on my way. Since I had no way of knowing what was coming, I didn’t have any time to be scared to death and filled with dread before the fact. After, maybe, but not before.
This time was different, because this time I had a very good idea of what was coming. Mel was driving me to a scheduled check-in appointment at the Swedish Orthopedic Institute surgical unit Mel and I have come to refer to as the “bone squad.” This morning at eight A.M. I was due to meet up with my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Merritt Auld, and undergo dual knee-replacement surgery. Yes, dual—as in two knees at the same time.
I had been assured over and over that this so-called elective surgery was “no big deal,” but the truth is, I had seen the videos. Mel and I had watched them together. I had the distinct impression that Dr. Auld would be more or less amputating both my legs and then bolting them back together with some spare metal parts in between. Let’s just say I was petrified.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You are not fine,” Mel muttered, “and neither am I.” Then she slammed her foot on the gas, swung us into a whiplash left turn, and we charged up Cherry. Given her mood, I didn’t comment on her speed or the layer of rubber she had left on the pavement behind us.
I had gimped along for a very long time without admitting to anyone, most of all myself, that my knees were giving me hell. And once I had finally confessed the reality of the situation, Mel had set about moving heaven and earth to see that I did something about it. This morning we were both faced with a heaping helping of “watch out what you ask for.”
“You could opt to just do one, you know,” she said.
But I knew better, and so did she. When the doctor had asked me which knee was my good knee, I had told him truthfully that they were both bad. The videos had stressed that the success of the surgery was entirely dependent on doing the required postsurgery physical therapy. Since neither of my knees would stand up to doing the necessary PT for the other, Dr. Auld had reluctantly agreed to give me a twofer.
“We’ll get through this,” I said.
She looked at me and bit her lip.
“Do you want me to drop you at the front door?”
That was a strategy we had used a lot of late. She would drop me off or pick me up from front doors while she hoofed it to and from parking garages.
“No,” I said. “I’d rather walk.”
I didn’t add “with you,” because I didn’t have to. She knew it. She also knew that by the time we made it from the parking garage to the building, we would have had to stop to rest three times and my forehead would be beaded with sweat.
“Thank you,” she said.
While I eased my body out of the passenger seat and straightened into an upright position, she hopped out and grabbed the athletic bag with my stuff in it out of the trunk. Then she came toward me, looking up at me, smiling.
And the thought of losing that smile was what scared me the most. What if I didn’t wake back up? Those kinds of things weren’t supposed to happen during routine surgeries, but they did. Occasionally there were unexpected complications and the patient died. What if this was one of those times, and this was the last time I would see Mel or hold her hand? What if this was the end of all of it? There were so many things I wanted to say about how much I loved her and how much she meant to me and how, if I didn’t make it, I wanted her to be happy for the rest of her life. But did any of those words come out of my mouth? No. Not one.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said calmly, as though she had heard the storm of misgivings that was circling around in my head. She squeezed my hand and away we went, limping along, the hare patiently keeping pace with the lumbering tortoise.
I don’t remember a lot about the check-in process. I do remember there was a line, and my knees made waiting in line a peculiar kind of hell. Mel offered to stand in line for me, but of course I turned her down. She started to argue, but thought better of it. Instead, she took my gym bag and sat in one of the chairs banked against the wall while I answered all the smiling clerk’s inane questions and signed the countless forms. Then, after Mel and I waited another ten minutes, a scrubs-clad nurse came to summon us and take us “back.”
What followed was the change into the dreaded backless gown; the weigh-in; the blood draw; the blood pressure, temperature, and pulse checks. Mel hung around for all of that. And she was still there when they stuck me on a bed to await the arrival of my anesthesiologist, who came waltzing into the bustling room with a phony smile plastered on his beaming face. He seemed to be having the time of his life. After introducing himself, he asked my name and my date of birth, and then he delivered an incredibly lame stand-up comic routine about sending me off to never-never land.
Gee, thanks, and how would you like a punch in the nose?
After a second wait of who knows how long, they rolled me into another room. This time Dr. Auld was there, and so were a lot of other people. Again they wanted my name and date of birth. It occurred to me that my name and date of birth hadn’t changed in the hour and a half during which I had told four other people the same, but that’s evidently part of the program now. Or maybe they do it just for the annoyance factor.
At that point, however, Dr. Auld hauled out a Sharpie and drew a bright blue letter on each of my knees—R and L.
“That’s just so we’ll keep them straight,” he assured me with a jovial smile.
Maybe he expected me to laugh. I didn’t. The quip reminded me too much of the kinds of stale toasts delivered by hungover best men at countless wedding receptions, and it was about that funny, too. I guess I just wasn’t up to seeing any humor in the situation.
Neither was Mel. I glanced in her direction and saw the icy blue-eyed stare my lovely wife had leveled in the good doctor’s direction. Fortunately, Dr. Auld didn’t notice.
“Well,” he said. “Shall we do this?”
As they started to roll me away, Mel leaned down and kissed me good-bye. “Good luck,” she whispered in my ear. “Don’t be long. I’ll be right here waiting.”
I looked into Mel’s eyes and was surprised to see two tears well up and then make matching tracks down her surprisingly pale cheeks. Melissa Soames is not the crybaby type. I wanted to reach up and comfort her and tell her not to worry, but the anesthesiologist had given me something to “take the edge off,” and it was certainly working. Before I could say anything at all, Mel was gone, disappearing from view behind my merry band of scrubs-attired escorts as they wheeled me into a waiting elevator.
I closed my eyes then and tried to remember exactly how Mel looked in that moment before the doors slid shut between us. All I could think of as the elevator sank into what felt like the bowels of the earth was how very much I loved her and how much I wanted to believe that when I woke up, she really would be there, waiting.
Except she wasn’t. When I opened my eyes again, that was the first thing I noticed. The second one was that I was “feeling no pain,” as they say, so the drugs were evidently doing what they were supposed to do.
I was apparently in the recovery room.
