Page 13 of The Love Operation

My system stops bracing and switches into overdrive, all senses heightened and on alert.

Are they sick?

I wish suddenly that we were in another room because this one is sacred. And whatever they’re about to tell me . . . it’s going to taint it.

“We just realized . . . we’re getting older.” She pauses. My mother uses pauses like scalpels—precise, deliberate, designed to cut through distractions and force focus.

My eyes snap to her face, to her tight features. I’m finding it harder to catch my breath.

“We’ve decided to retire.” Her voice is level, but her posture shifts—shoulders rolling back, chin lifting, like she’s daring me to challenge her. “Maybe travel a little. Really, we just want to do what we want, and fortunately, unlike many people in this world, we can.”

My brain registers relief—this isn’t cancer; no one’s dying—but it doesn’t linger. It curdles into something sharp at the back of my eyes.

Retirement is a choice.

Retirement is also for old people.

I search blindly behind me for the worn DNA pillow, something to ground me, and I force calm into my voice, because they can’t be serious. “Why not cut back? You two love what you do. Your patients are counting on you.” I’m counting on you.

“Cord, we’ve decided.” My father’s voice slices through the last five minutes, leaving something unfamiliar in its wake. When I meet his eyes, his jaw is set, like this isn’t up for dissection. Not a joke.

I push anyway. “You’re not old.” They’re sharp, ambitious, necessary. This isn’t just a job for us to stop or continue at will—it’s identity. It’s inheritance. My voice rises before I can stop it. “And you guys should know more than anyone—once people stop doing what gives them purpose, that’s when they fall apart.”

Dad glances at Mom. She shakes her head once, then she leaves the room.

I gape after her. She always stays. We discuss our way through everything.

A fist presses into my ribs, remains there, disrupts my balance. I try to shove it away.

“Why now?” I ask my dad. “Last month when I came over, everything was the same.” Mom and I were outlining a keynote for a women’s medical conference she planned to attend this fall. She was scribbling notes and researching stats. And Dad was walking me through a replantation case—a guy who’d severed his finger with a bandsaw. He’d just seen him post-op, and the guy was doing great. That man has a whole hand again because of my father.

Dad exhales through his nose, pinching the bridge like he’s warding off a headache. “Cordelia, we hoped you’d be happy for us. We just want time. God knows we’ve worked hard enough for it.”

“What happened to ‘the work is the reward’?” My voice wavers, but I don’t stop. I gesture toward the entryway. “TikTok, Dad? Really?”

“We have thought it through,” he says, his tone holding an end-of-discussion flare.

Silence stretches between us.

Finally, I exhale. “I give you three months. There’s no way you will be able to walk away from something that defines us.”

He studies me. “Love defines us, sweetheart. Not medicine.”

It’s a lovely sentiment, but it lands like a slap.

I swallow and nod, pulling a smile onto my face like a placebo.

Fine. Let them pretend this isn’t a crisis. I will too. Because I know what this is.

Burnout. They’ll take a break, and then they’ll remember who they are.

They’ve always been the same—same values, same pace, same structure. Predictable in unpredictable situations. They’d risen from difficult childhoods where they didn’t have enough and were told they couldn’t. But they built our family on “I can,” not “I quit.”

So this change? It doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t fit.

Because if they stop being who they are . . . Where does that leave me? It almost feels like they’re rejecting me.