Page 88 of Requiem

“Cool cardigan.” I stifle a laugh.

“Thanks. I knitted it myself.”

“Really? I’d never have known.”

“All right. All right. Good to see you haven’t lost that wicked tongue of yours.” She hugs me, and her embrace is so comforting that I nearly break down and sob. She smiles at me, holding my face and rubbing her thumbs over my cheeks, regarding me with what can only be called motherly affection. “It’s very good to see you, sweetheart. And you…” Her expression becomes even softer when she turns to Theo. “It’s a gift to see you again, dear boy.”

“Whoa, now. Who do you like better here, me or him?” I rub my nose with the back of my hand to hide the fact that I’m sniffling.

“Oh, definitely him,” she tells me winking conspiratorially. “I told you he was handsome, didn’t I? If I were twenty years younger—”

“Sorrell would definitely have some competition.” He draws her into a hug.

I pretend to be offended, but I’m secretly enjoying how cute he’s being around her. It occurs to me, as we head inside, that Theo knows Gaynor far better than I ever did. They spent a lot of time together after the accident, when I was hanging onto life by little more than a thread. She must have comforted him when things were hard. Must have tried to make things more manageable for him.

The inside of Falcon House—or the Henry DeKosky Center—is nothing like I remember it. The faint tang of bleach hangs in the air. Everything is sterile and white, and different. My heart skips a beat when we walk past an open door and I see the huge, open space on the other side, though. A gym. A training room, to be precise. This is the space where I trained so hard before I left for Toussaint. On a little metal plaque mounted to the door, is the word ‘PHYSIOTHERAPY.’

“Ahh yes. The old torture chamber,” Gaynor says. “You worked your ass off in there.”

Behind Gaynor, another familiar face appears, heading toward us down the hallway, and my chest tightens. It’s Ruth. “Oh good. Sorrell. You made it.” She gives me a curt, professional smile.

She doesn’t wear nurse’s scrubs. She wears a tailored white button-down shirt and a pair of dove grey suit pants, under a pressed white lab coat with the name Doctor Ruth Brighton embroidered over the pocket and the center’s logo.

Doctor Brighton. Ruth. The woman who I always wanted to please. The woman who I thought had saved me and taken me in off the streets. Turns out she did save me, but not in the way I had convinced myself she did. Dr. Brighton—god, I can’t get used to not thinking of her as Ruth—is the doctor who performed my last surgery. The cowboy, Theo had called her. She pulled off what everyone else in her field claimed was impossible: she dragged me back into the land of the living, and now she wants to save me a second time.

She’s as stern as I remember back on the dock at Toussaint. Twin lines form a deep eleven between her brows. Her eyes are sharp and assessing, clinical and cold. She holds a hand out to me in greeting, and it feels beyond weird to shake it.

“I hope the flight wasn’t too taxing,” she says. “Cabin pressure has been known to worsen some patients’ headaches. That’s why Nurse Richards drove you to Washington back in September. But I understand that the drive might have been a daunting prospect, given who you’d have had to spend all that time with this time around.” She turns an icy, pointed look on Theo—it takes me a moment to put two and two together and realize that she’s throwing shade. “I’m glad to see that you’re here, supporting Sorrell’s decision to go ahead with this surgery, Mr. Merchant.”

“Oh, I’m not. I only came to make sure you don’t downplay the risks involved in this butcher’s procedure. I’m gonna do everything in my power to talk her out of it.”

“What a surprise.” Her lips press together in what amounts to be the unfriendliest smile of all time. “I’m allowing your presence here because it’s important that Sorrell has access to her support system, but let me make this clear to you, Theo. If you insult me, my staff, or any of—”

“Might I remind you,” Theo says, interrupting her. “That the last time we were in each other’s presence,youwere the one who physically assaultedme.”

“That’s because you had just implied that I wanted tomurderyour girlfriend just to get my name in a medical journal.”

“I didn’t imply it. I straight out said it,” Theo snaps back. “This whole trial of yours is just some vainglorious, bullshit ego-stroke for you. If—”

“I’ve completed three entirely successful procedures in the past six weeks. Three patients, all completely recovered and healed, returned to their families. Their symptoms have been improving daily, as their swelling goes down. I have every hope that Sorrell’s procedure will go just as well.”

“Three patients? Out of how many?”

Dr. Brighton looks like she’d love to slap Theo again, but she thinks better of it. “Three,” she says coolly. “Three out of three. A one hundred percent success rate.”

Theo’s mouth snaps shut.

“The headaches you’ve been suffering from, as well as some of the extreme lethargy, are all side effects of the contusion on your brain. This area here,” Dr. Brighton says, drawing a circle with a stylus around a darkened area on the image of the brain—mybrain—that is displayed on her computer screen. “This is your frontal lobe. This is the area of your brain that’s responsible for your personality. For things like emotions, mood and judgment. These areas here are the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe. These are the areas responsible for making and storing memories. As you can see, this small shadowy area sandwiched between the frontal and the medial temporal lobe is darker than the rest of your brain. This is what is causing your issues. We were worried that it was the beginnings of a glioma—a tumor caused by the trauma you suffered during your accident. Our scans have subsequently discounted that, though, which is excellent news. We now know that this is more than likely a fibrotic lesion scar, putting pressure on very delicate areas of the brain, which is obviously causing some very serious complications. I would like to perform a lesionectomy using an exoscope and a new tubular retractor system—”

“Snake oil,” Theo hisses through his teeth.

Dr. Brighton rolls her eyes. “This is a common procedure, Theo. I’m not reinventing the wheel here.”

“Right. But you haven’t explained to her yet that the area you’re trying to resect in her brain is incredibly deep. The complications associated with screwing around in that area of the brain are—”

“Are noteworthy, yes, and not to be made light of. If you’d stop interrupting me, then I’d love to go through the procedure with Sorrell, step by step, from start to finish. I’ll explain the associated risks that come with each of those steps, as well as the overall recorded outcomes, and perhapsthenyou can air your grievances.”

Theo is clearly unhappy about it, but he allows Dr. Brighton to describe the procedure. I’m covered in a cold sweat by the time she’s finished, and more than a little confused. Neurosurgeons get paid the big bucks because that shit is hard. But my takeaway once she’s done is this: the surgery is dangerous. It will take about four hours. I could wake up with some of my memories, or all of my memories returned to me, but thereisalso a chance I might not wake up at all.

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