I lay there and let the words arrange themselves into meaning.

I had survived.

The thing in my head that had threatened to take my memory, my speech, my self, was gone, lifted out, and I had come back whole.

And underneath the ordinary flood of relief that any patient feels, there was a second, stranger feeling, private and fierce, that I did not share with the smiling surgeon.

I had not only survived.

I had made it back — back to my own life, in time, with my mind intact and my memory whole — back in time to watch my husband discover, at last, exactly who had paid for the lavish life he so loved to brag about.