None of it mattered to me now. The past was dead tissue.

“Closing,” I said, my voice firm in the chill of the OR.

My left hand, marked with a faint white scar across the knuckles, held the tissue forceps. It didn’t tremble. It didn’t hesitate. It assisted my dominant right hand as I placed a flawless microscopic suture on the child’s dural sac.

My skill had never lived only in my fingers. It lived in my mind, and in a refusal to be broken.

“Beautiful work, Doctor,” the anesthesiologist murmured as I stepped back and peeled off my gloves.

That evening the Los Angeles sky went bruised purple and burning gold. I stood in my quiet kitchen pouring a glass of heavy red wine. The house was peaceful.