Mirko ends the call.
Katriona
I don't sleep much because tonight is different. Tonight the thing keeping me awake isn't pain.
It's tomorrow.
I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling and think about the fact that in a few hours someone is going to put me under and fix the thing that has been quietly taking me apart since I was sixteen. I feel terrified. Then grateful. Then furious. Then terrified again, cycling through on a loop that shows no sign of breaking before my alarm goes off at five.
At some point around two, I give up on sleep entirely and sit up. Pull my knees to my chest and think about Akyl, and Dr Marsh, and how just a few weeks ago I wouldn’t never have been able to imagine I’d be here. In a beautiful room, being looked after by a man who is terrifying and wonderful in equal measure, waiting for dawn to break so I can go for my surgery.
The solution always existed just out of my reach, but now it exists for me. That's the fact I keep returning to. Dr. Marsh can do this surgery. He's done it hundreds of times. He used the wordexcellentin that consultation room, and I sat across from him and had to work very hard not to cry, because no one has ever saidexcellentto me in a medical context.
I keep saying the word to myself in the dark like it might teach me something.
At four-thirty I get up and shower. I stand under the hot water for longer than I need to, because the heat helps and because I can. No eye on a utility bill. No calculation of whether a long shower is a luxury I can justify this week. I just stand there and let it run while I breathe in the steam and think about how long it's been since I did something as simple as that without guilt attached to it.
I'm toweling off when there's a quiet knock at the bedroom door.
"Katriona." Akyl's voice, low, through the wood. "I'm in the kitchen when you’re ready."
I check the clock. Five-fifteen. "I'll be down in ten."
No response. Just his footsteps moving back down the hall, quiet and even.
I dress quickly in the clothes I laid out the night before: loose trousers, a soft long-sleeved top, nothing with a waistband that would sit against potential surgical sites. Hair in a low braid. No jewelry. I look at myself in the mirror and I look like someone being taken care of.
Akyl is exactly where I expected him to be when I pad through to the kitchen a few minutes later. Pouring two glasses of water.
"Sit," he says, and he sets one glass in front of the stool he's already pulled out.
I sit. I wrap both hands around the glass and take a long sip.
"Nervous?" He's folding himself onto the stool opposite me, his dark eyes assessing every part of me.
"Yes," I say. "And happy. Which is a strange combination."
"Why happy?"
I think about how to answer that. I could give him the practical version. But we're alone in this kitchen and I kissed himyesterday in a hospital car park, so I think honesty is what we're doing now.
"Because I've been waiting a long time for someone to take this as seriously as it deserves," I say. "And that's happening today. That's actually happening." I pause. "I'm allowed to feel good about that, even if I'm also frightened."
"You're allowed to feel anything you want," he says.
I nod, take another sip of water. "I've been thinking about yesterday," I say, studying my water.
He doesn't say anything. He just waits. He does this, leaves silence open like an invitation, which means you have to walk into it yourself.
"The car park," I say. "When I kissed you."
"I remember."
"It wasn't planned." I look up at him. He's watching me with that quality of attention he has, the kind that makes you feel like the only thing in the room worth looking at. "I don't play games, Akyl. I don't have the energy for them. I kissed you because you said something true and I didn't know what else to do with it."
"I know you're not playing games."
"I didn’t mean to overstep, or… whatever it was I did."
