The 2 surgeons, wearing scrubs and superior faces, stood astatine my bedside for a pre-op conference. “Maybe we should person a snack first,” Doctor Sam suggested to her colleague. “No. We person to hold until aft the surgeries,” Doctor Katie decided. Doctor Sam, a archetypal grader, nodded and nudged maine backward onto the couch, wherever I laic level portion she measured maine successful a vertical enactment from cervix to waist. Meanwhile, Doctor Katie, a 4th grader, sat nearby, moving connected a stack of consent forms. She handed maine the sheets and said, “You person to motion each of them — and don’t skip immoderate pages.” Illegible squiggles filled the spaces supra each signature line, and I asked what I was really signing. “Oh, conscionable worldly that lets america bash the surgeries, and past you person to wage us, adjacent if … .” She did a “c’est la vie” shrug. I had a atrocious feeling astir this, but I scrawled my signature 13 times and realized, excessively late, that each of the consent forms mentioned surgeries. Plural.
Doctor Sam — a rubric she considered much affable than “Doctor Samantha” — had assured maine that this process would widen my beingness by 50 years. Further details were vague, but that I’d look truly aged by the end. Doctor Katie frowned erstwhile she joined Doctor Sam successful the operating room. “You utilized up each the measuring abstraction connected her stomach!” The younger doc huffed. “Playing country was my idea! I get to chopped her first!” I truly wished I’d work those forms. Finally, Doctor Sam sighed, erased her invisible markings and shifted her diagram person to my near hip. Doctor Katie did her ain measurement adjacent my close hep and looked astatine her partner. “OK? Ready? Go.” They reached for 2 small overgarment brushes with pointed ends.
I jerked my caput up. “Wait. You’re doing 2 surgeries astatine the aforesaid time?” They nodded. Neither of them laughed, oregon adjacent smiled. Doctor Sam’s dependable turned stern. “Go backmost to sleep.” “Excuse me, doctors,” I said, “but you haven’t anesthetized maine yet.” My surgeons ran retired of the room. Maybe they’d decided to devour their snacks, I hoped, but they returned each excessively soon, carrying a collapsible integrative h2o jug with a spigot. As Doctor Sam lowered the improvised anesthesia disguise implicit my face, I prayed I wouldn’t commencement hyperventilating. Luckily, my teenage grandson, Henry, was moving astatine a table nearby, with a wide presumption of the operating room. Henry is the creative, witty feline I’d privation sitting crossed from maine astatine a meal party. He besides knows the quality betwixt make-believe country and cardiac arrest. “Henry, if I halt breathing, you’ll telephone somebody, right?” He looked up from his laptop and smiled. “No problem, Grandma.” Doctor Sam glared. “No talking. You’re asleep.”
English (US)