Page 11 of Hello Stranger

And so there was nothing left to do but cry myself to sleep.

LUCINDA DID NOTreturn “first thing in the morning.” Which was fine with me. I’d already had breakfast, an MRI, and begun a consultationwith a deeply serious Filipino brain surgeon named Dr. Sylvan Estrera before she showed back up, appearing in the room just as he got to the juicy stuff.

“The scan didn’t reveal anything urgent,” Dr. Estrera was saying. “No stroke or hemorrhage. No significant bleeds in the brain.”

“That’s a relief,” I said.

Then he continued. “But it did reveal a neurovascular issue.”

Okay, that didn’t sound good. “A neurovascular issue?” The wordneurovascularfelt like a foreign language in my mouth.

“A lesion,” he explained, “that should be treated.”

“Alesion?” I asked, like he’d said something obscene.

Dr. Estrera put some images from the MRI up onto a lightboard. He pointed to an area with a tiny dark dot and said, “The scan revealed a cavernoma.”

He waited for recognition, like I might know what that was.

I did not. So I just waited for him to go on.

“It’s a malformed blood vessel in the brain,” he explained next. “You’ve had it all your life. An inherited condition.”

I glanced at Lucinda, like that didn’t seem right.

But Lucinda lifted her hands and said, “Don’t blame me. I’m just the stepmother.”

I looked back at the scan—and that menacing little dot.

Could he have gotten my scan mixed up with someone else’s? I mean, I just didn’tfeellike a person walking around with a malformed blood vessel in her brain.

I frowned at Dr. Estrera. “Are you sure?”

“It’s plain as day right here,” he said, pointing at the image.

Plain as day? More like a fuzzy blur, but okay.

“Cavernomas frequently cause seizures,” he went on. “They can be neurologically silent. You could go your whole life without ever having a problem. But they can also start to leak. So your best option is to get it surgically resected.”

“It’s leaking?” I asked.

“It is. That’s what brought on the seizure.”

“Thenonconvulsiveseizure,” Lucinda noted, like that made it better.

“I thought you said there was no bleed in the brain,” I said.

“Nosignificantbleed,” he clarified.

Why was I arguing with him?

He went on, “We need to go in and resect that blood vessel.”

Huh. “Bygo in,” I said, “do you mean go in…to my brain?”

“Exactly,” he said, pleased I was getting it now.

I was definitely getting it now. “You’re telling me I need brain surgery?”

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