There is nothing else like it on earth.

There is certainly no wedding like it.

I want to try to explain that feeling, because it is the thing everyone in my old life — Andrew, Brenda, all of them — either could not or would not grasp, and understanding it is the key to the entire story.

People who do not do this work suppose that a surgeon’s dedication is a kind of ambition, a hunger for status or achievement, and so they weigh it against other ambitions and find it selfish — she loves her career more than she loves me, they say, as if a career were a rival lover.

But that is not what it is, not for the ones who do it right.