Page 21 of The Love Operation

I step back before my body can betray me. Before he can ruin me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “As much as I want to, I can’t.” And before the earnestness on his face causes me to do something I know I’ll regret, I turn and head back toward the elevator.

He doesn’t follow, and my disappointment that he doesn’t is only further proof that walking away is the right choice.

I slide onto the elevator, and the doors close. The silence pounds against my eardrums.

I did the right thing, I tell myself. Because didn’t I? My brain is fully on board, but that stupid organ in my chest has ears of its own, and it keeps hearing Isaac’s words: Love makes room.

I tear my gaze from the closed elevator doors and check my phone.

Delenn: Everything’s all set for tonight.

God bless my best friend. Her study feels like a breath of fresh air. That’s what I need to focus on. Not Isaac. Not what I’m walking away from but what I’m walking toward. Her study is a risk I’m willing to take because somehow it feels safer than him.

Me: I’m ready.

I choose focus. I choose control. I choose the version of me that doesn’t break.

Chapter 5

Time Travel for One, Please

“I feel like Bruce Banner about to meet his alter ego,” I say, only halfway joking.

A chill races across my skin. I shake it off.

The hospital is a different place at night—emptier, stretched thin, like the walls have loosened their grip on reality. Footsteps echo too long. Shadows stretch too far. The air has a different hum. The after-hours atmosphere verges on creepy.

The lab is dim, lit by work lamps and the glow of the large screen opposite us, where my lesson, the procedure I am to memorize, will soon be displayed.

Delenn dots conductive gel to my scalp, and I inhale at the sudden shock of cool and wet that becomes tacky and mildly unsettling as she presses the electrodes over it. The attached wires brush against my skin like mutant spider legs.

“I hope you’re planning to step away once you apply the electricity, in case I turn into a monster or go berserk.”

A flicker of a smile tugs at Delenn’s lips, but her focus is laser sharp. She’s half with me, half with the machine. I watch the slight crease between her brows, the measured way she checks each electrode, her gaze darting over the setup like she’s triple-checking what she’s already triple-checked, and I think, This is why we’re friends. We ride the same wavelength—driven, ambitious, wired to keep pushing forward. I trust her completely.

Still, a thread of nerves gets tangled beneath my excitement, and doubt wants to scuttle around the forming knots. Electricity will soon be applied to my head, changing things in my brain. What if it changes too much? What if this doesn’t go as planned? Lately nothing has, and this almost feels like tempting fate.

At least I’m not thinking about Isaac. Not about the fact that I haven’t heard from him all day. Not about this morning. That moment.

At least there’s that.

My mind is eased by knowing I’m not the first to have this procedure done. Three other people have gone through it earlier today. The study is officially underway, and even after the first session, it’s promising. Delenn sent me ecstatic messages all day. She couldn’t wait for me to try it.

“So, why do you think the results varied from person to person?” I ask, wanting to hear again that they’re all okay, even though I’ve analyzed all the prestudy data. It’s not like these therapies are novel—it’s only the combination that’s new. I have no reason to be concerned, but I do want to be thorough and cautious, as much as I can be in this scenario.

“It’s not surprising,” she says. “Each person’s brain encodes and stores memory in different ways. There are structural differences—variability in hippocampal volume, synaptic density, neurochemical balances. But more than that, memory retrieval is deeply affected by emotional regulation, prior trauma, and even baseline sleep cycles. And then there’s the added complexity of neuroplasticity—people who’ve trained themselves to remember differently, or repress consistently, have literally rewired how their recall pathways function. The protocol for the study has stimulated heightened recall in everyone we’ve tested so far. Their memory is, as we hoped and hypothesized, better—much better. But the interpretation still happens through the lens of who they are. It’s not just data. It’s identity.”

This explanation takes a hammer to my lingering concerns, and I lean into the anticipation.

“You swallowed all the pills?” Delenn asks, tapping a pen against her clipboard, but it’s not really a question. She watched me do it.

“A half an hour ago,” I say.

She spins away. “Good. I’m going to turn on the diffuser.”

A switch flips, and instantly a thin vapor unfurls from the top of the machine, curling into the air like the first breath of an active volcano.