The resident passes the suture.
We reinforce the repair with interrupted stitches, test the line with irrigation, wait, take another pause, then watch for any sign of fresh bleeding.
Nothing.
“Good,” I murmur. “Place the Blake drain.”
Once it’s seated, we close in layers. The monitors stabilize almost instantly.
Normal sinus.
Stronger pressures.
A heart working as it should, relieved of its strangling cage.
We step out into the scrub alcove, the quiet space just outside the OR, and peel off our gloves. The resident shakes his head in disbelief. “Nice call, Dr. Prescott. That pause you asked for…if we’d rushed, we might’ve missed it.”
I toss my mask in the bin.
“Pausing’s underrated,” I tell him.
He nods like I’ve handed him the secret to theuniverse. Maybe I did. Took me twenty years to learn it.
After the ICU handoff, I find the patient’s husband in the waiting room. The moment he sees me, he shoots to his feet.
His eyes are swollen, and his hands twist in front of him. “Is she?—?”
“She’s stable,” I tell him. “It was a bleed, but we controlled it. She’s responding well.”
His knees buckle with relief. He sinks into the chair, hands covering his face. When he looks up, tears streak his cheeks.
“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you. I didn’t—” His voice breaks. “I didn’t know if I’d see her again.”
I rest a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be waking up soon. You can see her in about an hour.”
His gratitude is palpable. Nourishing.
I always assumed it was hero worship, or as Jayne would say, I’d let it feed my God complex, but today, I can see it for what it is.
Humanity meeting humanity.
These past months have not merely been about prioritizing my family and my wife over my work; they have changed me in visceral ways. I have learned to connect with myself—for real—and that has taken away my need for validation, as well as my hunger to be recognized as a world-class surgeon.
It’s just one more epiphany in a long line of themsince I started my sabbatical. I thought I was going to reconnect with my family, but the surprise of it is that I reconnected with myself.
And strangely, I’m a better surgeon for it.
CHAPTER 31
Jayne
It’s just past midnight when the click of the front door wakes me. A moment later, our bedroom opens, and the familiar mix of hospital smells—soap, latex, antiseptic—drifts in before he does.
“How did it go?” I whisper, eyes still mostly closed.
“She’s stable,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss my forehead.
“Good.” I breathe out, sinking deeper into the pillow.
