"You're being very brave."
He tries to think of other things, other places, but his mind keeps being drawn back to this place. Everyone's so close around him now. Yellow figures lean all around him like flower petals closing in. Another section of the table is taken away. The petals move in closer. He does not deserve this. He has done many things, not all good, but he does not deserve this.
And he never did get his priest.
* * *
Two hours, twenty minutes.
"You'll feel a tingling in your jaw. It's nothing to worry about."
"Blink twice if you can hear me."
Blink, blink.
"Good."
He locks his eyes on the nurse, whose eyes still smile. They always smile. Someone made her have eternally smiling eyes.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to stop blinking now."
* * *
"Where's the clock?" says one of the surgeons.
"Two hours, thirty-three minutes."
"We're running late."
Not quite darkness, just an absence of light. He hears everything around him but can no longer communicate. Another team has entered.
"I'm still here," the nurse tells him, but then she falls silent. A few moments later he hears footsteps, and he knows she's left.
"You'll feel a tingling in your scalp," says a surgeon. "It's nothing to worry about." It's the last time they talk to him. After that, the doctors talk like Roland is no longer there.
"Did you see yesterday's game?"
"Heartbreaker."
"Splitting the corpus callosum."
"Nice technique."
"Well, it's not brain surgery." Laughter all around.
Memories tweak and spark. Faces. Dreamlike pulses of light deep in his mind. Feelings. Things he hasn't thought about in years. The memories bloom, then they're gone. When Roland was ten, he broke his arm. The doctor told his mom he could have a new arm, or a cast. The cast was cheaper. He drew a shark on it. When the cast came off he got a tattoo to make the shark permanent.
"If they had just made that three-pointer."
"It'll be the Bulls again. Or the Lakers."
"Starting on the left cerebral cortex."
Another memory tweaks.
When I was six, my father went to jail for something he did before I got born. I never knew what he did, but Mom says I'm just the same.
"The Suns don't stand a chance."