Chapter 7 - The Operating Room and the Clean Slate
The morning of the surgery, Suburban Hospital smelled of antiseptic, cold tile, and nervous anticipation.
Dad sat in the hard plastic chair beside my hospital bed, wearing a plaid button-down shirt that looked like it had been ironed in a hurry. He held a crossword puzzle book in his lap, though he hadn't turned a page in twenty minutes.
“You nervous?” he asked, looking up as a nurse rolled a cart into the room with my IV supplies.
“More annoyed than nervous,” I admitted, looking at my right arm, which was currently adorned with a thick black Sharpie arrow pointing toward the shoulder joint—hospital protocol to ensure the surgeon didn't operate on the wrong side. “I’m tired of sleeping in a recliner.”
“You’ll be back on your feet before you know it,” Dad said, reaching out to pat my left hand gently. “And... Tessa? I want to say something. Before they wheel you in.”
“What is it?”
He looked down at his knees, his jaw tightening slightly. “I’m sorry. For all those years when Lena crossed the line and I told you to let it go. I thought I was keeping the family together. I realize now I was just teaching you that your safety didn't matter as much as her happiness.”
The words hung in the air, simple, unvarnished, and long overdue. A knot that had been sitting in my chest since childhood finally began to unravel.
“Thank you, Dad,” I whispered.
Before he could answer, the door swung open and Dr. Vance walked in, wearing his blue surgical scrubs and a reassuring smile.
“Good morning, Tessa. Are we ready to fix this shoulder once and for all?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
The journey down the brightly lit hospital corridor to the operating room was a blur of clicking wheels and murmured voices. As the anesthesiologist placed the oxygen mask over my face and told me to count backward from ten, the white lights of the surgical theater dissolved into darkness.
When I woke up, the world was muffled, heavy, and wrapped in cotton.
My right arm felt as though it had been encased in lead, throbbing with a deep, surgical ache that radiated down to my elbow, but the sharp, unstable grinding of the torn labrum was gone. It had been anchored, stitched, and repaired.
Dad was sitting in the chair beside the recovery bed, reading a paperback novel by the dim bedside lamp. When he saw my eyes flutter open, he dropped the book and stood up immediately.
“Hey, sleepyhead. How’s the arm?”
“Heavy,” I croaked through a dry throat.
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“Surgery went perfectly,” Dad said, his face breaking into a wide, relieved smile. “Dr. Vance said the tear was worse than expected, but he managed to anchor the labrum securely. You’re going to make a full recovery, provided you actually follow the physical therapy protocol this time.”
“I will,” I murmured, closing my eyes again as a wave of fatigue washed over me. “I promise.”
