Olga began the slow waltz of emergence. She turned off the gas, flushed the circuit, and pulled the chin forward slightly. One minute. Two.
Mateo coughed. His eyes fluttered, unfocused, then found hers. “Mamá?” he mumbled.
“Casi,” she smiled. “Almost. You’re in the recovery room. Breathe deep for me.”
Dr. Olga Herrera adjusted the flow of sevoflurane, watching the vaporizer’s gentle rotation. Below her hands, suspended in the liminal space between consciousness and void, lay a nine-year-old boy named Mateo. His appendix was about to betray him, but he would never know.
She remembered her first solo case in Barranquilla, twenty years ago. A farmer with a machete wound, terrified, gripping her wrist so hard it bruised. “Don’t let me wake up inside,” he’d begged. She’d held his gaze until the propofol took him, whispering, “Usted está en mis manos. Duerma tranquilo.” (You are in my hands. Sleep peacefully.)