Irreplaceable

A few weeks after she knew she had to undergo surgery to have a nodule in her thyroid gland removed he noticed himself a small lump in his neck. The coincidence didn't surprise him much. He wasn't concerned for that little irregularity. Her nodule and the operation worried them both.

The induced anesthesia she had to go through had been troubling her for some time. Her fears were justified from previous allergic reactions she had had to many different types of drugs. She had once worked in a hospital's surgey ward and knew mistakes were sometimes made. She put all those fears into him, something he could only but understand.

The days went on, anxiety gradually piling up, until a phone call set the time and day.

On the morning of the operation, circumstances conspired to make him arrive late at the hospital to kiss a final kiss and wish a final wish. The bed in her room was gone. Down by the 'no entrance' sign of the surgery ward a nurse was kind enough to tell him he had been late by just five minutes. The first operation in the room assigned to her had been cancelled. She was second on the list and found herself lying on the operating table in no time. He shouldn't worry, the nurse said, she will inform him of the outcome of his wife's surgery as soon as she had some news.

A swarm of butterflies fluttered hastily in his stomach. Then and there he was fully aware that she was irreplaceable.

He spent the next few hours idle in the waiting room and dawdling back and forth the aisle opposite the surgery ward sliding doors. The place was crowded with relatives and friends of the many patients under surgery in the various rooms of the hospital unit. At intervals, a voice on the intercom instructed relatives of whomever patient to move towards the doors to be informed. His heart skipped a beat with every announcement.

He was at the back of the room when the same nurse who had told him not to worry four hours earlier approached. It had all gone very well. The nodule was not malignant. It hadn't been necessary to remove the entire gland. Her wound was being stitched as she spoke. And then that anonymous bearer of good news disappeared behind the sliding doors.

A smile of happiness and relief appeared in his face. He kept on dawdling along the aisle and sent a couple of messages to their children. Casually, he raised his hand to his neck only to find his own lump gone.