Chapter Fourteen

Carlos

“Mi media naranja…” I said, holding his hand tightly. The general anesthetic started to set in. A lot of people got panicky when they were on it. Their emotions went haywire. Nate was proving to be no different. “Maybe we can go to Barcelona when all of this is over. I can take you to meet my familia. You can make your wonderful paella with my mother.”

“What does that mean?” He asked me. He squeezed my hand. His voice sounded weak, like it was coming from underwater, as he looked at me. The mask was still on his face.

“It is a way of… how do you say?” I paused, my brow furrowing as I tried to work out how to translate it. Nate raised his hand to touch my forehead, smoothing out the lines that had appeared. My eyes softened as he looked at me and I smiled. He was kind of really adorable. “It means that you are my better half, Nate. You are my soul mate.”

“Your soul mate, huh?” he said. I could tell that he was trying to be cheeky and flirtatious.

Leaning in, I kissed his cheek softly. “Yeah,” I whispered. “You are like the star that I pluck out of the sky to keep. You remind me that there is still beauty in this world. You are a reason to be happy.”

A smile broke out across his face as his eyes started to flutter shut. He fell into sleep with that expression. I could stand back afterwards, pleased with and proud of myself. He was wheeled away from me and into the theatre seconds later. I was left with a growing anxiety as they took him. The procedure had never been performed before.

I was terrified. Downstairs, Jade was waiting for me. She had offered moral support when she found out that we were going through with the operation. I made my way down there. She was waiting with a friendly smile, dressed in casual clothing for once.

“Hey, Doc,” she said. “How are you doing?”

I walked up to her and she gave me a hug. We walked out of the hospital. There was a coffee shop around the block that we had decided to go to for lunch while they operated. “I’m so scared right now.”

“Breathe. He will be okay. You need to have faith in that.”

“What if—”

“No,” she said, cutting me off. “There are no what ifs right now. We are going to have coffee and lunch and we are going to have a good time and we are going to hope for the best. He will be okay, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

***

Jade and I had been out for an hour and a half by the time I finally received the text message. I had asked to be informed as soon as Nate was out of the theater, whether he was awake or not did not matter. I wanted to know how everything had gone.

I had known that if it took too long I was going to want to return to the hospital prematurely. That would have ended terribly. That was one of the primary reasons that I had accepted Jade’s offer of moral support. Any support at all was helpful to have, really. She could stop me from going into the hospital. She knew better than to let me do dumb things.

Still, as soon as I had gotten the text, we began to make our way through to the hospital. I did not even need to ask at reception. I knew which ward he was being taken to. That was one of the perks of working at a hospital—even if I was never allowed to treat Nate again now that we had gone public with our relationship. We made our way to it. Nate was asleep when we walked in. The head surgeon on his case was standing at the end of the bed, filling in a sheet on a clipboard. I knew that he was only there so that he could give me news. I appreciated it. That was another perk, I supposed.

“Hello, Doctor Ramirez,” he said. “Hello there, Jade.”

“Hi,” we both replied breathlessly.

“I suppose you want the news then. Well, it looks like everything went smoothly. We will have to keep him for observation obviously, since we have never done anything like this before.”

“It looks like everything went smoothly?” I asked.

“Yes. The procedure went by without a hitch and all of his vitals are exactly as they should be. We will reevaluate everything once he is awake. The good news is that I think this may actually have worked.” The surgeon smiled, genuinely cheerful to be delivering the news. I could tell. I could have hugged him.

Instead, I avoided the potential awkwardness of that moment and threw my arms around Jade. She was so tiny that I lifted her up and spun her around in a circle. She laughed into my ear.

“Thank you so much,” I said both to Jade and the surgeon. “Thank you.”

“I’ll leave you three alone. This is revolutionary, Carlos. I’m happy for the both of you.” The surgeon said. He took his clipboard with him and proceeded to leave the ward. It was then that I realized Nate was the only patient in the room. It was no wonder it had been so quiet. I walked around the bed to sit beside Nate.

He had a bandage wrapped around his head where they had made the incisions. I did not want to get too into the procedure if I could help it. The surgeon was right though – it was pretty revolutionary.

I took Nate’s hand in mine and pressed a kiss to the back of his knuckles. He may have looked pale in that moment but I knew that that was temporary. When he recovered from the procedure, he would be healthier than he had ever been before. I was flooded with relief. Jade sat down on the other side of the bed.

“This is thanks to you, you know. We would never have known about the procedure without you.”

“It was luck, really.”

“How did you even find it?” I asked softly.

“There was a case almost identical to Nate’s. I had seen his medical history when he checked in. I just followed the trail.” She paused, looking over at me. “I hate to say it, but I don’t know if I ever would have looked if it were not for you. I was worried about the kid, sure, but it was my worry for you that pushed me to do it.”

“You did, in the end. The reason doesn’t matter nearly as much as the outcome does.”

“Well, anyway, the person before had a neurosurgeon for a father. Unfortunately, one of her attacks killed her before he could ever finish the procedure. It was all a theory that he had never tested and no one else had been ill enough to risk it on.”

“So you contacted him.”

“Oh, Carlos…” She shrugged. “You just met him a few minutes ago. He flew here from South Africa specifically to operate on Nate. He will be flying back as soon as Nate has recovered.”

I was on my feet in seconds. I raced down the hallway after the surgeon. I had wanted to hug him before to thank him but I had thought that it would be awkward. Fuck the awkward, I thought. I threw my arms around the man and hugged him as tight as I possibly could.

“Whoa!” he said. I could suddenly hear the accent so different to my own. I pulled back to look at his face and I could see the age of loving someone who had to struggle and fight so much all over his face, alongside the happiness of being able to help someone else.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, sir, but I’m so grateful to you. Thank you so much for coming here and helping him. I’ll never be able to tell you how much it means.”

The man smiled at me. His eyes watered as he looked at me and I could see the tears threatening to spill over the rims of his eyes. “You don’t need to tell me, son. I already know.”

I did not know what to say, so I said nothing. Instead, I pulled him in for yet another hug. He patted my back softly.