Chapter Thirty-Six
JULIáN
The hospital is mayhem, voices echoing, whispering, screaming. My hands tremble as I beg the woman behind the desk for any information on Ry’s consciousness. Isolde and my pare come rushing in, Isolde collapsing to her knees, while my pare pulls her up, carrying her weight as we all try to understand what’s happening.
“She must get the surgery to remove them. They’ve shifted, and there’s nothing outside of surgery we can do,” the surgeon and his team explain to the three of us.
“She doesn’t want that. She’s never wanted that.” Isolde is hysterical. Her voice pure agony.
“She must. We have to,” I interrupt.
“It’s her choice, Julián, and I can’t take her choice from her. I’ve tried for years. She won’t even hear of it. The surgery is extremely dangerous, even with the best surgeon, and she would never want it. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times.” My father wraps his arms around her shaking shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Julián. I know you love my daughter, but I have known and loved her her entire life and I know she will never forgive us if it goes wrong.”
“At least she will be alive to be angry! I made her a promise to keep her here with me, and I refuse to break it! I don’t care if she never speaks to me again, and you can hate me all you want, as long as her heart is still beating! We have to give her a chance!” I shout, slamming my fist against the desk. The nurse behind it jumps in shock.
“Her heart may beat, but her mind could be gone! Do you know what happens when it goes wrong?”
“I know about Audra, yes. But I’ve spent weeks doing research, and there are many cases of success—many of them—and she will be one. I promised her, Isolde. Please, we have to.” I shove my shaking phone with its shitty cracked screen toward her face, scrolling through article after article, post after post.
“But she’s always been so against it. She’s refused more times than I can count. I’ve taken so much from her. I can’t make this choice for her. You may have spent weeks with her, but I’ve spent her entire life with her.”
“That was before! She has so much to live for, so much to do. Please don’t take her away from me.” I feel my knees hit the hard tile floor and I try to stand back up.
“You think you’re the only one who loves her? The only one who wants her to live? I’m her mother, and I’m the reason she has this condition. I passed it to her and she’s the one suffering.” The anguish in Isolde’s guilt-ridden confession pains me.
“No.” I reach for her hands to beg, but she pulls away. “You aren’t the reason. You didn’t know and you spent her entire life trying to keep her alive, so don’t stop now! We both need her. I know how much you need her. Who are you without her? Who are any of us? The world needs her. Please, Isolde. Please don’t take her chance at life away.”
Conflict, anguish, absolute devastation, and the tiniest bit of hope flash over her face as she stares at me in silence. “I don’t know…” she finally says, and I stand fully.
“I’m not going anywhere. Neither is she. I will never leave her side. If something goes wrong, you can blame me for the rest of my life. You can take my life; I’ll gladly trade it for hers.” I swallow, meaning every word.
“I will never forgive you if my daughter doesn’t come back. I will spend my life making sure you suffer,” Isolde promises, and I hope she keeps her word if that were to happen.
Grief can make people lose all sense of grounding, of their tempers and reality. I know the cold touch of grief all too well, and Isolde may hate me now, but when her daughter wakes up with her memory, everything will be fine. She finally nods to the waiting surgeon, and they rush to get to work. The room is spinning; the relief of Isolde changing her mind has me nearly jumping up and down.
I don’t care how long it takes, but I know Ry will be okay. She has to be. Life can’t be this unfair, not to her. Not to that warm heart and kind soul. It’s taken too much from her already; it cannot claim her memories or her life.
Once Ry and the medical staff are out of our vision, Isolde pivots to me. “She will hate both of us if this goes wrong! You must know what happened to Audra after her surgery, and Ry was never the same. I swore to her I would never allow that to happen to her! What will we do if it doesn’t work? What will we do?” Isolde repeats as she collapses, and I hold on to her this time, knowing she doesn’t want a response, and let her curse me in both languages and sob until she has no tears left.
My father takes over holding her, and shocking us both, she allows him to comfort her until she falls asleep, half in his arms, and half of on the cold hospital floor. She’s terrified, her heart is worried and nearly shattered, and I would feel guilty for convincing her if I didn’t know I was doing the right thing. Hours later, I ask the nurse again for an update, and she tells me Ry will be moved to recovery soon. My heart is a heavy anchor as I hear that word— recovery . So she made it through the surgery. Relief, like the waves of the sea, washes over me, and I take one look at Isolde and know to keep quiet until we know what state Ry is in before speaking to her again. I wait, trying to distract myself with crossword puzzles, but every thought goes back to Ry. The day I met her, her sarcasm and attitude immediately drawing me in. Her reluctance to admit she was wrong and her stubbornness were so intense, I knew I had met my match. She’s my other and better half; she’s all that’s right in this cruel world, and I may be a poor fisherman’s son, but I will scour this entire fucking planet to find a better surgeon, another surgery, some kind of cure, if anything goes wrong.
The hours feel like years until the doctor comes out to us. Isolde is asleep, her body resting against my pare as he strokes her hair. Maybe they are soulmates, I realize. He’s loved her his whole life, and she didn’t make it easy, yet here he is, comforting her in the most important moment of her life. The surgeon, who came from Madrid on an emergency flight, comes to me first, and I hold my breath, trying not to vomit up my empty stomach as he speaks. He tells me the surgery was technically a success, but she hasn’t regained consciousness yet. Both good and uneasy news.
He tells me that we can go see her, but to allow her to wake up on her own. Even though it’s hard as hell, I have Isolde go into the small room first to see her daughter alone, but she comes out rather quickly and rushes back to my pare’s side, sobbing again.
When I enter the room, the beeping and the smell of stale saline remind me of when my mare was dying. I gag a little but swallow it down and approach Ry in the bed. The sight of her like this is devastating, even though the machines tell me she’s stable, the steady beeping is a positive thing, but saints, seeing her this way, I pray to a god I’ve never believed in that she’s going to be okay. I will pray and worship for the rest of my life if she’s okay. And if not, I will wreak havoc on this world, unlike anything anyone’s ever seen. If I somehow manage to survive it, I simply won’t accept it. I sit down next to her still body, counting the movements of her chest as she breathes in and out, in and out.
My lids are heavy, but I refuse to sleep until she wakes up. I attempt again to do a crossword but fail. I turn the page to a new puzzle and notice scratchy handwriting. Ry’s scribbling in random boxes that, as I read, spell: I LOVE YOU JULIEN . In the margin, her scribbles appear again: “Sorry they didn’t have the boxes for the right way to spell your name, so I had to use an E.”
Smiling for the first time since we got here, I take the pen and write back, I love you, Oriah , then reach for Ry’s hand. I drag the tip of it down her palm, extending her lifeline, willing it to be.