“Are you feeling nervous?”

A nurse speaks to me in front of the operating room.

Maybe I was.

Or maybe I wasn’t.

Did I not seem that way,
or did I?

There was nothing left but to surrender.

Once the anesthesia began to take effect, there was nothing I could do.

While asleep,
does the world continue to exist?

I remembered writing lyrics about that once.

——

I had no sense of time or place.

I was being moved from somewhere to somewhere.

My body would not move.

There were tubes running through me.

A respirator.

A heart monitor.

IV lines in both arms.

A catheter.

Another tube.

“…Was the surgery done?”
“Yes, we performed the surgery.”

“…Do I have a stoma now?”
“No, you don’t.”

Even with a mind that could barely function, those two questions told me one thing.

It had gone as well as it could.

I wanted to feel relief.

But the discomfort in my body overwhelmed it.

I wanted to sleep.

But the pain and unease would not allow it.

I didn’t know what time it was.

I couldn’t even turn over in bed.

And still.

Nothing I had feared had come to pass.

A quiet sense of gratitude began to rise within me.