Sweet Romance11 min read
My Appendix, My Tattoo, and the Surgeon Who Wouldn't Let Go
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I never thought I'd wake up on an operating table to the face of my ex.
"Your tattoo—what on earth did you do?" Grey Brandt asked, and his voice was flat as if he were reading a chart.
"My portrait," I said through a twist of pain. "Cute, right?"
The anesthesiologist beside him snorted, then laughed out loud.
Grey's long fingers hovered near my lower belly. He pressed, then drew a gentle line on my skin with a gloved fingertip. "On this spot? Can your current boyfriend handle that?"
My whole body shivered. I reached for his hand.
He didn't pull away.
"Grey—could you make the stitch look pretty? I have swimsuit shoots next month." My voice cracked. I sounded ridiculous and small.
"No." He said it like a verdict.
"Start the IV. I scrub," the anesthesiologist said, then left. Ten minutes later Grey returned. He was methodical as always.
"Don't be scared," I told myself. "Grey's an excellent surgeon."
"Delaney." He called my old nickname, startling me. He was close enough now that his breath tickled my ear.
"If you're so good, why did we break up?" he murmured.
"Because I asked for a life that made noise," I said, because I could not give him the long list.
He smiled, cold and almost amused. The anesthetic slid into my veins and I forgot the sound of the operating room for a while.
When I woke, I was hot and pulling at the blanket.
"Turn the AC down," I mumbled.
"Who is Delaney?" Grey asked, crisp and cool.
"A very handsome man," I slurred.
"Your new boyfriend?" He sounded irritated when I called him "new boyfriend."
"Mmm...we took rooms, drank, and—" I felt silly. I blinked. The man in the white coat was Grey Brandt.
"Delaney, calm down." Mason Wallace, my best friend, flung himself onto my bed and cried theatrically. "I thought I'd lost you!"
"You big goon," I said. "Say it again."
"Okay—'My Delaney,' every night if you want." He made a face. The nurses laughed.
Grey watched us, then pushed back his glasses with a hand that smelled faintly of disinfectant. "IV first. I scrub."
"I'll get you something to eat," Mason said, trying to be helpful and failing spectacularly.
"She cannot eat today," Grey corrected. He leaned in to check the incision, and everything about him went still and kind.
"Will you...moisturize my lips?" I whimpered.
"I'm at work." He said it like it was the worst trespass.
"I'm Delaney—" I moved my hand up his chest. He looked down, smaller when he smiled.
"Say it to my face." He took off his glasses and kissed me. It was slow. I felt something like the sun setting where I had thought the horizon was always night.
"Don't test me," he said, but his breath was warm.
When Mason poked his head back inside, Grey did something I had never seen him do: he stayed. He smoothed my bandage with precise, gentle motions.
"Stop laughing," he told me when I squeezed his arm.
"You're not my boyfriend." I said it anyway, and he pinched my hair like he had for years.
"I won't be your spare tire," Grey said quietly. "But—"
"Be mine?" I tried.
"No." He shoved his chin up. "I won't be your backup plan."
That night he stayed. He sat on the plastic folding chair with his hands folded, eyes dark from long shifts. When I woke with a start to a full bladder, he was already there, book in hand.
"Wake?" he asked. He rose and knelt by my bed like it was the most routine thing.
I felt my cheeks burn as he managed a catheter without missing a beat. He did it like he had done dozens of times, professional and unembarrassed.
"Don't touch the bag," I murmured.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"No—I'm ashamed."
He hummed and handled everything. I cried a little because no one had ever been that patient with me since the divorce with my father and the years of being left to make my own choices. Grey came back and tucked me in.
"Why did you break up with me?" I asked later.
"Because you were loud in the wrong way for me." He was always honest. "Because you tasted like the whole world and I was afraid of noise."
"Then why are you here?"
He gave me a wrapped white rabbit candy and said, "Because I remember."
That little piece of candy became a ritual. He popped one in my mouth while we watched a dull hospital program. His laugh when I called him "little brother" on the game app made my stomach do a soft, new thing.
Mason came with fried chicken. Grey stood at the foot of my bed, watching us like an island.
"Grey, please join us," Mason offered. "You look tired."
"No." Grey's tone didn't change. "She shouldn't eat."
"Then I'll go get the nurse," Mason joked, but he was already making himself useful, pulling the privacy curtains.
The awkward moment didn't last. Grey rearranged the dressing with fingers that were delicate and certain. He leaned his forehead close. When he told me not to seek other people the way I used to, his voice was quiet and tender. When he kissed me in that dim curtained space, I realized he could be the one who made me breathe easier.
I told the nurse to arrange a caregiver. Grey clenched his jaw.
"I will stay tonight," he said.
"Oh my god!" Mason whooped.
"Don't clap." Grey's voice was still stern but softer. "She needs rest."
That night, I slept with my hand threaded around his wrist. The next afternoon he fed me wonton soup, then lost at my mobile game on purpose so I could win. He tucked my blanket and made little jokes that made my skin prickle. He teased me and then kissed my dimple.
"Play with me later," I said. "You were never this fun before."
"I was busy saving lives," Grey replied, then kissed me again.
We went home together after a week. He moved a duffel bag into my apartment. Mason lugged the rest like it was a parade.
"Why are there so many things?" Mason asked.
"They're his," I said, surprised.
"I moved in." Grey said it like his presence was a fixed fact.
"Same bed?" Mason winked as he ran out.
"Yes." I leaned my head against Grey's shoulder in the car and whispered, "I didn't expect this."
"Neither did I," he said. "But I'm here."
The days that followed were small miracles. Grey bought a microwave and a proper soup pot. He bought me the skin fridge he joked about. He cooked dinners, fixed my leak, and washed my hair with the patience of someone who had practiced tenderness.
He found a glowing paper star I'd kept since I was a kid, folded from candy wrappers. He smoothed it into my palm and said, "I kept looking for you."
"How?" I asked.
He took out a faded postcard with my childhood stage name printed in the corner. "The internet is loud, but if you know how to listen," he said, "you find the right echoes."
He fed me another rabbit candy. "Because I liked you then. Because I still like you now."
Months slipped by. We fought; we made up. He was still strict about airway sterility and the place and time for jokes, but he learned to laugh at my ridiculousness. I learned to be less loud in ways that mattered to him, and he learned to be less perfect in how it mattered to me.
But life handed us a shadow. A video stormed the web: a single clip of Grey hitting a man outside my building. It was edited. People were vicious in the comments. I saw it, heart in my throat, watching as my world threatened to crumble.
"Grey is a monster," an anonymous commenter wrote.
"Harsh," Grey said when he arrived at my hospital bedside that afternoon. "It's staged."
"It showed you beating my brother," I whispered.
"Your brother?" he echoed. He looked at me like a man who already knew and cared too much. "When did your mother show up?"
The man who had been injured was my brother, Orlando Boyle. He had come with our mother, Beatriz Bowers, to harass me. He had tried to humiliate me in my own home. Grey's punch had broken a line of cruelty he'd been tired of watching.
"Grey, they filmed it." I said. "Someone placed a camera."
"Somewhere hidden," he said.
"Someone wanted to ruin you," I replied. "Someone wanted to ruin us."
Mason drove me to my tattoo shop that night. I needed to know if someone had been watching me there. I needed to trace the thread.
We arrived at the shop and Mason pulled the security DVR. "Look," he said. "There's a pinhole cam at the side door."
I watched the slow footage. A man I didn't know slipped by, camera tucked out of sight. He glanced at the counter and at the wall with my sketches.
"He had to know the layout," Mason said. "Whoever this is, they were close."
I felt bile. I wanted answers, and the shop had one tiny lead: the man's gait and the ring on his finger.
"Let's go to him," Mason said.
We found Cosmo Aldridge at a gallery opening. He was charming and polite and smiled too smoothly. He said he'd been a fan for years. He said he adored my work. He gave me a folded paper star and a gift of photos. I thanked him.
"He's weirdly obsessed," Mason hissed.
"Just a fan," I said.
He wasn't.
That night Cosmo's car bumped us in the parking garage. He cornered me in the back seat and smiled.
"You're mine," he said softly. "You love him, but he doesn't deserve you."
"Let me go," I said, throat tight.
"Shh." He leaned in. "You will love me eventually."
My phone was gone. Mason struggled in the front seat. I felt the cold press of fear.
"Cosmo," a voice said behind him.
It was Grey. He arrived like a storm. The confrontation spilled into a dark private garage and a scuffle. We got away. Cosmo drove off into the night.
The next morning the police found a stash at Cosmo's house: fake accounts, edited photos, cameras, a file of every social post I'd ever made. They found the knife used on my brother. They found the copies of my tattoo designs sewed into his lining.
"You're arrested for stalking, assault, and dozens of digital crimes," a detective said.
Cosmo smirked at first. "You have no proof," he told the room full of journalists who had gathered outside his building. There were cameras everywhere. His online followers had come to cheer and deride. "She's a fame-hungry actress. This is all a set."
Grey walked up to the lectern, and I watched him change from the careful man who measured time in stitches to the anchor of truth. He collected every shred of evidence into his hands like a surgeon collecting instruments.
"These are his journals," he said, "he's been fabricating a narrative for months. He planted cameras. He edited clips. He attacked Orlando himself to create a martyr story." He tapped the folder that had Cosmo's digital fingerprints on the edits. "And he attempted to frame me."
Cosmo's face went slow from smug to furious.
"No," he said. "You're lying."
"Stop lying." A woman shouted. "Look at the footage."
They rolled the full, uncut video. It started with Cosmo entering our building. It showed him sneaking cameras, planting them, then returning later with a knife. It showed him stabbing Orlando and then editing the footage frames by frame to make it look like Grey had done it. The truth hit the crowd like rain.
Cosmo's expression shifted.
"That's not—" he stammered. "I—"
"You're a liar," someone in the crowd called. "Pervert."
"Fake," another voice muttered.
Cosmo's followers had been small but loud. Now their faces were turned, the bright screens in their hands catching the light. People began to record him. They took photos and videos. The murmurs rose into a roar.
"Arrest him," someone said.
Cosmo staggered, trying to regain control. He reached for his phone as if to call for help, but his hand trembled.
"No!" he squealed. "You don't understand."
He tried a new tactic: seduction. "I did it for love," he whimpered. His voice cracked. He smiled at some people. "You all would do it."
A woman spat at him. A man stepped forward and shoved him. "You're sick," he said. "You're insane."
It was sudden. The cameramen pushed our way into the gallery foyer. A TV crew shone a light on Cosmo's sweating face. He went from composed to unglued.
"Let me go!" he screamed, eyes wide and wet. "I didn't mean—"
He lunged for a nearby table. People scattered. Security cuffed him, then lifted him to his feet. He went from denial to pleading.
"Please," he begged, eyes searching for a face he'd painted in his mind. "I love you—"
From the crowd came a chorus I didn't expect:
"Shut up!"
"Who are you to call it love?"
"You're a liar."
They pointed phones at him. They took his picture. He called someone's name, but no one answered. He began to cry, high and awful.
He sank down on his knees when the police read charges. His voice stripped of artifice, raw as ragged cloth.
"Don't leave me." He looked at Grey.
Grey turned away.
The crowd snapped photos. People filmed the man who had tried to ruin me and they shouted their disgust. A woman filmed him for a living, livid.
Cosmo's reaction changed in visible stages: arrogant, baffled, indignant, frantic, pleading, then collapse. He tried to smile, then grimaced. He reached for the audience as if for an audience that never existed. A child shouted, "You're creepy," and the sound seemed to crush him.
The cameras rolled. The editor took the footage that night and the video of Cosmo kneeling, hands cuffed, crying into the bright lights, zipped across the web. The comments that had once defended him turned sour.
"Good," someone said. "He deserves it."
"He freaked me out," another woman posted.
Grey stayed with me while the police processed statements and we were questioned. He stood by me when people who had believed the fake story tried to ask questions. He comforted me. He held my hand through a press statement.
"Thank you," I told him quietly, when at last it slowed.
"For what?" he asked.
"For staying."
"For being stupid," he said, and kissed my forehead. "For being brave."
Months later, at our wedding, my mother tried to cause a scene. She arrived with Orlando limping beside her, ready to show the world how little she cared.
Beatriz squared her shoulders and shouted into the microphone, but Grey's mother, Leoni Thompson, stepped forward and told the story of how Grey had fixed a man in their neighborhood and refused to leave his side when the world turned against him.
"She is our daughter," she said to the room. "And if anyone dares to call her name wrong, I'll call them out for them."
The wedding turned into a celebration of rescue and truth. My mother tried to yell. She was cut off by Leoni's scolding and by the critical, puzzled looks of our guests. A few people laughed, more people recorded. My mother's rage folded into shame. She left, dragged behind by her shame and by the knowledge that no one believed her.
At the reception, Grey leaned over and whispered, "Do you remember the paper star?"
"Yes," I said. "We wished for this."
He took my hand and slid a ring onto my finger. "We got our wish," he said.
I kissed his stomach—warm, safe—and then his mouth. People cheered. Mason recorded the whole thing on his phone.
Later, the courts moved, and Cosmo was tried. But the real punishment, the one that mattered to me and the internet, had already happened at the gallery. Cosmo's public collapse—his staged confession, the video footage, the chants—had eaten his reputation. The people who had once adored him turned their phones on, recorded, and kept the footage. He was a cautionary tale.
That humiliation lasted: bloggers turned it into a thread of how obsession looks when it's fed, the way the public shines its light on private monsters. Cosmo watched his followers abandon him. His sponsors left. His small, dark fan accounts turned away because their leader had been exposed.
When he finally faced the judge, the courtroom was full. People who had once cheered him now watched in silence. Cameras captured a man whose life had been built on lies fall apart in real time.
I sat with Grey. He squeezed my hand.
"You were brave," he said.
"I was scared," I said.
"You were brave and scared," he said.
At home we made sugar stars into prayers. He held me while I slept.
"Will you tell the internet who you really are?" I asked once.
He smiled. "They already do. 'Grey Brandt, the surgeon who loved candy and paper stars.'"
"That's ridiculous."
"Maybe. But it's ours."
The next morning, as the sunlight cut slats across our bedspread, Grey kissed the little dimple by my mouth and asked, "Do you want children?"
I laughed, then sighed, and said, "Let's just survive Monday first."
He tightened his hand around mine. "Then let's get married."
We did. We kept the paper stars. We kept the candy in a jar by the window as a promise that we had survived the worst kind of public cruelty and learned to trust one another again.
The world still had noise. But ours had a quiet hum under everything. We slept. We stitched. We loved.
The End
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