The procedure isn’t new, but it’s new-ish. New enough that we can access it as a trial instead of paying $4600 Canadian out of pocket. 

The clinic is surprisingly welcoming. They’ve forgone hospital lighting for amber ambience, and white marble for finished wood and tropical plants. I have visited countless medical facilities in the last decade, and this is by far the nicest. 

Currently, the pain is mild. Tendrils of it pull at my optical nerves, but in a manageable way. Liam shifts next to me in the plush waiting room chair. I can feel the excitement radiating from his chest and filling the space. He is not afraid. I can’t figure out why. He’s been talking nonstop about this, carefully planning the seven days following the procedure.

I haven’t put much thought into what happens after this appointment. I have not planned the next seven days. I think because I’ve come to believe there isn’t anything that can truly help the pain. I’ve tried exercise, microdosing, talk therapy, acupuncture, medications that cost more than my share of our steep rent. I find moments of joy that make the other moments worth enduring. I have not found relief. 

~

“Liam and Emmy Alister, come on in.” The doctor’s voice is gentle, and I feel a warmth across my body as we follow her into the transition room. It’s small, with a few chairs and a stretch of one-way windows; an otherworldly vestibule between lives.

“I know you’ve both filled out the requisite paperwork, but we also need to reassess and repeat verbal consent immediately prior to the procedure. You understand this is safe, but experimental?” She doesn’t wait for us to answer. “You may both experience pain at the incision site, nausea, headache–”

“Headache? But that’s what she’s–” Liam begins. 

“It’s not likely, but you understand, we have to express all possible side effects.”

We nod. She is our sergeant, and we are her dutiful soldiers. She hands us each a packet of cream-coloured pages. I don’t skim to the bottom. I know they’ve included death. I don’t want Liam to die, but I am not afraid for myself. 

“Emmy, do you comprehend and consent to this procedure?”

“I do.” I said this when Liam and I were married, but the words feel composed of a new and spectacular heft. We might as well have said totally, man at the altar.

“And Liam, do you comprehend and consent to this procedure?”

“Yes, I do.”

I wait for her to tell us we may kiss and cement our holy union. Liam begins to speak again, and I watch, struck by the way his features come together. So pretty, a lanky baby deer, strutting ahead with wobbly legs and the unearned confidence of a man who does not know what he’s getting himself into.

~

I lean against the operating chair and pretend we are at the dentist. A couples massage, but for teeth. The burning lights above will be lowered, and our teeth drilled into, and nothing will change. Nothing but the feel of enamel against my tongue’s wild exploration. 

My eyes close in bliss as the doctor meticulously carves away at the skin behind my ear. The meds are kicking in. I love anaesthesia. Unlike sleep, in which I am subconsciously suffering, anaesthesia is completely freeing. I am a bird on the breeze. As twilight pulls me closer, I drift off to the image of myself as a vulture and Liam as an injured fawn, running from me in a rose bush maze whose paths I know by heart.

~

At home, we message the doctor to begin the rerouting. Next to Liam in bed, I recline, face slack like I’ve experienced the most intense orgasm in human history. Maybe I have, and this is all a post-coitus hallucination. The world is Dorothy’s after the tornado, sparkling and bursting. The world is singing a hymn in tongues. I have never suffered. Never known pain. Half a lifetime of agony, erased in one blink of anaesthesia. 

Liam rests for a full day before leaving the bed. He looks sleepy. I know that’s not quite what it is. The pain isn’t killing his body, but it is already killing him.

~

Earlier this week, Liam told me about his “recovery” plan. A ten-minute walk every morning, two litres of water per day, physio and massage therapy. No added sugar, no alcohol, no red meat. This was all to start on the first Monday post-procedure.

On post-procedure Monday, though, he moans as he wakes to his alarm. 

“Hurts like a bitch,” he mumbles against his drool-covered ergonomic pillow.

I have been in REM, deep and pleasurable. The blaring of the alarm is simply a noise, not a hammer against what is usually an already throbbing head. 

He does not take a ten-minute walk. He does avoid sugar, alcohol, and red meat, but only because the pain-induced nausea prevents him from consuming anything except toast and tea.

I go for a run. I have never been much of a runner, but it’s incredible to pound the pavement and not feel it reverberate through my skull. I walk into a minimalist cafe and order a ten-dollar strawberry matcha latte with a five-dollar tip. I chat up the cashier, a baby-faced woman, and bask in the way she shines when I compliment her gingham dress. Without the pain, there is so much space in my consciousness. Perhaps the doctor took out a chunk of my brain. Perhaps she performed a lobotomy. Either way, I am content.

~

When I return sweaty and glowing, Liam is in bed. The lights are off, and piano music plays almost inaudibly from the surround sound speakers. His job, managing a hedge fund, is the reason our apartment is so nice. I cannot hold a full-time job. Or at least, I couldn’t. We live near the top of a downtown high-rise with a wraparound balcony that surveys killer summer sunsets. It’s May, but June heat has begun to roll in across the water. I can feel potential rustling in the hot air, productive summer days and evenings making vigorous love above the city. If he hasn’t become accustomed to the hurt by then, I can do most of the work. I’ll have a better view from on top, anyway. I’ll turn us to the blue and ride with vigour until he forgets, for a blistering second, he is under pain’s spell.

~

Liam manages to return to work ten days after the procedure. He wakes up in tears every morning. When I withdraw elegantly from sleep, I can see the wetness dripping from his closed lids before he’s come to awareness. 

For weeks, I rise and make batches of apple pancakes or sourdough with fluffy scrambled eggs. I do yoga naked in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows while breakfast cooks. I was fearful of the height of this building when we moved in, but since the procedure, my anxiety has lessened. We float above the little pedestrians, so far that a fall would not be something to fear. I would be dead, painlessly, on impact. 

~

On day thirty-nine post-procedure, he shakes his head when I set a plate of steaming pancakes in his lap.

“I can’t eat.” 

“Ibuprofen? Morning blowjob?” I say. He doesn’t even smile.

“I can’t do it.”

“Want me to call out of work for you? I could say it’s food poisoning.” During the past thirty-nine days, he’s called out for migraine, flu, exceptional allergies, and the funeral of a close aunt. I help him craft the message each time, and each time his work acquiesces.

Liam places the plate weakly on his marble bedside table with a clink, and I sit beside him, massaging the meat between his thumb and pointer finger. 

He doesn’t tell me, right then, what he’s been thinking. Instead, he agrees to food poisoning and lets me get him off before drifting back to fitful sleep.

~

He waits until day fifty. I have trained for a marathon, befriended the stylish barista from the overpriced cafe, and taken to walking dogs for our wealthy older neighbours. Liam attends four work days in a good week and his bonus is half of what it was last quarter. 

We are on the balcony and I have wrapped him in a wool blanket when he says, “I think we should shorten the procedure duration.” 

“We agreed to six months.” I’m going to be sick.

“We also agreed I need to hold my job.” He retains his normal confidence, but underneath, layered below sediment of stubbornness and nonchalance, is a terror so thick I worry he will suffocate on its mud.

“It’s been less than two months, Liam.”

“You… You had such a handle on it.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” I know what he’s thinking; he does. I am a more accomplished sufferer. This does not mean I deserve that suffering.

“I’m sorry, Emmy, but we have bills that your dog-walking fee won’t cover.”

“Oh, be serious. It’s been less than two months, and you’re done? You’re fucking joking.”

“You’re lashing out.”

“And you’re a weak, hypocritical man-baby.”

His eyes widen. I am shocked I’ve spoken these words. Has the lack of pain unclouded my personality? Was I nothing more than a husk of who I could be? I will become a high-powered lawyer and dominate my field. I will snap at men who eye me in the subway, chomp their heads off and chew them like rare steak.

“I get to stop if I want, that’s the deal. That’s what we agreed to, legally speaking,” he protests.

I can feel my freedom, a palpable thing, slipping through the gaps in the railing. It threatens to splatter and die on the concrete. 

“You promised. You promised I could have six months, and then we’d trade back.”

“I cannot do it anymore–”

“Because we need the money, or because you can’t handle the pain?” He doesn’t respond, and I want to slap him. “You’re a wimp. I did this for ten years.”

“And I don’t know how you did it for so long without literally killing yourself!” He stops, shutting himself up. I can see on his stupid, pretty face that he believes these words have hurt me.

I am not hurt. I am liberated. I bathe in his words, smooth their silk across my skin, wash and become new. He is ready to die after two months. I lasted a decade. I am stronger than he is. Better. I am better than everyone. And now, I have a chance to show that to the world, to take what has been so long out of my grasp. Streetlights glint below us as the sun sets. Humans were never meant to live this high. It awards us too much power. 

“You are not going to do this, Liam.”

He shakes his head, stands effortfully and paces to the railing. His chin quivers.

“You said… you would take it all away if you could. And you can!” I try not to sound desperate. Instead, I am letting him be the hero, allowing him to sacrifice for me.

“I didn’t know… it would be like this. I saw your pain, how hard it was… I don’t think I fathomed how it would… I didn’t actually realise what I was signing up for. That’s not consent.”

I can see the headache behind his eyes. He’s half in this conversation, half drowning in the pain. Thoughts swimming against the tide to leave his lips, halted by relentless crashing waves of agony. This must be what I looked like all those years, half dead already. I might as well have been dead. 

He might as well be dead.

I feel so alive. I move closer, not sure what to do with the body that has been returned to me. So gentle and untethered. I’ve always known what I would do to get rid of the pain. I’d sacrifice every dollar I’ve ever earned and ever will. Give up my firstborn. My second. Estrange myself from my family. Take a life. 

That was all in theory, hypothetical and without meaning. But now, there is something tangible I can sacrifice for a painless existence. My sweet Liam.