She shouted from her room, “Why? What if it’s important?”

In an attempt to stall her from answering because there was no way she wouldn’t, as it could be the doctor or someone at the hospital even though I knew it wasn’t, I shouted back, “What kind of important?”

“What are you talking about?” The phone rang two more times, bringing us to three rings.

I yelled, “It’s not important,” which negated my previously shouted question. I stood next to the kitchen wall phone, my hand on the receiver, and it rang a fourth time. Would I answer it and listen only, or say hello, or pick up and hang up in one motion?

The phone stopped ringing. My hand buzzed with aftershocks, anticipating another vibrating ring that didn’t happen. Mom came downstairs, frantic, saying, “Dammit, Art. We missed it. Shit. Should I call the hospital just in case?” Then she asked again, “What if it was important?”

I shrugged. I sure as hell didn’t know. And Mercy didn’t call back.

It wasn’t me that called. Okay, maybe it was.

* * *

We were up well before the sun the next morning. Dad asked that I not listen to my Walkman on the ride into Boston so we could talk. I complied, leaving the headset dangling on my neck, but I don’t recall anyone talking much. Dad commented on how light the traffic was as we crossed the nightmarish Tobin Bridge’s upper deck, more than one hundred and fifty feet above the Mystic River. Mom said we all should’ve stayed in the hotel last night instead of having to rush around this early, the last line in an argument to which I hadn’t been privy. The rest of the ride into the city was candy apple gray.

Once we arrived at the hospital, a valet took my parents’ car and hid it so I couldn’t change my mind, be my own hero, attempt a madcap escape. Unlike the usual thirty-plus minutes of waiting rooms we endured with our prior hospital visits and appointments, I immediately checked in and a staff member braceleted my wrist with a plastic band imprinted with the data of my identity so while under sedation they wouldn’t lose me. Minutes later, I was alone in a dressing room where I had to take everything off, including my underwear, and wrap myself in two gowns that were too short in length and too big in width. This was the moment pre-surgery in which I was the most scared, partly because everything of mine was stripped away and now I was alone, truly alone with myself in the moments before I was to be zippered open and changed.