Chapter Katriona
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 word excellent in that consultation room, and I sat across from him and had to work very hard not to cry, because no one has ever said excellent to 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 him yesterday 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."
The corner of his mouth moves, just slightly, in the way I've come to recognize. Amusement, or something close to it.
“You didn’t overstep," he says. "We’re going to be married; you can kiss me whenever you want."
The knot in my stomach loosens a little. I want to ask him why he hasn’t kissed me, why he has barely touched me, but I don’t think that’s a conversation to have just before surgery.
We leave at six.
The clinic is a low stone-faced building behind automatic gates, the kind of place that doesn't advertise itself. Akyl parks close to the entrance and cuts the engine and we sit for a moment in the quiet.
"Ready?" he says.
I take a breath. "As I'm going to be."
Inside, the reception desk is warm and hushed.
A woman greets us by name. Not Miss Bontoft, not the eight o'clock excision.
By name, because someone, presumably Akyl, made sure she would.
I notice this the way I've been noticing all his small adjustments.
Quietly, without pointing at them, the way you notice something good and want to hold it carefully.
A nurse takes me through to the pre-op area at seven-fifteen.
She's efficient and kind in equal measure.
Takes my vitals, checks my chart, explains what's going to happen in plain language without medical jargon.
She leaves me to change into a gown and tells me someone will come for me in twenty minutes.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the paper gown and the non-slip socks and I let myself be frightened.
I let myself feel the honest fear of someone about to be put to sleep and cut open who doesn't know, can't know, whether the relief they've been promised will actually come through.
I've been promised things before. I've learned not to count on them.
But Dr. Marsh said excellent. And Akyl made this happen today with a single phone call.
Maybe this is what it looks like when things actually work out.
The curtain opens and Akyl's head appears, his expression carefully neutral.
"I told them I needed two minutes," he says.
"And they let you back here?"
He comes in and lets the curtain fall behind him. Stands at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets and just looks at me. His jaw is set. He's doing something emotionally effortful and he's not trying to hide it, which feels important.
"Everything is prepared for your recovery," he says. "The room. The medications. The follow-up appointments. You won't have to manage any of it."
Part of me already knew that would be the case. But I was too scared to trust it. "Thank you."
"Marsh is the best there is." A pause. "He knows how important this is for you."
He steps closer and brings one hand to the side of my face, his thumb resting against my cheekbone. His palm is warm and slightly rough and the touch is so deliberate it feels like a sentence he's been working out for some time.
"Come back to me," he says. "After."
I put my hand over his and press it there. "I'll be in the next room."
"I know where you'll be." He holds my gaze for a moment, then drops his hand and steps back. The control slides back into place like a coat being straightened. "Tell them if you're in pain. Don't downplay it for anyone."
"I haven't downplayed anything for you yet."
"No." He's almost at the curtain. He looks back at me one last time. "I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Then he's gone.
I sit in the quiet and press my hand flat against my chest where the fear has been replaced by a settled warmth.
I'm not in love with him. It's too early for that. I know the difference between gratitude and love, between attraction and something that goes deeper.
But I think I could be.
The thought arrives without fanfare, twenty minutes before surgery.
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 word excellent is just the beginning.
"Count back from ten," the anesthesiologist says.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
I think about Akyl in the waiting room. The way he said come back to me like he needed it.
Seven.
Six.
I think: yes.
Five.
I don't make it to four.