![]() ![]() She’s too busy watching me, watching the tubes hooked into my arms and nose, watching that machine beep-beep-beep, proving I’m still alive. There’s a book open on her lap, but I know she’s not reading it. She sits on the edge of the pea-green pleather chair that doubles as a bed in my hospital room. I’ve made my own stomach twist more than once, but this kind of stuff is not for the faint of heart. ![]() The scalpel zips down my sternum, and my body squelches and squishes as gloved hands dip into my open chest. A lot of people leave out noises and smells when they let their imaginations ramble, but not me. The color is pretty, bright red against my pale skin and the white and steel operating room. It’s my heart, after all, puny as it may be, the lousy blood-bringer to all my other top-notch organs. When you’ve spent most of the past two years on your couch watching the sun tick across the sky like I have, you’ve got a bunch of time to work on your thoughts. One of the best on Juniper Island, if I had to guess. Day in and day out, while Kate biked back and forth from our house to the bookstore she owns downtown about a million times a day to check on me, I would weave together this very moment in full color. ![]() Kate keeps telling me no way, nohow is it going to be forever, but she isn’t the one who’s about to have her most important internal organ switched out like a new swimsuit at the start of the summer. Definitely for a few minutes and maybe forever. ![]()
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