Chapter 9 - SURGERY IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
The operating room was a blur of bright overhead surgical lights, sterile green scrubs, and hurried medical personnel shouting prep instructions as I was transferred from the gurney onto the operating table. An anesthesiologist placed an oxygen mask over my face, telling me to count backward from ten, but my mind was entirely clear, racing with terrifying thoughts of my two-week-old daughter growing up while I was confined to a wheelchair. The last thing I remembered before the darkness swallowed me was the cold sting of the IV line and Dr. Sterling scrubbing his hands at the sink across the room, preparing to make the incision that would either save my legs or confirm my worst nightmares.
Outside in the deserted surgical waiting lounge, the clock ticked past midnight into the early hours of the morning. Marco sat alone in a plastic chair with his head buried in his hands, staring at the scuffed linoleum floor where the security footage of me crawling across our living-room carpet replayed endlessly in his mind like an inescapable horror film. He realized then that his casual dismissals, his accusations of overacting, and his refusal to look up from his phone had nearly cost his wife her ability to walk and his daughter a mother who could hold her.
