Chapter 20 #2
I bite into it, the carb rush grounding me in the moment.
Liam stands, stretches, and says, “I’ll wait outside. Give you some space to get ready.” He squeezes my shoulder, a silent promise, and ducks out the door.
Andie sits beside me on the bed, her eyes a little softer than usual.
“You good?” she asks.
I nod, the answer honest.
She bumps her knee against mine. “Good. Now put on real pants. We don’t want you dying in whale pajamas.”
We get ready together, the normalcy of it soothing. I pull on my oldest jeans and a hoodie, brush my teeth, and braid my hair the way my dad used to like.
When I look in the mirror, I almost recognize myself.
I gather my stuff. I look around the room—at the messy desk, the tangle of sheets, the single lamp still glowing in the corner. For the first time, it feels less like a prison and more like a home.
We step out into the hall. Liam waits at the far end, hands in pockets, his face as open and unguarded as I’ve ever seen it.
He smiles when he sees me. I smile back.
Maybe the world isn’t fixed. Maybe I’m not, either.
But for the first time in a long time, I believe I could be.
One step at a time.
One sunrise at a time.
Let’s go.
The car ride is a vacuum. None of us talk.
Liam drives, knuckles white on the wheel.
Andie sits behind me, knee bouncing, muttering to herself about traffic, the weather, the inequity of morning hours.
I watch the city slide by, all the windows fogged and the sky a flat, metallic grey.
I try not to think about where we’re going.
I try not to think about the way my insides feel: tight and twisty and somehow hollow, like the walls of my stomach have sloughed off overnight.
We get there super early, and the hospital lobby is mostly empty.
A single woman in scrubs sits behind the intake desk, clicking through a game of solitaire.
The smell—antiseptic, lemon-pine, and something underneath—hits me like a flashback.
I double over, clutch my arms to my ribs, and suck in a breath.
Andie is beside me in an instant. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just nerves.”
We check in. The woman in scrubs gives me a clipboard with six forms and a pen attached by a chewed plastic cord. I fill them out in silence, my handwriting so spidery it’s barely legible. Name. Date of birth. Next of kin. All the lies you tell hospitals to get what you need.
The waiting room is an aquarium, all glass walls and dead air.
There’s a TV on mute, playing a loop of weather, headlines, and pharmaceutical ads.
The chairs are bolted to the floor, barely padded, designed to keep you alert and anxious.
The magazine rack is a graveyard of People and Us Weekly, all the covers dated from two years ago.
I sit between Andie and Liam, the three of us forming a tense, closed circuit. My phone vibrates every few minutes: campus emails, random notifications, a reminder about a paper I never turned in. I swipe them away, one by one.
My breathing gets shallow. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I twist the admission bracelet around my wrist until the skin goes red and raw.
Liam watches me, says nothing, but his hand rests close enough that our fingers almost touch.
I keep waiting for him to say something meaningful—some last-minute reassurance, some line from a poem or a sitcom or even just his own battered heart.
But he stays silent, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on a point just beyond the window.
Andie hums a tune under her breath, one I don’t recognize. It’s off-key and repetitive, but somehow it keeps me anchored.
When the nurse finally comes for me, I stand up and nearly drop to my knees. My legs are rubber. I cling to Andie and then to Liam, as if proximity alone could keep me safe.
The nurse is an older woman, tired but kind. She checks my name, my date of birth, and says, “Let’s get you prepped.” Her hands are warm and dry.
They walk me down a hall lined with soft yellow light. The world goes small and slow. My lungs won’t fill all the way. I taste old panic on my tongue.
We stop at a door marked PRE-OP.
Before the nurse can usher me inside, I turn to Liam and Andie, who’ve followed like shadows. The nurse hesitates, then lets me have a minute.
I face them. I can see the fear on both their faces—different, but the same core. Andie is holding back tears with all her might. Liam just looks stunned, as if he can’t believe any of this is happening.
I reach for Liam’s wrist, grip it tight. “Why did you come?” I ask, the words tearing out of me. “After everything?”
His eyes go soft, and for a second, he’s not a professor or a lover or anything but himself. He covers my hand with his.
“Because I adore you, Simone McCall,” he says, simply. “Regardless of what happens with the surgery. That’s it.”
The words cut me to the bone. There’s no artifice in his voice—just a broken, raw truth.
I want to say something back, something equally true, but the nurse interrupts with a gentle cough.
Andie hugs me, her chin digging into my shoulder. “You got this, Sim,” she whispers, fierce as ever.
I let go. The nurse leads me inside. The door swings shut behind me with a soft, final click.
The pre-op room is cold, the air conditioner set to polar. A nurse hooks up my IV. Another slaps little electrodes on my chest, the sticky pads cool and a little slimy. Everything is blue: the gown, the sheets, even the stupid hairnet they put on my head.
The doctor comes in, a woman with square glasses and a voice like crushed velvet. She explains the procedure in calm, clinical language. She tells me it’ll take two hours, maybe three if the fibroids are as big as the scan suggests. She says it like it’s no big deal.
I nod, barely hearing her.
When she leaves, I stare at the ceiling and count the tiny holes in the acoustic tiles. I wish I’d memorized a poem for this moment. I wish I had something to hold onto besides fear.
A nurse asks if I’m ready. I say yes.
They wheel me into the OR. The lights are impossibly bright, the air sharp and chemical. The anesthesiologist—young, with nervous hands—fiddles with the IV and tells me to count backwards from one hundred.
I get to ninety-six.
Then the world slips away.
When I come back, the pain is distant. The room is still cold, but the light is softer, filtered through beige curtains. My head aches, but my body feels strangely light.
I open my eyes.
Liam is there, slumped in a plastic chair, his face slack with exhaustion. Andie sits next to him, knees tucked to her chest, her head nodding in sleep.
I try to move, but a nurse appears instantly, checking my vitals, adjusting the IV.
“You did great,” she says. “It’s over.”
I look at my belly, swaddled in white bandages. I want to ask if I’m fixed, but the words won’t come.
The nurse brings me ice chips. I chew them slowly, the cold waking up my brain.
Andie stirs first. She looks at me, then at the nurse, and then back. “Sim?” Her voice is wobbly.
I try to smile. “Hi.”
She leaps up, careful not to tug my tubes. “You made it,” she whispers, then wipes at her eyes.
Liam wakes next, and when he sees me, something in his face cracks open. He doesn’t try to say anything. He just takes my hand, thumb tracing circles on my wrist, grounding me in the here and now.
The doctor comes in. “All done,” she says. “We got everything we needed to. You’ll be sore, but with a little luck and some rest, you should be good as new.”
I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak.
For the next hour, Andie and Liam keep vigil. They don’t argue, don’t snipe at each other, just sit side by side, hands folded, waiting.
Finally, Andie excuses herself to get something from the vending machine, and Liam and I are alone.
“Hi,” I say, voice shredded and small.
He looks at me like I’m a miracle.
“You look beautiful, Simone,” he says, and squeezes my hand, careful not to crush it. “You did great.”
I want to say something clever, something to prove I’m not a lost cause, but all that comes out is, “Water?”
He pours it, brings the straw to my lips, patient as a saint. It tastes like nothing, but the coolness soothes the raw patches in my throat.
A nurse comes in. Checks my vitals. Tells me I did great, that the doctor will be in again soon.
Liam sits back in the visitor’s chair, knees jiggling. He doesn’t touch me again, but he doesn’t look away, either.
I drift off. When I wake, he’s still there.
The physician is a blur of white coat and cheerful competence. She shows me before-and-after images: big, ugly fibroids, now excised and gone. She says, “We’re optimistic about your recovery. With some healing, you’ll have every chance at a normal life.” She says it like she means it.
I don’t cry, but something in my chest goes loose and floaty.
Liam listens to the whole speech, asks the right questions, then writes down the instructions word for word.
When the doctor leaves, I look at him.
“You don’t have to stay,” I say.
He smiles. “I want to.”
For the next two days, he comes every afternoon. He brings books—some literary, some just for fun. When my brain is too foggy to focus, he reads out loud, voice steady and sure, turning the hospital room into a different world.
He brings tea in a thermos, chamomile, the kind I like best. He adjusts my pillows without asking. He never tries to kiss me, or touch me, unless I reach for him first.
At night, when visiting hours end, he leaves quietly, promises to come back. He always does.
Andie visits, too. She brings gossip, sour candy, the news from campus. She sits on the edge of the bed and needles me about “finally getting my uterus in working order.” When she catches Liam in the hallway, she nods at him, nothing more. It feels like an amnesty.
Every morning, the sun is a little higher. Every morning, I feel a little less like a collection of wounds and a little more like myself.
On the last day, I stand at the window in my paper gown, looking out at the parking lot. There are people, moving about their days without any idea who I am. For the first time, I want to be back there. Not to hide, but to start again.
Liam sits in the visitor’s chair, flipping through a battered copy of Rilke.
“Hey,” I say, turning to him. “Why did you do all this?”
He sets the book down. “You mean the books? The tea?”
I shake my head. “You know what I mean.”
He stands, crosses the space between us, but not too close.
“Because I care about you,” he says. “Because I want you to get better. Not for me, not for us—just for you.”
I believe him.
For the first time, I really do.
I let him hold my hand, and when his thumb traces the old, familiar pattern on my palm, I don’t feel fear or need. Just a soft, electric hope.
“I don’t know what happens next,” I say, honest as I can be.
“Neither do I,” he replies, and this time, it feels like freedom.
We stand there, together, looking out at the world.
The future is a blank page.
I’m ready to write it.