The room seemed to tilt slowly on its axis.

Cassian had chosen that surgeon.

He had brought me the recommendation himself, had reassured me when I hesitated, had sat beside me while I signed the consent forms in the fog of pre-op sedation — forms I could not now remember reading.

And afterward he had held my hand and told me, so gently, so sadly, that the operation had failed, that my body was simply defective in some way the doctors couldn’t fully repair.

I had wept in his arms over the brokenness of my own body.

He had comforted me.