“I need the signature.”
Dad signed.
They started moving my bed again.
Mom walked beside me until the operating-room doors.
“Sweetheart, I’m here,” she whispered.
I wanted to be comforted by that.
Instead I remembered her standing beside my bed saying, “Enough, Ella.
You’re fine.”
The doors opened.
A nurse stopped my mother from following.
The last thing I saw before they turned me away was Dad holding her shoulders while she stared at me like she had finally understood how loudly a person could scream without making a sound.
Inside the operating room, everything was brutally bright.
The anesthesiologist leaned over me.
“Ella, we’re going to take care of you.”
I wanted to believe him.
I watched clear medication enter the IV tubing.
The lights blurred.
Then there was nothing.
When I woke again, terror arrived before memory.
Ceiling.
Monitor.
Blanket.
Hospital smell.
For half a second I thought I was back at the beginning.
No.
Please, no.
A nurse noticed my eyes open.
“Ella?”
I tried to move.
Nothing happened.
Panic exploded through me.
The nurse stepped closer.
“Don’t force it.
You’re just waking up.”
Those words were too similar to everything I had heard before.
My eyes filled with tears.
Then the doctor appeared beside her.
He seemed to understand immediately.
“We’re going to test this one thing at a time,” he said.
“Can you feel my hand on your right foot?”
One blink.
“Good.
Don’t try to move your whole leg.
Just your big toe.”
I concentrated on my right foot.
Nothing.
My heart sank.
“Again,” he said.
I tried so hard my jaw ached even though I wasn’t sure I was moving that either.
The doctor stared at my foot.
The nurse leaned forward.
Something touched the inside of my hospital sock.
Tiny.
Barely there.
The doctor smiled.
“You moved it.”
