Page 26 of The Love Operation

Ignore him, I tell myself.

But my brain won’t let me.

I suck in air—and suddenly, I hear the ding of the elevator. Even though I know I’m still in bed.

I don’t just remember walking into Harriet’s—I see myself doing it. I feel the temperature change on my skin. An ambulance siren whirs in the distance, something I didn’t register before.

And then it’s all back. The plants. The skyline. Isaac.

I smell his cologne.

His fingers brush mine, and I reexperience that crackle of connection that made my stomach swoop.

Cordelia. My name, a plea on his tongue.

I rip back to the present, gripping my sheets, blinking at my ceiling.

That felt real, too real.

I reach for my phone to call Delenn, to tell her that this goes beyond what I learned in her lab. But I stop myself. She needs rest.

And for now, I just want to play with this superpower.

I close my eyes and picture the rooftop. It’s like pressing rewind and then play.

And I let it take me.

Chapter 6

There Will Be Signs

My alarm screeches from the bathroom, an obnoxious sound like a goose and a bagpipe arguing over their taxes. I swing my legs out of bed and, channeling my inner Frankenstein’s monster, amble across the floor, slap the phone silent, and rub my face until I’m convinced I still have one.

Two hours. That’s all the sleep I got. But it was worth it.

All night, I wandered through everything—surgeries, family dinners, med school rotations. Relationships. Touch. Heat. Breath against skin.

It was incredible. The rush of remembering—the sheer clarity of it—shoots through me, jolting me fully awake. It’s like remembering I got a puppy yesterday and I get to go play with it again today.

I grab my phone.

Me: What time will you be at your office?

Delenn: Already here.

Me: On my way.

I need to update her.

I pinball around my bathroom, half dressed, half lost in thought. I need to get to the hospital. I need to make rounds. I need to see if I can still do it.

But then I freeze, a shirt dangling from my fingers. Of all the memories in my brain’s infinite catalog, it chooses this one—the first time I met Isaac at the hospital.

And suddenly, I’m not in my bathroom anymore.

I’m in a hospital hallway, headed for the doctors’ lounge after a brutal day, exhaustion dragging behind me like a lead apron. My sweat-dampened scrub top clings to my back. My bottoms are fresh, though. After the case, I was forced to change—too much blood.

My blood.