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Todos os capítulos de ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE: Capítulo 91 - Capítulo 100

115 Capítulos

Chapter Ninety-One: Seven Green Shoots

I look at the photograph for a long time.Seven small green shoots pushing up through the New Mexico ground in February.Adobe foundations and two carved stones and yellow flowers and now this.Seeds that Paz planted days ago, seeds that have been in a sealed box for a hundred years, seeds that by any reasonable botanical understanding should not be doing anything yet in February soil.It's already growing.I show Dominic.He looks at the photograph and is quiet for a moment."Adobe holds heat," he says. "The foundation walls. They'd create a microclimate.""Yes," I say."That's probably the explanation," he says."Probably," I say.We look at each other.Neither of us says the other thing. The other thing doesn't need saying. Some things are just allowed to be what they are without requiring a complete explanation.I send the photograph to the group chat.Responses come from Edinburgh where the session has just closed and five people are standing in a formal chamber corridor with the

Chapter Ninety-Two: What Ordinary Looks Like Now

February becomes March and Lucia now looks different. Grown.Not dramatically actually, just incrementally. The way all real things grow, in the small daily accumulations that you don't notice until you look back and the distance is larger than you expected.She is two weeks old. Three weeks. Four.She sleeps in patterns and feeds with the determination of someone who has decided that eating is worth taking seriously. She looks at the world with the insight and attention that has been hers from the first night and that I have stopped being surprised by and started simply accepting as who she is.She is Lucia and she is just exactly herself from the beginning.The apartment settles into what it is now. Three people rather than two. The specific choreography of a life that has added a new center of gravity and is finding its balance.I learn things. Things I'd have said was fascinating.How to make coffee one-handed. How to read during feeds with the phone propped at the right angle. Ho

Chapter Ninety-Three: Twelve Years in the Same Room

The name on the screen is Diane Okafor.My charge nurse.Twelve years we have worked together. Twelve years of her handing me patient files and telling me to eat before I leave and saying you have a face when she means something is wrong. Twelve years of her running the ER with the specific combination of warmth and competence that makes everyone around her better at their job.Twelve years of her reading the room.Every room. Always.I look at the name. Surprised.Then I look at Dominic.He is very still."You know her," he says."Twelve years," I say. "My charge nurse."He looks at the phone."Does she know?" he says."I don't know," I say. "Rosamund says close to me and that I may know her. Not that she knows."I look at the wall.Diane Okafor.Who said you look different when I came back from Albuquerque.Who reads patients the way I read patients and has always called it experience and has nineteen years of calling it that.Who said pain has information, listen to it, the first y

Chapter Ninety-Four: The Community Finds Itself

Diane comes to the Thursday dinner.It's two weeks after the break room conversation. She arrives at the Italian restaurant looking the way people look when they're walking into something significant and have decided that composure is the right approach. Practical. Shoulders back. Taking in the room the moment she enters it.She stops just inside the door and reads the room.Six of us already at the table. Me and Thalia and Margot, who is still in Chicago, and Adaeze and Soren who have been here since November. Ezra at the end.Diane stands in the doorway and reads the room and something happens in her face.The same thing that happened in Margot's face when I walked into the hotel lobby four months ago.Recognition.Not of faces. Of frequency.The quality. The connection of a room full of people who carry the same thing which you just have to feel. She crosses to the table.and takes a sit. She then looks around at the six of us."You all feel like that," she says."Like what?" Thali

Chapter Ninety-Five: What Spring Feels Like This Year

Spring arrives in Chicago the way it always does. Chipping in calmly.Not with announcement. Not on the calendar date. Just a Tuesday morning when you open the window and the air is different and something in your body recognizes it before your mind does.I open the kitchen window on a Tuesday in late March. Take in the atmosphere and a huge smile made it's way to my lips.Lucia is in the bouncy seat on the counter, which Dr. Vega approved and which I position so she can see the window because she watches what moves outside it with the focused attention of a researcher.She is seven weeks old.She sees the open window and the different air and she makes a sound.A different sound. The one that means she is registering something new and approves of it."Yes," I say. "Spring."She makes the sound again. Making irregular movements with her limbs while smiling I look at the street below while letting air pass through my hair making it wavy. I didn't put it up this time.The neighborhood

Chapter Ninety-Six: The Proposal He Didn't Plan

April arrives.Lucia is ten weeks old and she has opinions about almost everything.This is not an exaggeration. She has an opinion about the angle of the morning light. She has an opinion about the blue blanket versus the green one, which she communicates through a very specific sound that Dominic identified before I did, which I have chosen not to mention because it clearly gives him disproportionate satisfaction. She has an opinion about which songs he plays on the piano and which ones she finds merely acceptable.She is entirely her mother's daughter.He says this approximately once a day and I have started saying thank you instead of arguing because he means it as a compliment and I have decided to receive it as one.Life has the quality that I described to Petra in March. Settled. Like something that was moving has found its pace rather than stopping. The movement continues. Edinburgh continues. Pren and I have had three calls about the larger structure and Rosamund is drafting

Chapter Ninety-Seven: Building the House

May arrives warm.The kind of May that makes Chicago residents slightly suspicious because it keeps being nice and they know better than to fully trust it, but it keeps being nice anyway and eventually you stop waiting for the catch and just accept the warmth.I am now back at work full time.Dr. Vega cleared it at the twelve-week check and Diane organized my return with the efficiency of someone who has been waiting for a resource and is not going to underutilize it now that it's back. My patient load is full. My feet are mostly cooperating.It is good to be back. To work again.The ER asks for exactly what I have. The competence and the ability, both of them, applied in the space where they make the most difference. I walk in on my first full Monday and the floor has the specific smell and sound that I've known for twelve years and I think: this is also home. Not instead of. In addition to.Multiple things can be home at once. I learned that in the last eight months.The Internation

Chapter Ninety-Eight: What We Are Building

June.Lucia is now four months old.She has two things she says clearly now. "Ma" and "Da", both of which she deploys with the precision of someone who understands that specific sounds produce specific responses and is using this knowledge efficiently.Dominic responds to "Da" with the expression that has no name every single time without exception.I have stopped finding this remarkable and started finding it simply true. The way the morning light is true. The way the piano on Sundays is true. The way certain things settle into the fabric of a life and become part of its texture rather than events within it.He is a father.He is good at it in the ways I knew he would be and surprising in the ways I didn't predict. The thoroughness, the research, the deliberate preparation, all of that I expected. What I didn't expect was the sentimental gentleness. The way he holds her that is different from the way he holds anything else, not more careful, more present, as if she asks for a quality

Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Night Before Everything Changes

We fly home from Albuquerque on a Sunday.The flight is two hours and Lucia sleeps most of it the way she slept the last time, in the complete committed way of someone who has decided rest is worth taking seriously. Dominic is reading, I don't know what it's about thought. I look out the window.The three days of the council meeting settle into me on the flight home the way significant things settle. Not dramatically. As weight that becomes familiar. The kind you carry differently after it's been named.Twenty-two people in a room, the structure decided, the gathering place confirmed.The morning before we left I walked to the Mira Seca foundations one more time. Alone, at six a.m., while the others were still at the hotel and Dominic had Lucia and the June morning was doing the specific thing with light that makes New Mexico look like it was lit deliberately.I stood at the foundations and looked at the plants.At the stones, then at the flowers Elena leaves. I thought about what Ros

Chapter One Hundred: What Stays

July arrives with the warmth and chill of a Chicago July that doesn't apologize for itself. The city at its most itself, outdoor everything and the lake and people moving through the heat with the determined enjoyment of people who endured five months of cold and are going to make the most of every degree above seventy.Lucia is five months old and she finally has the third word now.It arrived on a Tuesday morning and it was, as Dominic predicted, something she decided mattered."Li."Her version of her name.The first time she said it I was at the kitchen window watering the herbs and she said it from the bouncy seat with the specific satisfaction of someone who has been working toward something and has arrived.I turned around.She looked at me."Li."I looked at her for a moment.Then I said: "Yes. That's you."She said it again bouncing on the seat in joy. Smiling so wide I could see her toothless gum."Li."Three times. How establishing.Dominic came in from the hallway and she

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