The River-Shaped Crack
The city bus shuddered over a pothole, and I tightened my grip on the canvas bag in my lap. It was a reflex, the instinct to protect something fragile, though in reality I was carrying almost nothing of value. A change of underwear, a toothbrush, a paperback I knew I wouldn’t have the focus to open, and a small mesh bag of Granny Smith apples because the nurse had told me fruit was permissible.
It seemed a ridiculous offering to bring to a threshold — the threshold of surgery, of anesthesia, of the very real possibility that I might not draw another breath on the other side. Outside the window, Arbor Hill blurred past in late November gray. The linden trees on Main Street had been stripped to their bones, their last leaves surrendered to the gutters weeks ago.
The puddles that had been glazed with ice in the early morning were being shattered now by midday traffic. I caught the drift of wood smoke from chimneys on the outskirts and the warm yeasty smell of bread from the bakery on the corner. I knew this town by heart.
I had taught second grade at the elementary school for a decade. I knew every crack in the pavement, every hidden backyard garden. But peering through the glass that morning, I felt the cold prickle of a farewell — not theatrical or loud, just a quiet, serene detachment.
What if this was the final viewing? My surgeon, Dr. Louis Herrera, had been a man of terrifying honesty.
He didn’t seek to frighten me, but he refused the comfort of empty platitudes. “The tumor is benign, Jessica,” he had said, his eyes meeting mine directly. “But an operation is physical trauma.
Risks exist. Anesthesia complications, post-operative variables. We must be prepared.” In that moment, a childish part of me had wished he had lied just a little.
Curiously, when the weight of the diagnosis finally sank beneath my skin, my first thought hadn’t been of Evan Morris, my husband of eight years. I thought of my classroom. I thought of Ben, who had finally conquered his stutter and begun to read with a lilting fluency.
I thought of Paige, whose shoelaces were perpetually untied and whose wit was sharp enough to cut glass. I thought of little Dany, who had spent all of September weeping at the classroom door and now raced in each morning like a conqueror claiming territory. I wondered who would explain verb tenses to them.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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