Page 275 of The Fall

Gaps. Resolve. Typically. Medical vocabulary.

My father hasn’t moved since Dr. Khatri started listing percentages. He’s frozen by the window, one hand braced against the sill like he needs the support. The morning light catches the silver threading through his hair.

“How long would recovery take?” Blair asks. “When everything goes well?”

When. Not if. Blair already demanding success.

“The surgery itself takes four to six hours,” Dr. Khatri responds. “Hospital stay is typically five to seven days, barring complications. Full neurological recovery varies. Some patients feel like themselves within weeks, others take several months. For return to professional athletics...” He pauses, considering. “Six months minimum. More realistically, eight to twelve months before you’d be cleared for contact sports.”

A year. An entire season gone, maybe more. Training camp would be starting while I’m still learning how to trust my own thoughts again.

Blair’s breathing has gone shallow. Each exhale of his barely disturbs the air between us.

“There’s no rush to decide today,” Dr. Lin says, though her tone suggests otherwise. “But the sooner we address this, the better your outcomes. The lesion has already grown since last year.”

“And if I don’t have the surgery?” The question scrapes out of me as if someone else is asking about someone else’s brain, and someone else’s future is dissolving into medical percentages. I brace, my whole body tightening against what I feel coming. Blair’s thumb stops its frantic motion against my knuckles. We’re both waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“The seizures will continue,” Dr. Khatri says. “They’ll likely increase in both frequency and severity. The hallucinations and the false memories may become more elaborate and more difficult to distinguish from reality. And eventually,” Dr. Khatri continues, and there’s something almost apologetic in his tone now, “the seizures could progress to what most people think of as grand mal seizures. Those carry their own risks. Injury from falling, respiratory complications, and in rare cases...” He doesn’t finish.

Death. He means death.

My father makes a sound, air leaving him too fast.

Dr. Lin shifts forward, her hands folding together. “Without surgery, Torey, we’d be looking at medication management. Anti-seizure drugs, regular monitoring.” She meets my eyes directly, and there’s no softness there now, only truth. “But I need you to understand: the league won’t clear you.” She spreads her hands, a gesture that encompasses everything and nothing. “The ice would be behind you.”

Hockey has been my world since I was five years old. It’s who I am, it’s how I know my father, it’s what brought me to Blair. Without it, who am I?

Blair’s hand in mine has frozen. The tendons in his neck stand out like rope under tension.

Surgery or retirement, those are my choices. What version of me survives each?

That gray smudge on the screen holds so much power. Two centimeters of damaged tissue owns every dream I’ve ever had.

Blair’s grip shifts, his fingers threading tighter through mine, like he’s trying to fuse us at the molecular level, make it so nothing can separate us.

“With everything going right, and with a full recovery, no complications, you could be back on the ice,” Dr. Khatri says. “The surgery has a strong success rate for people your age and as healthy as you are. But I won’t lie to you about what we’re discussing here: this is brain surgery. There are no guarantees.”

“I need time.” The words barely make it through my throat. Everything inside me has gone rigid, brittle as old ice.

Dr. Khatri nods. “Take the time you need. The medication we’ve started will keep the seizures controlled for now.” He reaches for a tablet on the counter and passes it to my father. “This has information about temporal lobe epilepsy, the resection procedure, recovery timelines. Read through it together, and let me know what questions you have.”

My father takes the tablet. His fingers tremble against the black case.

When the doctors leave, silence fills the room, broken only by the steady broadcast of my cardiac monitor. My father sets the tablet on the bedside table with a soft clack. His face is pale, his jaw set in a hard line as he stares at the wall over my shoulder.

I look at my brain scans still on the monitor. They are two snapshots of my brain, one before I knew Blair existed and one after loving him. It’s only a smudge; I’d think it was lint. Does this explain everything or nothing at all?

I close my eyes and try to feel the truth. If I quiet everything else—the diagnosis, the prognosis, the risks—what remains?

The perfect shine of Blair’s eyes, a deep Pacific blue I knew to love before I’d ever truly seen them. The cascade of his laugh, the curve of his smile, the crinkle of his eyes, the feel of his fingertips on my skin, the taste of his lips?—

A lesion can’t create that depth of knowing. Which means what? That every choice, every moment of recognition, every time I looked at Blair and knew— All of it was broken circuitry?

An ache threads through me, resentment at the reduction, grief for all that science can name but never feel. That smudge—that nothing, that everything—mocks me. How dare something so small contain so much? How dare it reduce what Blair and I have?

My life divides into two irreconcilable truths: the world of lesions and electrical impulses and a world where the most profound year of my life can be traced back to a scar of damaged tissue. They belong to two separate worlds, and I am standing with a foot in each.

I cannot reconcile the man I fought for across time with this Dr. Khatri’s recitation of symptoms.