I spent the next three hours in surgery to save a fifty-three-year-old man with abdominal aortic aneurysm, brought in by ambulance after collapsing at a grocery store. His wife had been with him, clutching his hand until the paramedics pulled her away. I saw her face in the waiting room before I scrubbed in. There was fear and desperate hope in her eyes.
This was why I'd become a surgeon. This moment, this responsibility, this chance to pull someone back from the edgeof death. Not for the gratitude or the recognition. For the work itself.
I saved him.
It took six units of blood, and a repair that pushed the limits of my technical abilities, but I did. When I finally stepped out of the OR, with my shoulders aching and my scrubs damp with sweat, his wife was still waiting. Still hoping. Still praying.
"He's stable," I told her. "The next twenty-four hours are critical, but he made it through surgery."
She burst into tears, unable to contain her relief. "Thank you," she managed. "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much."
I nodded and escaped before she could say anything else. I was never good at these moments, the raw emotion of families confronting mortality. I could handle the surgery, the blood, the chaos, and the pressure of holding someone's life in my hands.
But the gratitude afterward, the tears and the hugs and the desperate need to connect, that always left me feeling exposed in ways I didn't know how to manage.
I changed out of my scrubs and drove home, my mind still circling the fellowship.
Cassian had beaten me there. When I walked through the door, the smell of garlic and tomatoes and something rich and savory made my stomach growl despite everything.
He was standing at the stove, stirring something in a large pot, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder. He'd already changed out of his work clothes into jeans and a worn t-shirt, his feet bare against the tile floor. Soft and acoustic music played from his phone on the counter, something he listened to when he was relaxed and happy.
"Hey." He turned when he heard me, his face breaking into a smile. "Perfect timing. Dinner's almost ready."
"You cooked."
"I did." He abandoned the stove long enough to cross the kitchen and kiss me, his lips warm and familiar. "Nonna's pasta recipe. The real one, not the shortcut version."
That recipe took hours. He only made it when he had time and energy to do it properly and wanted to create something special for us.
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"Is there a need for an occasion?" He handed me a glass of wine. "I had a good day. I wanted to share it with my favorite person."
My favorite person. I took a longer sip of wine than necessary, using the glass to hide my face.
"Tell me about your day," I said, because focusing on him was easier than facing what was in my own head.
We sat down to dinner with candles lit and wine poured. The pasta was as good as he'd promised. Cassian talked about his cases, his residents, and a scheduling conflict he'd finally resolved with the chief of surgery. He told me about a first-year who'd fainted during a routine appendectomy.
"Poor kid went down like a ton of bricks," he said, laughing. "One minute he's holding a retractor, the next minute he's on the floor. He kept apologizing while the nurses were trying to get him flat. I had to tell him three times that it happens to everyone."
I smiled at the right moments and asked follow-up questions. I played the part of the engaged wife, while my mind calculated time differences, flight costs, and how many hours we could reasonably expect to video call per week.
Eight thousand miles. Fourteen hours difference. Two years.
The numbers kept running through my head like a terrible equation I couldn't solve.
"You okay?" Cassian asked eventually, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth.
"Just tired."
"Long day?"
"They're all long days."
It wasn't a lie, exactly. Just an incomplete truth—a half-answer I'd gotten too good at giving to avoid conversations I wasn't ready to have.
Cassian studied me for a moment, his green eyes searching my face for something I hoped he wouldn't find. Then he reached across the table and took my hand, his thumb tracing circles on my palm.
