Page 23 of The Love Operation

“Okay.” She grins, and I can practically feel the excitement radiating from her skin. “Let’s review the procedure. Read it aloud.”

I zero in on the screen. The words are crisp, immediate.

Most frequent approach: suboccipital craniotomy, usually combined with dural patch grafting and cervical laminectomy of C1 through C2 or C3.

Patient position: prone on chest rolls, head in Mayfield.

Flex neck to open interspace between occiput and posterior arch of C1.

Shoulders retracted inferiorly with tape.

Midline incision . . .

As I speak, it’s like the words aren’t just being read, they’re stamped onto my brain, locked in place. Not just reviewed, but etched.

When I finish, Delenn clicks her pen. “Do you feel like you need to read it again?”

I shake my head. “No. Turn it off.” My lips curl into a grin. “Test me.”

“Cord, that was too fast. There’s no way—”

“Test me.” I feel giddy, restless, completely unmoored by the implications of this. I just absorbed a complex surgical procedure in a fraction of the time it would have taken me without these wires attached to my head and this medication in my bloodstream.

Delenn hesitates, then shuts off the screen. She grabs the physical copy of the procedure, flipping it open. “Okay. Walk me through how you’d operate on someone with Chiari malformation.”

I open my mouth and begin thinking of the first words I saw on screen, but then—

My body locks up.

I . . . I can’t believe it. I can barely process it. My heartbeats tumble over one another as I feel suddenly weightless, unattached from the present. It’s as if I’ve slipped through a crack in reality.

The scene in front of me shifts, and it’s like I’m watching a movie of the past several minutes from the inside.

Delenn paces. Not now, but before, as she did moments ago. She rubs her temple. Drops her pen. Bends to pick it up.

I see myself reading the screen. Except I’m not just remembering what happened or even watching a memory—I’m in it.

Everything replays exactly as it happened, and I’m somehow, at the same time, inside yet outside myself, observing—clearly. The words I read aren’t just in my head. They’re right in front of me, as clear as the moment I first absorbed them.

It’s a memory, but it’s . . . more than that. Acute awareness.

Then—

“Cord!”

The present slams into me.

I jolt at the sound. Delenn is in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, eyes wide, pupils huge, breath shallow.

The screen behind her is black.

“What the hell just happened?” Her voice is tight and strained, but it’s tinged with relief. “You didn’t blink. I called your name five times.”

I blink now, trying to process. My chest rises too fast. It’s not fear. It’s adrenaline.

“When I tried to remember the procedure”—I swallow—“I started experiencing it all over again. Like you recorded the room, pressed rewind, and then played the video back, except I was in it. I saw it all—the screen, you pacing, the room, even details I hadn’t noticed, like you dropping your pen and picking it up.”

Delenn stares at me, jaw slack. Then she mutters to herself. “When you initiated recall, you just . . . froze. Stared into space. No blinking. No reaction. You were gone. You didn’t respond to anything I said.”