A method and apparatus for setting aside a long-latency micro-operation from a reorder buffer is disclosed. In one embodiment, a long-latency micro-operation would conventionally stall a reorder buffer. Therefore a secondary buffer may be used to temporarily store that long-latency micro-operation, and other micro-operations depending from it, until that long-latency micro-operation is ready to execute. These micro-operations may then be reintroduced into the reorder buffer for execution. The use of poisoned bits may be used to ensure correct retirement of register values merged from both pre- and post-execution of the micro-operations which were set aside in the secondary buffer.