Ella’s Point of View
The operating room was a quiet battlefield, its sterile air heavy with the weight of life and death. My hands, steady in their gloves, wielded the scalpel like a painter’s brush, each cut and suture a stroke in the delicate art of saving Shawn Hayes. His coarctation of the aorta—a narrowing that choked his heart’s lifeline—demanded precision, a dance of skill and focus I’d perfected over years.
But this time, it was different. Shawn wasn’t just a patient; his laughter, his midnight vows in the garden, his gentle touch at my mother’s grave had woven him into my heart. As the monitors beeped, steady and true, I poured every ounce of myself into the procedure, my mind sharp, my soul tethered to the man on the table.
Hours blurred, the world narrowing to the rhythm of his pulse, the hum of my team, the quiet trust that I could give him a future.
When the final suture was tied, the tension in my shoulders melted, a quiet triumph washing over me. Shawn’s aorta was rep
