Chapter 4

The light green walls of the operating room reflect the light of the operating room. The room cannot get more professional than it looks — anesthesiologists operating beeping, complex machines and controlling countless tubes entering and leaving the patient’s many orifices. Surgical nurses that pass instruments effortlessly like they have done this a thousand times, which they actually have.

But in the center of it all are Meredith, Professor Perkins, who is the chief surgeon, and Dr. Henshaw. This would not be Meredith’s first presence in the operating room, but this is the closest she has been able to the patient on the operating table. As a student, she only had the closest privilege of viewing the operation from the top shelf, and as an intern, she served as a messenger in the operating room at best or the portal between the operating room and the outside world at worst.

But today, she is not just watching or shuffling around to pass inf