I could so easily fall in love with Akyl Mostovoi.
The nurse comes back. Goes through the final checks. Confirms my name and the procedure. Asks me, with the tone of someone who means it every time, if I'm ready.
"Yes," I say.
They wheel me into the theater at eight. It's bright and cold and full of people who know exactly what they're doing. Dr. Marsh greets me like a person rather than a procedure, and I think:yes.This is what I'm choosing. This version of the world, where I am seen, where the wordexcellentis just the beginning.
"Count back from ten," the anesthesiologist says.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
I think about Akyl in the waiting room. The way he saidcome back to melike he needed it.
Seven.
Six.
I think:yes.
Five.
I don't make it to four.
Akyl
The surgery takes four hours and twelve minutes. And I count every second of it.
I've never counted anything so carefully in my life. Not money, not odds, not the seconds between a threat and a response. Yet here I am in this private waiting room with its expensive chairs and its faint smell of antiseptic and I watch the clock with the focused attention of a man who has nothing left to do but wait, which is something I am spectacularly bad at.
Marsh finds me at twelve-seventeen, still in his scrubs. He tells me the excision was extensive but successful. That the adenomyosis was more advanced than the imaging suggested. That his team removed adhesions from the pelvic sidewall, the bowel, and the left ovary, which had been partially embedded. That Katriona's pain in the years before diagnosis had been, in his clinical estimation, considerable.
When he uses the wordconsiderableand I have to work very hard to stay seated.
He tells me her recovery will take several weeks. That she'll have significant post-surgical pain initially, which will reduce as the healing progresses but she should be up and about in just a few days. That she'll need follow-up appointments at two weeks and six weeks. That with proper care and the ongoing hormonal treatment they've recommended, her prognosis is excellent.
"She did well," Marsh says. "She's strong."
I look at him. "She's been strong for a very long time with no help. That ends now."
He holds my gaze for a moment and nods.
"I'll have the nursing team speak with you about post-operative care," he says, and excuses himself.
I sit back in the chair and I breathe. Just breathe normally, for the first time in four hours and twelve minutes.
She's strong. I knew that already. I've known it since the auction when I heard her comforting the other woman. Liv, it turns out, is now ensconced in my brother’s apartment in the city. But knowing she's strong and watching her being wheeled toward an operating table are entirely different experiences, and the version of me that emerged from this waiting room is not quite the same one that entered it.
Something changed while I was sitting here counting the minutes. Something I'll examine more carefully when I’ve got Katriona back home and she is healing.
I'm in the chair by the window when she opens her eyes. She's slow coming up from the anesthetic, blinking at the ceiling with the careful, deliberate focus of someone taking stock of their situation. Her first clear movement is her hand going to her abdomen, not pressing, just resting there.
"Still here," I say.
She turns her head toward me. Her voice is rough from the breathing tube when she speaks. "Hey, you’re here.”
