The role existed because the Act required it. Any Schedule 4 contact required a licensed third-party witness present for the duration: extended grief-touch, palliative comfort sessions, certain categories of care. The witness did not participate. She observed, logged, and countersigned the record. Her presence made the contact legal. Her absence would have made it a violation.
Avel had been doing this for nine years. She had witnessed four hundred and eleven sessions before today's. She had a system: she arrived ten minutes early, checked both licenses, positioned herself near the door without being in the direct eyeline of the parties, and kept her log on her knee. She did not speak unless spoken to. She did not look away. That was the job.
Today's session was at a hospice. A man had driven some distance; she could see from the travel documentation that it was several hours. The woman in the bed was in her final week. The license check took four minutes, which was standard. Both exceptions were valid, both in the name of the other party, both recently renewed.
She positioned herself near the door.
The man sat down. He took the woman's hand. The woman had said something to him when he came in (she hadn't caught it) and he had not answered. He had just sat down and taken her hand.
The session lasted two hours and forty minutes. Neither of them spoke for most of it. Avel logged the time, the license numbers, the nature of contact: sustained hand-hold, no violations, no change in status of either party during the session. She countersigned.
She thanked them both before she left. The man nodded. The woman did not look up.
She walked to her car in the hospice lot. She put the log on the passenger seat. She sat for a while before she started the car.