He’d been doing it for me.
He’d been experimenting relentlessly, trying to find a way to help me, while I thought he was doing something else.
I started to cry.
But I was terrified too. I won’t pretend I wasn’t.
That night, I lay awake for hours. Nigel was asleep beside me for once, finally, like a man who’d put down something very heavy.
What if it failed?
What if I went through all of it, the surgery, the recovery, the hope, and I woke up and nothing had changed?
Or worse. What if it worked, and I regretted it?
I’d built a whole life in the dark. I knew how to live here. I knew where every chair was. I knew my kids by their footsteps. What if the light was too much? What if I didn’t recognize anything? What if I’d forget how to be the person I’d worked so hard to become?
