This excerpt comes from a book called “Mortal Lessons: Notes in the art of surgery” by a surgeon called Richard Seltzer, and is quoted in a book called the “Sixty Minute Marriage” by Rob Parsons.

I stand by the bed, where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish.  A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed.  She will be thus from now.  The surgeon has followed with religious fervour the curve of her flesh, I promise you that.  Nevertheless to remove the tumour in her cheek I have cut a little nerve.  Her young husband is in the room.  He stand on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.  “Who are they?” I ask myself.  “He and this wry mouth that I have made.  Who gaze at and touch each other so greedily”  The young woman speaks “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.  “Yes, it will” I say.  “It is because the nerve was cut.”  She nods and is silent, but the young man smiles.  “I like it“ he says “It’ s kind of cute” And all at once I know who he is and I lower my gaze.  One is not bold in an encounter with a god.  And unmindful I see he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close, I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate her, to show the kiss still works.  And I remember that the gods appeared in ancient times as mortals and I hold my breath, and let the wonder in.

Parsons comments

Would that young husband have preferred his wife to hate loo,s she had when he married her? Oof course.  Is it the case that sometimes even now he dreams of her with a perfect f ace? Yes.  But there will come in every marriage time when we are called to lovenot “Because of “but “in spite of”, a time when we have to twist our mouth “to show the kiss still works”.  It has at its heart not just the feeling of love but the will to love.  Unless we hold on to that, it is impossible for love to last.

From Page 102