CHAPTER 2
Doom and Gloom
RODNEY
THE NEXT DAY, WE ASKED A FAMILY FRIENDto stay with the girls again, while Paige drove me to the hospital. We didn’t say much to each other, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
When we arrived, they whisked me away and prepped me for surgery. I tried not to think about what was ahead of me and just got into the gown. When the nurse gave me stockings to wear, I looked at them in confusion.
“What are these for?”
“They’ll prevent blood clots from forming in your legs during surgery,” she said.
Great. A gown and panty hose!
Paige came in soon after, looking pale and fragile. “What’s that?” she asked the nurse, pointing at my left arm. They’d drawn a purple circle around it.
“It’s to tell the surgeon from which side to remove the lymph node.”
“Wouldn’t want to get that wrong, now, would we?” Paige muttered under her breath.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all very routine.”
Two single teardrops ran down her cheeks. “Might as well be brain surgery.”
The anesthesiologist and doctor arrived together before the surgery. Their calm expression put me at ease, but Paige was still agitated. The surgeon gave her a sympathetic look. “It’ll be a piece of cake.” She nodded, and two more tears fell.
“It’s time,” the nurse said to her gently. “You can go out into the waiting room, and Dr. W. will update you once the surgery is complete.”
Paige leaned over and planted a brief kiss on my lips. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
She walked to the door and then turned back to look at me. I could tell it was hard for her to leave me there, so I gave her a small smile, waved goodbye, and watched the door close behind her.
The nurse put an IV into my arm and raised the rails of my bed, before wheeling me down a long white hallway.
Is this how inmates on death row feel?
It suddenly hit me that I would be going under the knife within just a few minutes, that someone would be cutting my body open like a piece of meat. When I looked around, the medical staff seemed calm, like they’d gone through this hundreds of times, which helped me relax a little.
When we arrived at the operating room, the air was freezing, so they covered me up with several warm blankets. Everyone was wearing a green surgical mask, so all I could see were their eyes.
Behind me, the anesthesiologist said, “How do you feel?”
My eyes darted around the room, taking in all the machines and people. I wondered how long it would take for the drugs to kick in, for everything to go dark.
“Fine, under the circumstances.”
He waited a moment and then asked, “How about now? How do you feel?” As he asked me that, my head started to feel funny, and I realized I wouldn’t be awake for much longer.
“See you on the other side,” I murmured. My eyes closed, and I heard the sound of low chuckles just before the room spun completely out of control.
PAIGE
WHILERODNEY WAS HAVING A LYMPH NODE REMOVEDfor dissection, I closed my eyes, exhausted, hoping to grab forty winks, to no avail. My mind flitted back to a different time I’d had to sit in a waiting room.
Rodney and I had been dating for a few months, and I’d caught some kind of bug that wouldn’t go away on its own. It was one of the rare times I’d visited a doctor.
Rodney offered to pick me up, becau
