Page 11 of Broken Dream (Steel Legends #3)

Chapter Ten

Jason

Three years earlier…

The room feels too bright, too warm. I want to loosen my collar, maybe just get up and leave. But I can’t leave my wife alone here. Not like this.

I glance at Lindsay. She’s sitting next to me on the couch, her shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the floor. She looks so small, so unlike herself. The Lindsay I know is strong, fierce, but now I hardly recognize her.

Hell, I hardly recognize myself.

The therapist, Dr. Morgan, clears her throat softly. She’s trying to look sympathetic, but I can see through it. She’s just another stranger who thinks she can get inside our heads, rearrange the furniture, and magically fix everything. As if talking about her will make this easier.

“So, Lindsay,” Dr. Morgan begins, “last week, you mentioned that some days feel harder than others. Can you tell me about one of those days?”

Lindsay shifts, fidgets with her fingers. Then with the sleeves of her sweater. She doesn’t answer. I know she won’t, and I don’t blame her.

“She doesn’t need to go over this again,” I say, keeping my tone controlled even though what I really want to do is scream at Dr. Morgan and throw something. “You know, every session it’s the same questions. Same painful details. And we go home just as messed up as when we came in.”

Dr. Morgan meets my gaze. “I understand, Jason. Sometimes it can feel like progress isn’t happening, especially when emotions are overwhelming. But sharing these feelings can help ease the burden. Sometimes only a little, but it helps.”

“I don’t see it,” I mutter, but I stop myself from saying more. The last thing Lindsay needs is me snapping at the doctor.

Or am I wrong? Because honestly I don’t know what the fuck Lindsay needs anymore. I don’t know what I need either. We’ve both been stripped of everything. Needs? Hell, where do I start?

Lindsay finally speaks, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I just… I can’t stop thinking… It’s my fault, Jason. I should’ve been there.” She doesn’t look at me. Just says it to the carpet.

My heart clenches. We’ve been over this. Over and over again. “Lindsay, it’s not your fault.”

It’s not.

It’s mine.

I’m the one who lost control of the car.

I’m the one who didn’t make sure Julia’s car seat was latched correctly.

Me.

It was fucking me .

Dr. Morgan nods and leans forward slightly. “Lindsay, it’s natural to feel guilt in situations like this, even though we both know you didn’t do anything wrong. Losing someone makes us desperate to find answers. And guilt feels like an answer, but it’s not.”

Lindsay doesn’t respond, just keeps staring. But her eyes glisten, and I feel the sting of it too, like salt in a wound.

Lindsay doesn’t want to blame me, and sometimes I want to yell at her, to shake her, to make her see the truth of all of it.

It was me.

My fault.

She wasn’t even there .

“Jason,” Dr. Morgan says to me, “I know you feel hopeless when it comes to the therapy process. I know this hasn’t been easy for you either.”

Hell, no, it hasn’t been easy. I want to help my wife. I want to more than I want to live my own life. But I can’t fix this. I can’t cut into her body and fix what is hurting her. I’m useless now.

I grit my teeth. “I just… I don’t see the point of talking. It’s not going to bring her back. It just feels like it’s making Lindsay worse.” I gesture to my wife, who has buried her face in her hands. “She’s drowning here, and I don’t think rehashing it is helping her breathe any easier.”

Lindsay’s shoulders go rigid, and I regret the words the second they’re out.

But I meant them.

Every single one.

Dr. Morgan stays quiet for a moment. Then, “I understand that talking isn’t easy for either of you. And Jason, it’s okay to feel like this isn’t helping. It’s okay to have doubts. But sometimes being here is just about holding space for each other’s pain.”

I scoff, unable to stop myself. “Holding space,” I mutter under my breath.

Sounds like another therapy buzzword. Doesn’t mean anything to me. But then I see the way Lindsay’s hand trembles slightly in her lap, her eyes brimming with that familiar hurt, and something shifts. Maybe… Maybe it means something to her.

“Lindsay,” Dr. Morgan says, “can you tell Jason one thing he could do that would make you feel supported, even if it’s just a small thing?”

Lindsay hesitates and then glances at me for the first time since we walked into this room. “Just… I just need you to listen sometimes, Jason. To sit with me, even if we’re not talking. Just so I don’t feel alone with it all.”

Her voice is so quiet, I almost don’t hear her. But those words hit me like a punch to the gut. I’m her husband. All I do is sit with her. God knows I can’t work, and she hasn’t been back to work either.

I nod slowly, swallowing the anger, the frustration, the helplessness I feel about this whole damned process.

I’m with her all the time, but still she feels alone.

I don’t know what else to do.

I try to live with the guilt. I almost feel like it would be easier if Lindsay would blame me.

I want to yell at her, tell her to snap out of this and put the blame where it lies. On my shoulders.

But when I yell, all she does is cry.

When I’m nice, all she does is cry.

When I do nothing, all she does is cry.

None of this is helping Lindsay. We come here day after day, and she’s not getting any better.

She lost her baby.

But so did I.

And I lost something else.

The ability to do what I love.

The ability to perform surgery.

The nerves in my hand aren’t healing, and I’ll most likely never cut again.

Every passing day feels like a blur, my heart heavy with grief. Each morning when I open my eyes, there’s that moment, just a fraction of a second, when I forget. When everything seems normal. Julia’s asleep in her bedroom, and I have back-to-back surgeries scheduled.

But then it crashes into me like a wave, all at once.

I force myself out of bed, into my clothes. The mirror reflects a person I barely recognize—pale, hollow-eyed, with lines on my forehead I don’t remember having before.

Lindsay is usually already up when I come down for breakfast. At least she gets out of bed. She doesn’t eat much these days. Her coffee turns from hot to chilled as she stares blankly out the window.

We used to share this ritual every morning—sipping our coffee and discussing our plans for the day, joking and laughing. Now our exchanges are limited to hushed good mornings. A heavy silence looms between us, more deafening than any words.

“Did you sleep?” she asks every morning, her voice barely above a whisper.

I shrug. “A little.”

That’s what I always say, but it’s a lie. Sleep has been elusive. I’ve been haunted by nightmares and memories that twist like knives in my gut.

She nods and turns her attention back to the window.

How can she think I don’t listen to her?

A few minutes pass. Dr. Morgan doesn’t speak.

“Lindsay,” I finally say, my throat dry. “I’ll listen. I promise you that I’ll listen.”

“Okay,” she whispers, reaching out to place her hand on mine. It’s cold, just like everything else since we lost Julia.

I squeeze her hand. In that moment, I make myself a promise too. That even if all of this feels pointless, even if it feels like we’re stuck in this perpetual state of grieving with no end in sight, I won’t give up on her.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all those years in the operating room, it’s that sometimes it’s not about cutting away the damaged parts or stitching up the wounds.

Sometimes, it’s about sitting quietly by a patient’s side, holding their hand and waiting for them to heal in their own time.

Except how can we heal when my wife won’t admit that she blames me?

Present day…

I get to the lab early.

Today these students will cut into a human body—albeit a dead one—for the first time.

God, I remember the thrill, the satisfaction of my first time.

And then the first time I cut into a live body.

It was exhilarating.

And something I’ll never again experience.

I look at the lab tables, the bodies covered in cloth. Who were these people? Did they get to live their dreams? Or did they get them ripped away from them by a cruel twist of fate?

As I did?

I jerk when my phone buzzes.

Interesting. It’s Dr. Louisa Matthews, my neurologist.

“This is Jason,” I say into the phone.

“Jason, Louisa Matthews. Is this a good time?”

“I teach anatomy lab in fifteen minutes,” I say. “But I have a little time.”

“Good. I’d like you to come in and see me. This afternoon if possible. We have a new visiting neurosurgeon. She thinks she may be able to repair your hand.”

I nearly drop the phone but catch it in time before it clatters onto the tile floor of the lab.

“What?” I say, not sure I heard her correctly.

“I know. Don’t get your hopes up, but she’s been experimenting with a new technique for a nerve transplant.”

A wave of hope, tinged with the dread of disappointment, rises inside me. “Louisa, I’ve been through this before?—”

“I know, Jason,” she cuts in. “But this is different. Dr. Patel is a pioneer in this field. She has successfully performed this operation already.”

“How many times?”

“Well…once. In Switzerland. She’s here on an O-1 visa.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s for individuals with extraordinary ability in their field, such as internationally recognized surgeons with significant accomplishments or publications. The hospital is sponsoring her research.”

“So she’s familiar with my case?”

“Yes. I took the liberty of sharing your file with her. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Are you kidding me? Of course not.”

“Good. It was for a consult, so no HIPAA worries.”

“Louisa, I’m not the least bit concerned about any of that.”

“I know.”

“But what are the chances?” I ask, my voice shaking.

My mind reels with the possibilities. To hold a scalpel again, to feel its cool metal against my skin, to operate on a living body…

“No guarantees, of course,” she says. “But Dr. Patel is optimistic after looking through your records. It’s not confirmed until we run some tests on you and match nerve types. But there’s a fairly good chance this could work.”

My mind whirls.

Is it possible?

To have my hand back, to once again perform surgeries…

I feel like I’m waking up from a nightmare.

I look at the covered cadavers sitting on the tables, waiting for the students to learn from them. “What kind of tests? And are we talking a nerve from a live donor or from a cadaver?”

“We’ll need to do some extensive nerve conduction studies and MRI scans,” Louisa says. “As for the donor… It’s a bit of both. The nerve graft is extracted from a cadaver, but it’s reanimated using living cells derived from your own body.”

I shiver as a chill rushes through me.

I’ve read about such things. It’s cutting edge, for sure. “Reanimated? How does that even work?”

“It’s complex,” she says. “Dr. Patel will explain it all when you meet her. But in essence, we take your cells, nurture them in a lab, and coax them into becoming nerve cells. These are then integrated with the cadaver’s nerve tissue.”

I resist the urge to blurt out that it all sounds like something straight out of science fiction. Again, I stare at the cadavers.

They’re learning tools. Tools that were once people.

That’s how we learn.

How doctors learn.

A cadaver like one of these might be able to save my career.

“Jason?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice breathless. “When can I meet Dr. Patel?”

“Can you come to the hospital this afternoon, around four?” Louisa asks.

I glance at the clock. The students will be here soon. “That should work,” I say. “Unless you can see me sooner?”

“Well…I have time now, and Dr. Patel is in the building. But didn’t you say you were about to teach a lab?”

“Yeah, but I’ll cancel. This is way more important.”

“All right, Jason. I’ll schedule you in. See you shortly.”

The click of the call ending seems to echo in the silence of the lab. The weight of what could happen, what might happen, threatens to pull me under.

With a deep breath, I grab a clipboard from a nearby counter and write Lab Canceled at the top of a piece of paper. Then I jot down some textbook pages for them to read about the thoracic area. I draft a quick email to the class letting them know as well.

They’ll be disappointed. So many of them can’t wait to cut.

But wait they will. Until next Thursday, our next lab.

And I feel not one iota of guilt about making them wait.

If I can regain the function in my right hand… If there’s even a chance…

I finish the note and tape it to the door of the lab. Then before I close and lock the door, I gaze back at the cadavers.

“Sorry,” I say out loud.

Sorry about what?

That they won’t fulfill their duties today? Won’t get cut into by eager students?

And some not so eager, as I think of Angie.

Angie…

I may be taking the first step into a return to my old life today.

This is a good thing.

So there’s no reason in the world why I should feel a sliver of disappointment at not seeing Angie Simpson in class.