At any moment, I expect Julie Andrews to come bursting over the peak of the hill in front of us, arms outstretched as she sings about the hills being alive and other shit.
It doesn’t fit my mood at all.
We’re scheduled to meet with the team of doctors that have been running trials of this surgery at the treatment center this afternoon. When I told Dr. Channing the news, he got on the first flight he could to meet us here. At least I will have a familiar face when I meet with everyone.
Fear slides across my skin, like it does every time I think about the surgery and what could happen. I still can’t believe that I agreed to this.
“We’ll be right here, every step of the way,” Logan whispers softly to me as he squeezes my hand.
I smile weakly at him.
The guys have been on cloud nine ever since that moment on the bridge, when they’d convinced me to say yes. They have so much hope for the future.
I’m trying not to have the same hope.
They don’t care about statistics or percentages. They somehow believe in giant miracles that defy all logic and reason.
They’ve forgotten about my dad dying long before his time and leaving me all alone. They weren’t there when I had to drop out of medical school. They didn’t experience the long days where I was poked and prodded with everything under the sun, only to find out that none of it worked after I’d tried with everything in me to get better.
I want to believe in their idea that this thing that connects the four of us is too big to be defeated by a little thing like a brain tumor.
But it’s hard.
Because in Valentina Rossi’s life, there aren’t miracles.
I’m not sure why that would change now.
The remarkable green of our surroundings continues to mock me all the way to the hospital. The building is a marvel of modern technology, far fancier than anything I’ve seen in the States. Everything is glass and smooth metal, and I’m almost afraid to touch anything because of how expensive everything feels.
Expensive is good, right? That means that people are happy enough with their treatment to give this place lots of money. That’s got to be a good sign.
We walk down a hallway completely made of glass. You can even see through the floor. I keep my eyes focused on the floor, counting the steps that I take in an effort to calm myself down. We walk through two giant steel doors, and Dr. Channing is waiting for me with a broad smile on his face, accompanied by four other men and women, all dressed in doctor’s coats.
He says something to them and then walks towards me. He gives me a hug. At this point, I’ve spent more time with him than I probably have with my own mother. He’s a good one.
I introduce Quaid, Carter, and Logan, and his eyes flicker with recognition as he examines Quaid. “And how do you three know our Valentina?” the doctor asks carefully. He saw how lonely I was these past years. He would often ask if there was anyone that he could call, or he would stay past his shift to sit with me in my treatment room.
He spent hours with me, yet he knows nothing about me really. Isn’t that a funny thing about life—you can spend all your time with someone, and they can still be a stranger.
That’s a deep thought that I put away for later, because Carter’s eyes are flickering dangerously at Dr. Channing’s use of the word “our.”
“She’s our fiancée,” Logan says firmly, his gaze flicking to mine to gauge my reaction.
My heart beats steadily in my chest at his words though.
They’re the words I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
The word ‘fiancée’ doesn’t encompass what we are though. We’re a love that couldn’t be found in twenty lifetimes.
But I guess fiancée will do.
Dr. Channing’s eyes flicker in surprise, but he doesn’t comment on the fact that I appear to be engaged to not one, but three men that I’d never mentioned just a few months ago.
“I guess I have you gentlemen to thank then, for Valentina’s change in heart?”
They smile grimly, their earlier euphoria at my decision fading at the fact that we’re here in a fucking hospital and the reality that I’m still the dying girl about to undergo the miracle surgery hits them.
It’s a cold realization, and I immediately want to go back to a few hours ago when they were brimming with hope.
“Let’s go meet the team,” Dr. Channing says as he watches me shake while I stand here in front of him. My head is pounding as it does every day now, and I know that a nosebleed isn’t far off.
I’m introduced to the “brilliant” doctors that hold my future in their hands. The guys spent hours looking into them, so I feel like I already know them. They’re colder and more clinical than I’d imagined though, and I wonder if they see me as a person with a life they’re trying to save, or if I’m just another number in a long line of attempts to become gods in medical history.
Shaking off my negative thoughts, I follow them into a conference room, where they start to explain how the procedure works. I’ve been to medical school, I know what most of the terms mean, I know how surgeries work, how science works.
But when they start to talk about the risks and what happens if they aren’t able to cut this nerve, or move this blood vessel, or if the tumor has attached itself to this part of my brain…I panic.
“We’ve had one recent success that gives a lot of hope for your procedure,” they tell me, but I can read between the lines, that their one success came amidst a hundred failures.
The paperwork is placed in front of me, and my hands shake as I sign, coincidently at the same time that my nose begins to drop steady drops of blood. They splash on the paper, and honestly, it all just feels like the biggest sign in the world that I shouldn’t be doing this.
We shake hands with the doctors and set up the surgery for the following morning. They go through the usual spiel of how I can’t eat or drink after a certain time. Blah, blah, blah.
I feel numb. All their words go in one ear and out the other, because I’m envisioning my dad on that couch, gone forever. And then I’m imagining myself stuck to a machine in a hospital bed, Carter, Quaid, and Logan mourning the ghost of a girl that will never come back.
How long would it take them to take me off the machines? How long would they let me lie there until all the memories of this life we’ve lived together have been replaced by memories of me comatose on that bed?
My panic is a living, breathing thing now.
I politely tell them I have to go to the bathroom, and when I turn the corner, I run. Or hobble really, because my body is not up for running anymore. I go through the heavy steel doors and down the glass-encased hallway until I’m out of the hospital. There are cabs waiting in the circle drive of the hospital, and I frantically hail one. I grab the handle and jump inside.
And right before we set off, for who fucking knows because I can’t even remember where I told the driver to go, the other passenger door swings open and Logan slips in.
He slides into the seat and closes the door. He doesn’t say anything as the cab pulls away. He grabs my hand and holds it tight. And he just sits there next to me as we drive.
“Where are we going?” he finally asks after we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.
“Away,” I tell him, my voice breaking.