Chapter 12
Alexei
The next several hours are the longest of my life.
I insisted on being in the operating room, so just like the doctors and the nurses, I’m wearing a surgical gown, mask, gloves, and booties—and even so, I’m not allowed to get within three meters of my wife or to interact with her under any circumstances.
“If you startle us, the scalpel could slip,” Ingels warned ominously. “You need to stay absolutely still and quiet at all times, or better yet, wait outside.”
I promised to be still and quiet, and that’s what I’m doing now: sitting in the corner like a ghost and staring intently as the team puts Alina under a combination of local and mild general anesthesia before hooking her up to a million monitors and strapping her head in place—I assume to prevent her from moving it once she’s awake.
The rest of her body is covered with surgical drapes, leaving only her head exposed, and then a portion of her skull is marked for an incision.
Stomach churning and chest tight, I watch as they use a drill-like instrument to create a bone flap and expose the grayish-pink tissue underneath.
Alina’s brain.
Fuck.
I realize my hands are shaking, so I ball them into fists.
I’ve seen naked brains before, both blown out and intact. But this is different. It’s not some enemy of mine. This is my wife lying there on the operating table, under the merciless glare of the bright surgical lights.
I know she’s not feeling any pain and that this is necessary to save her life, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I still want to go over there and crack open the skull of every person who’s doing this to her.
Taking deep breaths, I squeeze my eyes shut, then force them open as Fasseau barks out, “Saline!”
The nurses are already on it, the entire seven-person team operating like a smoothly oiled machine. In addition to Ingels and Fasseau, the two neurosurgeons, there is an anesthesiologist, three nurses, and a neuropsychologist, all of them moving in a carefully orchestrated way.
And then… Alina is awake. Her long lashes flutter open, revealing her gorgeous jade-green eyes, and her tongue flicks out to moisten her plush lips.
She blinks, once, twice, three times as the doctors start speaking to her, assuring her that everything’s all right, reminding her of what’s happening and where she is, asking if she’s feeling any pain or discomfort. And… she answers.
She fucking answers them, as if she’s not lying there with her brain exposed.
It’s surreal to watch.
I understand now why Ingels explicitly warned me to stay still and quiet.
The urge to come up and speak to her, to make sure she’s all right, is overwhelming.
Though she’s just told the doctors she’s not in any pain, I want to ask her that myself, to make sure she’s not freaked out by what’s happening to her—because I fucking am.
Still and quiet, I remind myself. Stay still and quiet.
So I do. I’m a human statue in the corner as the surgeons begin cutting into the exposed tissue, speaking to her the entire time.
They make her count to a hundred and do multiplication tables.
They ask her to sing and to speak in both English and Russian—and then translate from one language to the other and back.
They remove some of the drapes covering her body and make her move her fingers and toes, then bend her arms and legs.
They apply electric stimulation to various parts of her exposed brain and ask her what she sees and hears, if she feels any tingling when they do this and that.
It’s the weirdest, most sci-fi experience of my life, and I’m not the one it’s being done to.
I don’t know how long the operation lasts, but my legs have fallen asleep by the time they put Alina under again and close up her skull, securing the bone flap with small titanium plates before suturing her scalp closed layer by layer.
I wait until they’re completely done before I finally move, carefully standing up as pins and needles cut agonizingly through my legs. It takes a solid minute to regain most of the feeling in my feet, and by then, the nurses are wheeling Alina to the recovery room.
I hurry to accompany them there and then wait impatiently next to Alina until Ingels and Fasseau show up sans their surgical gowns and gear.
“Well?” I demand. “How did it go?”
“About as well as we could’ve hoped,” Fasseau says, wearily rubbing a hand over his face.
“There were no complications during the procedure, and we removed all of the tumor cells that could be removed without impacting healthy brain tissue—which, luckily, was nearly all of them. Now we’re waiting on the pathology report to determine the exact tumor type and grade.
That’s what will tell us how aggressive the follow-up treatment will need to be. ”
I exhale a breath I had been holding. “And how long will this report take?”
“Normally, at least several days,” Ingels replies. “But since your case is of the highest priority, our neuropathologist will work through the night, and we’ll have the answers by morning.”
They’d fucking better, given the high-seven-figure “donation” I’ve made to the clinic on top of their already-exorbitant fees.
I look at Alina, who’s still sedated, her head thickly bandaged, and my chest tightens again. “When will she awaken?”
“Within the next twenty minutes or so,” Fasseau says. “Our anesthesiologist used slightly stronger sedation at the end, just in case there were any complications as we were wrapping up. Luckily, there weren’t.”
Luckily indeed. If anything had gone wrong, he and his colleagues wouldn’t have walked away alive.
I find Alina’s limp hand under the blanket and squeeze it gently. Her long fingers are so thin, so fragile in my hold.
The need to protect her, to keep her from all pain and hurt, is overwhelming, and the knowledge that I can’t is like a festering boil inside me.
Watching her on that operating table today, being forced to stay still and silent as they drilled into her skull…
I’m still not sure how I survived that. Or how I will be able to bear watching her suffer through the chemo and radiation.
But I will. Because she needs me, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.
Although… maybe she did sort of admit it this morning. I overheard only portions of her conversation with her brothers, but it was obvious that they wanted to take her away and she refused.
It’s possible she’s just trying to avoid bloodshed, but I’m hopeful that it’s more than that. That she’s beginning to see what I’ve always known: that we belong together.
The doctors leave, and I carefully perch on the edge of the bed and bring her hand to my lips, brushing a kiss over her knuckles. As I do so, I notice that the red polish on her nails is chipped—the first time I’m seeing her nails less than perfect in recent years.
Strangely, I like it. More than like it—I prefer it.
Just like I prefer the way her face looks without any makeup, her porcelain skin baby soft, her lips naturally full and rosy, slightly parted to reveal that adorable tiny gap between her teeth.
Even the heavy bandage on her head doesn’t take away from the stunning symmetry of her features, the delicate beauty of which is only enhanced by the super-short buzzcut they gave her.
It was all I could do to stop with a kiss in that bathroom.
Fuck, even now I want her.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that she’s sick, and that it’ll be a long time before she recovers enough to handle the raw need pulsing through my veins and stiffening my cock.
No matter how much I crave her, I will restrain myself for the foreseeable future.
I’d never want to hurt her in any way.