When is sorrow ever sweet? Never, in my experience, least when bidding adieu, perhaps for the last time. There is a lump-in-the-throat farewell at the gurney. My unbridled imagination throws up horrific images before my eyes.

“Everything will be fine,” says self.

“So you say,” my vivid imagination sneers.

Her sister Kieu arrives just before Mimi is wheeled away. She kisses her forehead. From a drug-induced twilight sleep, Mimi acknowledges her with a weak smile.

We (Kieu, David and yours truly) take our positions in the lobby. A clutch of blear-eyed vigil keepers is already in place. Our numbers will ebb and flow throughout the day.

Five hours into our vigil, we are paged. We jump to our feet as one and race to the reception desk. A volunteer points to the courtesy phone on the wall.

“All is well,” a woman’s voice assures me. “They should be done in two hours.”

I crunch some numbers. Five hours into a four-hour operation—that’s how long we were told it would take—plus two hours. That didn’t add up to “all is well” to me. Must be medical math. I don’t like the numbers, but say nothing.

David and I throw caution to the wind and head for the hospital cafeteria. Waiting is hungry work.

Two hours later, time grinds to a halt as we wait for the next page. It comes and I rush to the courtesy phone.

“All is well. Two more hours.” Same woman, same message. It sounds disconcertingly like a recording. This time I question the math. I decide the voice isn’t so much interested in accuracy as she is in conveying assurances. The strain in her voice tells me she’s too busy to hold my hand, so reluctantly I let hers go.

By now, the chairs in the lobby are molded to our backsides. It’s 5:00 PM; the volunteers manning the reception desk are calling it a day. They are our lifelines to the voice. Who will page us after they leave? Not to worry. Admitting will take responsibility.

It’s been over two hours since our last page. I go to Admitting to prompt them for news. Pouting as only the underpaid can, the girl informs me that no one has called down. We are in free fall now. Two more family members join us: Mimi’s cousin Kathy and her husband Phillip. Kathy calls every doctor on her speed dial. The consensus is that an operation of this magnitude takes as long as it takes. I think about the young, soap opera-handsome doctor who holds the power of life and death in his slippery hands. How could he be at his best working hour after hour under relentless pressure, when less than his best could cause our grievous loss?

I flash back to pre-op. I help Mimi out of her street garb and into a skimpy hospital gown. A veteran of so many operations, she feels in her bones that this operation will be different. Different how? Don’t know, only that she’s afraid. Can slicing a fist-sized chunk off her liver, the only organ that can regenerate itself, be more life threatening than the heart valve replacement she had a few years back? The fear factor is higher, that’s all. Perhaps because she’s older, and her keen sense of mortality has grown finer.

We are approaching the eleventh hour, the hour of exigency. Though Mimi is oblivious to what is happening to her, her body is not. How much drugging, slicing, and suctioning can it take? Laid open and blushing for an immoderately long time, it must be stitched and stapled to give the appearance of wholeness.

I contemplate going back to the indolent underachiever in Admitting. Perhaps a ten-finger necklace will instill some compassion in her, or make her more cooperative. Mayhem is averted by the approach of the surgeon. We surround him, hungry, expecting to be fed.

“It was a long operation,” he began. Though painfully obvious, I find this morsel strangely satisfying. It verifies our experience, makes real the surreal.

“The gall bladder had to be removed,” he continued. (It was a purse full of worthless stones.) “We cut off the cancerous part of the liver and a little extra, which we sent to the lab. It tested cancer-free, so we’ve begun putting Mimi back together.”

He looks tired, drawn, as he has every reason to be.

“The patient,” he concluded, “will be in intensive care for a couple of days. In an hour, after they’ve cleaned her up, you can see her.”

Bowel-deep is my gratitude for what he has done for us, yet how insipid and stale are the words that come out my mouth.

It seems we should celebrate, but we aren’t in a celebratory mood. Our party breaks up; the original three vigil keepers stay. The nearly deserted lobby becomes a sanctuary where we prepare ourselves for the viewing. An hour and a half passes with no word, more than enough time to dwell on what has to be done to make her presentable. Isn’t that what they do to corpses disfigured by mischance? Make them presentable?

One hour stretches to two. I tell David I’m going to Admitting. Maybe Mad Dog can get results where Nice Guy could not. One pout, one roll of the eyes and I will slip the leash. She makes my performance unnecessary. Perhaps I had unknowingly bared my fangs. She makes the call without my asking. Everything is ready.

The nurse meets us outside the ICU. One door then another wheezes open as she escorts us into the inner sanctum. A disorienting scene of bustling efficiency assaults the senses as we follow her into the room.

So tiny Mimi looks, so fragile, more dead than alive. Her face is puffy, her eye swollen shut. Her body has sprouted a garden variety of tubes, some feeding her clear liquids, others removing the waste. A phalanx of monitors measures everything but her will to live, and maybe even that. The nurse’s programmed movements, as she untangles a tube or pets her patient, are perhaps for our benefit, but not lost. Failure, skulking in the corridors testing each patient’s door for easy access will, I’m sure, find this one securely barred. I approach the patient and stroke her head. An unseeing eye flutters open, then retreats behind a puffy lid. This will pass, I say to myself. This will pass.

We are mere accessories in the effort to stabilize her. If we are not in the way, we soon will be. For the second time that day, we bid Mimi farewell. In view of all that has transpired, two isn’t a bad number.

Seventeen hours after our ordeal began, spent, relieved and blear-eyed, we stumble to our cars. The late hour has parted the usual sea of traffic. Home. Bed. Oblivion.

I woke her in the middle of one of her dreams, a bump-in-the-night, fear full-throttle nightmare. Then I read it wasn’t good to rouse the dreamer from her nocturnal terror. The theory being that part of her might get stuck in the dream, that left alone she has a better chance of escaping in one piece.

These dreams start with a tremulous whimper, build up steam, and explode in a Krakatoa of wailing and keening. She appears to be in such terror that it seems cruel not to extract her as quickly as possible. In due course, the animal noises coming from her throat subside.

“Did I scream?” she asks, sheepishly.

“A little,” I reply.

I’ve asked her about these dreams, but the details evaporate with the sweat on her brow. Mostly, she is being chased through dark, Dantesque passages even ogres are afraid to enter. Knees pumping like pistons, she seems doomed never to escape her pursuers. I have had one or two similar dreams, but I try to keep my fear to myself. Quieter that way.

Mimi is coming around. Who knows from what dream she is emerging? Perhaps it is one of those dreams. She opens her eye (she has only one). But the dream persists. The specters chasing her have followed her from one dream world into the next, the one we call life. One of them holds a pointy object and is bent on sticking her with it. This is worse than her worst nightmare. Fear puts iron in her arm. She resists. Others rush to restrain her.

“It’s for your own good,” says the specter with the pointy object, frightening Mimi even more.

“I want to see my doctor. I want to see a member of my family,” she cries, a perfectly reasonable request. She has more exotic drugs sluicing through her veins than a spaced out sixties hippy and is just as disoriented. She doesn’t know where she is or who these beings are presumably trying to help her.

“There’s no one here,” the hypodermic-brandishing specter informs her. No one can help you now, she might have added, for the effect it had. Mimi kicks at the specter and connects with flesh and bone. More hands appear, too many for her ransacked body to repel. Something sharp pricks her arm.

They release her. She beckons the nurse/specter. The nurse is wary. Perhaps the deranged patient is drawing her near to strike a more telling blow. She approaches, cautious as a cat. The patient cups the wary nurse’s face in her hands.

“I just wanted to see my doctor or a member of my family. I don’t know who you people are, or where I am. I love you. Why don’t you love me?”

A pearly tear trickles down the nurse’s cheek. “But I do love you,” she insists and melts away.

David called me at work. They’ve moved Mimi out of the ICU, where she stayed...