My best friend asked me if I remembered coming out of anesthesia for my breast surgery.

I do.

I remember the nurses talking about travel. I started to cry. I wanted to travel too. Then someone handed me a tissue, some Goldfish, and a Ginger Ale.
And left me alone.

My best friend asked me about the end of the surgery — coming out of anesthesia.

She didn’t ask about the beginning — slipping into anesthesia.

I remember that too.

If she had asked, do you remember the last thing you heard before someone placed a mask over your nose and mouth? I would have told her yes.

The last thing I heard was a lyric:

We were born before the wind.

Van Morrison. Into the Mystic.

Then I was out.

—

Someday I’ll tell you the whole story of that song. 

It happens in the Beforetimes — before the phone call: you have breast cancer, before the confirmation: stage three rectal cancer.

The story of the song involves another friend of mine. 

He is one of the best — one of my soul people.

Though on paper we’d never be friends.
It’d be very unlikely. 

So, I will call him
My Unlikely Friend.

—

I had started to write the story of the Beforetimes – which includes the story of the song and My Unlikely Friend – before the phone call, before the confirmation. It is a beautiful story. I have some chapters. 

“How does it end?” asked My Unlikely Friend.
“I don’t know how it ends,” I replied.

That was Before. 

Now I have this plot twist. 

Now I don’t know what the story is or how it will end. 

I suppose it will tell me.

—

I do know with every new plot comes new characters – for example, in my case, an anesthesiologist. 

(I mean, my anesthesiologist was really hot. How could he not have a role?)

He will be known in the story as Hot Anesthesiologist, a man worthy of his very own proper noun.  

Maybe the story is fiction!

(Most days I wish this story was fiction.)

Maybe in the fiction version I get to have steamy sex with Hot Anesthesiologist – the last man to touch my breasts before a surgeon digs into my left boob and a new chapter begins.

That would be a great plot point in a great story.
I’d love to write that story.
I’d love to live that story.

Unfortunately for you (and for me), I won’t write that story.

For better or worse, the story I will write is true.
It involves a different surprising chain of events.

A little more magical.
A little more mystical.

But Hot Anesthesiologist will have a role in the true story. 

(It’s a tough story but we can still make it a little whimsical.)

In the true story the anesthesiologist is also the DJ.

Here’s a snippet of the true story I’ll tell:

I was wheeled into the bright, cold operating room. I looked up at Hot Anesthesiologist and asked if they played music in the OR.

Hot Anesthesiologist said yes.

I asked if they could play some Van Morrison.

He seemed genuinely excited by my choice.

(Not excited like that. I already told you this isn’t that kind of story.)

In the true story, Hot Anesthesiologist asked what I wanted to hear first.

Into the Mystic, I told him. 

He pulled it up on Spotify.

I remember hearing the opening line of the Van Morrison song:
We were born before the wind.

I felt a familiar softening.
A familiar sense that everything was going to be ok.
Then someone placed an unfamiliar plastic mask over my nose and mouth.

And I was out.

–

When I finish telling the story of the Beforetimes, you will fully understand how that song came to make me feel like everything is going to be ok — because it makes someone else feel that way too.

My Unlikely Friend.

Someday I will tell the whole story of me and My Unlikely Friend — from Before. 

A story of pain and trauma.
Of loss and love.

A story of mattering.
Of divine connection.
Of anxious and secure attachment.

Of quantum physics and military special operations.
Of spiritual teachings.
Of human performance.

Of deep connection.
Of searching and wondering and laughter and tears.
Of toughness and strength and softness and surrender.

Of oceans.
Of Montana.

Of music.
Of Into the Mystic.

A story of what it takes to find peace in unlikely places.
In unlikely people.
In the unlikely Self.

And in that story I will tell you what My Unlikely Friend — who spent twenty-four years in naval special operations — said to me at the end of a phone call.

The phone call after the confirmation.

He asked me:

Do you think this whole time you’ve just been training?
Training for this?
And now it’s time to execute the mission?

And I said, Yes.
I think everything I have ever experienced in my life has prepared me for this mission.

Including you.

That conversation happened after the phone call.
After the confirmation.

But the story of the song happened earlier.

In the Beforetimes.

In Charlottesville, Virginia.
Seven months before the diagnosis.

—

In the story of Beforetimes I will tell you about Charlottesville, Virginia. I will tell you the small town reminds me of my most innocent and most violent loves – a place, like all places, that holds two truths at the same time. 

I will tell you the town makes me feel safe again.

And I will tell you that rebuilding that sense of safety started with me standing in a hotel conference room — one month after a move, five months after my husband told me he wanted a divorce, six months after he moved out — a time that seemed so hard, and was.

A different kind of hard.

I will tell you the conference room was surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows draped in sheer curtains. Five round eight-top tables filled the room, each covered with a white tablecloth. Each place was marked with a nametag, a hotel-conference notepad, and a pen — along with the handouts and swag I had diligently placed the night before.

The royal blue carpet was adorned with golden stars. 

It was a sunny morning and the light poured in, diffuse. 

The room smelled like fresh brewed coffee. 

There was music playing. 

I will tell you My Unlikely Friend, who was also my co-worker that day, was sitting at one of the tables typing away on his laptop. I will tell you he didn’t look up to say good morning.

I will tell you I looked at him and in a moment everything paused and I felt it.

I felt the weight of the bag on my shoulder. The gentle electricity that fills a room when you know what you’re about to present will make a difference in people’s lives. I smelled the coffee and saw the diffuse light reach the corners of each nametag.

The music changed.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in.

I felt my body soften.

I felt my body say yes. 

I heard the music say:

We were born before the wind.

I heard myself say, I love this song.

I heard My Unlikely Friend say, typing away without looking up,
“This is my favorite song. Every time I hear it I know everything is going to be ok.”

And I will tell you, in case you didn’t know, that song was Into the Mystic.

Every time I hear that song I think of My Unlikely Friend.

Every time I hear that song I think: everything is going to be ok.

Every time I need to feel ok, I play that song.
I think of My Unlikely Friend.

And I feel ok.

Like everything is going to be ok. 

And I will tell you this is why, when they wheeled me into the operating room — in this new kind of hard — I asked Hot Anesthesiologist to play Into the Mystic.

I needed my friend.

I needed to feel like everything was going to be ok.

—

In pre-op you’re only allowed to have one person with you. I was in a gown and cap and grippy socks, tethered to an IV, ready to be wheeled back. My mom was the last person in my family to see me before they took me to the OR.

Before she left she asked if she could take my phone with her back to the waiting room. I refused. 

She seemed confused. After all, I had made a phone tree so my closest people would know I was ok. And I would be hopped up on anesthesia when I came out. Who was I going to call? Could I even use my phone? Would it be safe? Would it get stolen?

My Unlikely Friend was the reason I wanted to keep my phone.

He was not on the phone tree.

He likes to be a little incognito. After all, he was in special operations for 24 years.

Incognito was his job.

Only I get to text My Unlikely Friend.

But I didn’t keep my phone for me.

I kept my phone for him.

So I could tell him I had changed into my gown.
So I could tell him I’d text him from the other side.
So he could write me back and say you got this! 

So there could be a shared silent moment of: I’m scared, you’re scared, but everything is going to be ok.

Because it has to be ok.

My Unlikely Friend cannot lose any more friends.

And he has told me I am not done.

Plus, I owe him a car.

That’s part of the story I probably won’t tell.

Or maybe I will — because that’s how My Unlikely Friend tells me he’s scared without actually telling me he’s scared.

He talks about my future.
My success.
What I owe him when I survive:
A car. Mid six-figures.

It is understood:
My future is non-negotiable.
I cannot die.

He will never say he’s scared.

But he’s My Unlikely Friend.

So I know. 

He will say he is a special operations veteran, so he has no feelings.
I will say, in the true story I will tell, he has a lot of feelings.
And in doing so I might get fired as his most unlikely friend.

But he will not fire me.
Because I am his unlikely friend.
And though he will never say the words, I know he loves me very much.

Not in a rom-com, When Harry Met Sally, apple-pie kind of way —
but in a meet-for-crabcakes-in-Baltimore-and-look-up-to-realize-they’re-stacking-chairs-around-us kind of way.

In recovery, after the nurses handed me a tissue and the Goldfish and the Ginger Ale, I asked them for my phone.

And somehow, in my doped-up state, I opened the text thread with My Unlikely Friend and wrote:

I had them play Into the Mystic when they put me under.

Not, I’m out.
Not, I’m safe.
Not, Went well!

Just that.

Because in that he would know everything.

He would know I was safe.
He would know everything would be ok.

And he would know he’s one step closer to his car.

—

As I said, the whole story of the Beforetimes — of My Unlikely Friend — will come later.

But for now know that before they put the mask over my face, I needed to hear the opening line of that song:

We were born before the wind.

I needed to feel My Unlikely Friend there with me.

And I needed to believe — just like he always does — that everything was going to be ok.

And it was.