ChapterThirty-Six
Jason
It starts with my hands.It always starts with my hands.
Steady.Precise.Instruments of salvation.
At least that’s what they were.
Now they shake.Tremble.
Useless.
A surgeon with a dead hand is no surgeon at all.
I may as well be dead too.
But I’m not.Not yet.
The scalpel glints in the overhead light.I know this room, the cold sterility of it, the hum of the machines, the scent of antiseptic.I know this body on the table.
My hands hover over her abdomen.She’s small.Fragile.Warm.
No.No, no, no.It’s not real.
But itis.
Because when I look down, when I see the face beneath the mask of unconsciousness, it’sher.My daughter.My baby girl.
Julia.
I blink.The monitors scream.Blood.So much blood.My hands are drenched in it, and they won’t stop shaking.
I can’t hold the scalpel.
I can’t cut.
I can’tsave her.
I try.Oh God, I try.But my fingers cramp, my wrist twists, and the blade—the blade slips.
A mistake.A fatal, irreversible mistake.
I hear my wife screaming.But she’s not here.She’s gone too.
The lights flicker.The walls shift.The operating room melts away, and I’m standing somewhere else.
Somewhere darker.
A cell?A courtroom?
A place where men go when they’reguilty.
I didn’t do it.
They don’t care.
I hear the whispers.The murmurs in the gallery.
