The Wedding Game That Cost Him Everything Chapter 33
My right hand still hurts when the weather turns rainy.
After that dislocation at the wedding, I spent a very long time in rehabilitation.
At the start, I couldn’t even hold forceps steady.
I used to sit alone in the rehab room, watching my fingers tremble uncontrollably.
And sometimes the sound of that balloon bursting would suddenly ring in my ears again.
When it happened, I would remember what Tucker used to say.
A surgeon’s hands are important.
He had been right about one thing.
My hands were important.
But they were important not because they needed his protection.
The day I returned to the operating room, the lead surgeon handed the most delicate part of the procedure to me.
The lights came down, and all that remained around us was the steady rhythm of the machines.
I took the instrument in hand.
My hand did not shake.
When the surgery was over, I sat alone in the changing room for a long time.
Not because I was afraid.
It was because only in that moment did I know for certain: Sloane had not taken my profession from me, and Tucker had not destroyed my hands.
I could still do the thing I was best at.
When I came out, Chloe was waiting with Peace.
The second Peace saw me, she ran over.
“Isolde, where are your nails?”
She noticed that every trace of the last color she had painted was gone and immediately looked upset.
“Doctors can’t wear nail polish,” I said, holding out my hand to show her. “It affects our work.”
Peace inspected them solemnly.
“Then put it back on after work.”
Chloe bent over laughing.
I laughed too.
Tucker used to say my life was too orderly.
Surgery, shifts, reading—he said even our dates had to be booked into my schedule ahead of time.
When Sloane appeared, it was as if he had finally found the thrill he claimed he was missing.
But now I knew that steadiness had never been the same thing as dullness.
A person getting home safely. A pair of hands completing a surgery. A child lying on the carpet and spilling nail polish if she wants.
Those were the things that should never have been turned into games.