I have to be at the hospital at the ungodly hour of seven a.m., but it’s basically impossible to sleep when Margaret’s crying, so I wake up at four.
“Hey,” I say, walking into the nursery, where Abbi’s breastfeeding Margaret in the rocking chair in the corner. There was a time in our lives when it would’ve been weird for me to see her boobs so much, but that time is definitely not now.
“Go back to bed!” Abbi says. “Don’t you have to wake up in like an hour?”
“I can’t sleep.” I sit on the carpeted floor and enjoy the silence that now occurs only when Margaret is eating.
But I’m glad I’m up. There’s a special kind of quiet that happens at four a.m., and while I don’t necessarily want to get up this early for the rest of my life, I appreciate it.
“Are you all packed?” Abbi asks. She switches Margaret to the other breast, and Margaret lets out the most dramatic scream for the two seconds she isn’t eating, like not having food right now is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. I realize that at this point in her life, it basically is.
“Yeah,” I say, which is mostly true. I threw a bunch of stuff in a bag. The truth is, I couldn’t really focus on what I might need—clothes to wear post-surgery, maybe my Kindle if I want to read—because there’s still a part of me that believes there won’t even be a post-surgery.
“You’re going to be fine,” Abbi says, as if she read my mind.
“I know,” I say, picking at the carpet. “I’m just scared.”
“You’re allowed to be scared,” Abbi says. “I’m scared every day now. It’s just my way of life.”
I smile. “Yeah, but you’re rocking this whole mom thing.”
She looks at me skeptically. “I haven’t showered in four days. I don’t think I’m rocking anything.”
“Maybe you’re rocking smelling bad.”
“Probably. But just remember: You’re going through a big change, but at the end of it, you’re still going to be you. A surgery isn’t going to change that.”
“You’re right.” I think about going to make some breakfast, but then I remember I can’t eat anything. “Ugh, not being able to eat sucks.”
Abbi snorts. “Talk to me when you’ve been in labor all day and you’ve only eaten ice chips.”
We sit there in companionable silence until Margaret finishes eating, at which point my mom pops her head in the door.
“Ready?” she asks.
I’m not sure I am, but I nod anyway.
* * *
Getting to the hospital and into the operating room is a blur, but then I’m there, on the table, as a nurse places a mask on my face. This is the moment I’ve been dreading and dreaming of for years. It feels surreal, but there’s no time to think about it.
“Jolie, just count backward from one hundred, okay?” Dr. Kelley says.
“One hundred … ninety-nine … ninety-eight…,” I say shakily as I close my eyes.
I open them and see a nurse. At least I think she’s a nurse. What if this is the afterlife, and she’s an angel who’s about to explain to me what’s going on?
She smiles at me. “You’re in recovery, Jolie.”
I try to say, “Wait, already?” but my mouth is full of gauze and I feel a little bit like my head is surrounded by pillows. So I guess I’m not dead—presumably the afterlife doesn’t involve surgery recovery.
“Just relax,” she reassures me. “Your family will be in soon.”
I close my eyes and when I open them again, Mom and Dad are standing over me. Mom’s arms are crossed as she stares at me with concern.
“Oh!” she says with relief. “You’re awake!”
“I’m not dead!” I try to say, but it comes out as a mumble.
“Shhhh.” Mom puts her hand on my arm. “Just get some rest, okay?”
So I do. The next day passes in a confusing blur. I wake up to see a nurse changing something, my dad watching a soap opera on the television, my mom eating a pudding cup. And then they’re telling me I can go home.
I feel groggy as a nurse pushes my wheelchair down the hospital corridor toward the exit, where Mom and Dad are waiting with the car. I’m wearing my clothes again, but I have no idea how they got on my body.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks as she helps me into the front seat.
I grunt my affirmation.
I feel the car door slam like a shock through my body, and then we’re in motion.
“Jolie,” Mom says from behind me. “You did great in the surgery—everything went even better than expected. But just as a warning, prepare yourself before you look in a mirror. Because you have some pretty major swelling.”
“I can handle it,” I mumble, and I glance in the passenger-side mirror as the scenery rushes past me in a woozy blur. I let out what can charitably be called a scream as I take in my current look: Right there above the words “Objects in Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear,” there’s a person who kind of, sort of looks like me, but with cheeks like a cartoon chipmunk and ice packs secured to the sides of her face with what appears to be a scarf made of gauze.
“What happened to me?” I try to ask, but it comes out as “Mwah mummuh mummuh?”
Luckily, Dad understands me, or at least guesses what I’m trying to say. “Your face looks pretty gnarly right now—”
“Tim!” Mom says.
“—but this is temporary. Dr. Kelley said this amount of swelling is totally normal and nothing to worry about.”
But as I look at myself in the mirror again, I’m kind of worried. Telling yourself you’ll be swollen and then actually seeing your own swollen face are two different things. Blood-tinged gauze pokes out of my mouth, and I look like I’m starting to get a black eye. This is like that time when Abbi got her wisdom teeth out, but way, way worse.
“Urrrrgh,” I gurgle before falling asleep again.
When I wake up, I’m on the sofa at home, and Abbi’s looking down at me.
“Do you want some chicken broth?” she asks.
Truth be told, I want pizza or chicken wings or potato chips or, like, anything chewy or crunchy or crispy, but I know that’s not an option, so I sit up and take the bowl from her. I’m just glad I didn’t have to have my mouth wired shut, which is the case for some people who have underbite surgery—Dr. Kelley thought I could get by with just some screws holding my jaw in place. Of course, I still have my trusty braces—they’ll be there for at least the next six months to make sure my teeth don’t stage a rebellion and slide out of place.
“Tell me the truth,” I say through my gauze, wincing as the pain reminds me that I need another dose of my meds. “How bad is it?”
Abbi looks away from me, then back at my face, then away again.
“That bad?” I ask.
“Well, I wouldn’t say you look great,” she says delicately. “But this is just temporary, remember?”
“Ugh,” I say, then attempt to spoon a little bit of broth into my mouth. It dribbles down my chin.
“Jolie.” Abbi leans over and puts her hand on my knee. “It’s gonna be a rough few weeks, but it will be okay. It will be better than okay, because you did it. It’s done.”
I nod, then spill more broth on myself.
Abbi takes the bowl away from me. “We’ll try this again later. You want to watch TV?”
“Yes,” I say, so Abbi turns on some show that, as best as I can tell, is about serial killers. Or maybe private eyes. Or a hospital. I don’t know; I’m on very strong painkillers.
That’s what the next couple of weeks are like. I attempt to make use of my free time and catch up on all the shows I’ve been meaning to see, but I definitely don’t have the mental ability to follow any sort of plot right now, so I resort to watching reality television. I fall asleep so often that it all becomes a blur of housewives yelling at each other, Kardashians staging zany stunts, and British people baking elaborate cakes.
I also get tired of soup pretty quickly, so I start using the blender to chop up anything and everything. Like, for example, a piece of leftover steak I found in the refrigerator, and slices of pizza.
One day in mid-June, I’m putting a can of SpaghettiOs into the blender (perhaps not my best idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures) when the doorbell rings. Abbi has just gotten Margaret to sleep, so I run to get the door before whoever it is rings the bell again and risks waking her up. At the last minute, I grab a dish towel to hold over my face—my swelling has gone down some over the past two weeks, but the bottom half of my face is still alarmingly big. I’d rather not field a lot of questions from whatever neighbor or political canvasser is at our door.
When I swing open the door, I couldn’t be more shocked to see who’s standing on our front porch.
Derek.