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My mouth fell open to answer, but at that moment, the curtain pulled open once more.
“Are you ready?” the nurse asked, a little too cheerful for my taste, considering I was about to lose my leg.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Raya told me again. “Everything will be okay.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “Really. I mean it. Thanks.”
She smiled at me, squeezing my hand as she walked alongside the bed the nurse was rolling me on, only letting go when we reached the doorway to the family waiting room. She couldn’t go any further back with me, but that didn’t matter.
Just knowing she was out in the waiting room left me with a feeling of peace I hadn’t had when I came in that day. I suddenly felt like everything was going to be okay. Her words stuck in the back of my mind. She didn’t fall in love with my legs, she fell in love with me.
The core of my being.
And if I was honest with myself, I had fallen in love with everything about her, too.
It wasn’t about the superficial or the external. It was all about the person she was.
She was the woman who showed up for me for a surgery I was dreading, just to support me after I already broke up with her without giving her reason at all. I knew it wasn’t fair, and I was humbled with the grace she had to come support me despite the way I had broken her heart.
If there was ever a woman who measured up to what I wanted in life, Raya was the definition of that woman. She was so sexy, so smart, so strong. The kind of woman I would feel completely at ease with. I knew I had nothing to worry about when it came to her, and I felt stupid now for breaking up with her when I found out about my cancer.
As I was being wheeled into the OR, I promised myself I would talk to Raya when I got out of surgery. I would tell her the truth, and I would be honest with her about how I felt. Not only with her, but about the cancer and why I did what I did. I wanted her to know the truth about everything, and I had a feeling she would be okay with it.
Or, at the very least, that she would understand why I had done it, and likely to forgive me for my mistake.
No one was perfect, but Raya came pretty damn close as far as I was concerned.
And nothing could change my mind about that. I’d fucked up when I broke up with her. I knew that. And if she was willing to talk to me, to hear me out, I knew nothing would stand in my way of telling her that I, too, loved her.
And I was ready to do something about it.
