I shivered under heated blankets against the cold steel of the operating table, and a nurse with colored contacts strapped me down to keep me still. The OR was so cold that I searched for trails of breath in the air—so many people moved about the room that I imagined the walls expanding as we exhaled into a common cloud. A man I’d seen before emerged from the periphery and paused to pull my socks up over my ankles before injecting the anesthesia into my IV, and as I shut my eyes I heard him whisper, “buena suerte.”
