Unwind: Chapter 61 Summary & Analysis

Fifteen minutes into his unwinding procedure, Roland finds himself strapped to an operating table. A nurse at his head tells him that the only pain he’ll feel is two pricks in his neck to numb his body and replace his blood with oxygen-rich gel, but he’ll be awake the entire time. As Roland feels himself go numb, he tells the nurse he hates her. A few minutes later, the first set of surgeons arrive and begin to work on his feet. Roland wants to look, but the nurse keeps his attention on her. They talk about Roland’s mother and stepfather.

An hour and 15 minutes in, Roland glances toward his toes but he can’t see them—instead, there’s an assistant cleaning the lower half of the table. He confesses that he almost killed Connor as a surgeon compliments Roland on his abs. Soon after, they pull away the lower half of the table. Roland tries not to look as surgeons lift things out of his abdomen. Since his blood is already gone, his organs are fluorescent green from the solution pumping through his body. He tells the nurse he’s afraid and that he wants her to go to hell. Half an hour later, the nurse says they need to stop talking. Roland tries to focus on his anger or on Connor, but the fear drowns it all out.

Two hours in, the nurse asks Roland to blink if he can hear her—he can—and praises his bravery. Roland can’t mentally escape, as there are hands and figures all around his head. He thinks that he doesn’t deserve this and that he never got his priest. Twenty minutes later, they tell him his jaw will tingle. The nurse stares into Roland’s eyes and smiles. Not long after, everything is dark for Roland, but he can still hear. He hears the nurse leave and a surgeon tells him he’ll feel his scalp tingle. After that, the surgeons don’t talk to Roland. They discuss basketball as they cut into Roland’s brain.

Roland experiences bits of memories and remembers breaking his arm when he was 10. They offered him either a new arm or a cast, but the cast was cheaper. He drew a shark on the cast, and had it tattooed on his arm when the cast came off. As they remove each piece of his brain, he remembers that his dad went to jail for something and that he had a beautiful babysitter who shook his little sister. His sister was never right after that. He remembers crying in his crib and forgets his name, but he thinks that he’s “still here” until the surgeons finish (20 minutes late) and call for the next Unwind to be prepped.