that had been there when she left the island. He had hoped time would heal her. That leaving him would somehow bring her comfort. It hadn’t.
“I’m going to stitch it up, then give you antibiotics.”
She went to leave, but he grabbed her hand. Her skin felt soft, her hand small and fragile in his. “Why aren’t you at peace with what happened to us?”
Her eyes flashed. “Because it didn’t happen to us, it happened to me.” His chest burned. No matter how hard he tried, she had never let him share her pain. Looking at her now, a familiar tightness choked his chest. He had grieved for Lucas, but he had moved on with his life. Taking a breath, he tried to shake off the suffocating feeling. What was wrong with him? He was at peace with what had happened. It was Anna who obviously still needed closure.
“Anna, you have to stop blaming yourself. You’re not the reason Lucas died.”
“I’m not the only reason. This island is the other reason. If we had been in California, he never would have died.”
He let go of her hand and she stepped away. After Lucas’s death, she had begged him to leave Guam, to come with her to California where they could start a new life. When they married, he’d thought she understood the man he was, a family man, one who wouldn’t leave his home, his land. Not like his father. But ultimately she hadn’t understood. She’d left without him and he’d let her go, thinking she would come back after time healed her wounds. But she hadn’t come back. Nor had she healed.
Anna rummaged through some boxes and returned to him. He started to say something but stopped when a man entered the tent and began unpacking medical supplies.
Anna held up a needle in one hand and an upside-down bottle in another.
“Lie back,” she ordered.
Nico lay on his back and felt her pouring liquid over his belly. It stung. He closed his eyes; there was no point in repeating the same conversation they’d had for months after Lucas’s death.
A needle pierced his stomach, sending a sharp pain through his body, but then everything went blissfully numb. He opened his eyes and craned his neck. Anna was bent over him, stitching away. He remembered the last time he’d seen her like this and a different pain speared his chest.
“Anna...”
“Not now, Nico.”
He waited patiently until she was done and saw her place a dressing over his wound. When she turned away, he sat up.
The man who’d been unpacking boxes left with an armful of empty containers.
“Anna...”
She turned to him, her eyes wet. “I can’t do this, Nico. Not here.”
He stood, then reached out and took her hand, pulling her close to him. She rested her face on his chest. Wrapping his arms around her, he placed his hand on her head, feeling her soft cheek on his bare skin, weaving his fingers into her silky hair. The years melted away as he felt her body against his. She belonged to him, always had. But her wounds were still as raw as the day she left. This island had never been her home because she hadn’t let it be. And never would.
“I’ve missed you, Anna.”
She nodded against his chest and he knew she still loved him, had felt the agony of their distance just as he had. Lifting her head, she stepped back, eyes shining, cheeks wet. He felt what she wanted to say. The very words that were on his lips. “Anna...we...” They were simple words, yet they stuck in his throat, threatening to choke him.
Her big, wet eyes stabbed at his soul. “Nico, I can’t do this. I can never come back here for good. We...we...we need to divorce.”
SHE FELT HIS pain more acutely than her own. Yet Anna stood poised to cut into the delicate heart of her two-month-old son. Her hand trembled slightly as she touched the precision steel blade to pale pink skin. Right before it pierced, she retracted the scalpel. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Even a minuscule tremble could end Lucas’s life. She wasn’t a cardiac surgeon, but if she didn’t correct the big hole in his heart, he would die. If she made the tiniest of mistakes, he would die. If any one of a thousand things went wrong during the surgery, like the electricity going out again, he would die. She was six thousand miles away from California and they were out of time. There were no other options.
She opened her eyes and looked up to see Nico’s tall frame fill the viewing gallery window. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, the normally smiling face creased. He put a hand on his heart, then onto the window that separated them. The gallery was meant for medical students and other physicians to watch surgeries. No father should witness his wife cutting into their son, but Nico had insisted on being there. Even across the room, she could see the wetness in his eyes. He mouthed, “I love you,” then kissed his fist, relaying confidence she didn’t feel.
She lowered her eyes from the viewing gallery to see the entire operating room staring at her. The panic in her chest was clearly visible in their eyes. The cold, sterile air reeked of desperation. They weren’t going to stop her, tell her how foolhardy this whole thing was. Not today. They were used to letting their babies die.
“Dr. Atao, you need to begin.”
The gentle but firm voice of the nurse anesthetist reminded her that the longer she waited, the more her son’s life would be at risk. The hospital didn’t even have a physician anesthesiologist. No one in their right mind would do this surgery. She looked at Nico one last time. His brown eyes reached into her soul, filling her with love. I have to do this. Lucas couldn’t die.
She took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow its frantic beating. She looked down at the small square of exposed skin, the rest draped with a blue sheet, as if the sheet could hide the fact that her little baby, the one she had nursed only an hour ago, was lying underneath. He was totally still, his normally wiggly, giggly, crying body as still as the air in the room. Ice seeped through her bones.
She pressed the scalpel into the skin above her son’s heart.
* * *
ANNA SAT UP with a sharp pain in her chest.
“Dr. Atao?” Her brain registered someone calling her name.
“Dr. Atao!”
She rubbed her eyes. A hazy face slowly came into focus. “Sorry, Doctor, you asked me to wake you. It’s eight o clock.” Anna thanked the clerk and checked her watch. Three hours had gone by fast, but at least she’d slept. The dream! She hadn’t had it for 392 days. But then she shouldn’t be surprised it had returned. It wasn’t so much a dream as a replay of the worst day of her life. The day she had performed surgery on her two-month-old son, hastening his death. It was technically a routine surgery; had she been in California, it would have been performed by a team of pediatric surgeons and Lucas would be a happy child today, five years, three months and four days old. But she’d been here on Guam, basking in the glory of being a new mother, ignoring the early warning signs.
She swung her leg off the cot, went to the latrine and splashed water on her face using the jug she’d brought. Time of death, 10:56. She’d done CPR for more than an hour, until finally the staff had pulled her away
