2009 12 26
The Better Half
- a dream -
Robert needed the job. Med school didn't work out for him, so he fell back to nursing. Having just graduated, and with bills to pay, he scoured the papers. Today was his first day. He was hired on site by Doctor Foxel, a noted surgeon in the community. The doctor indicated he was developing a radical new surgery, the results of which were in high demand by certain sufferers.
Robert arrived five minutes early, eager to prove himself. Doctor Foxel was in his office. He glanced at his watch. "First surgery of the day in twenty minutes!" He followed the doctor to the surgical dressing room. They scrubbed down and suited up - cap, gloves, mask. All routine Robert thought. He began to feel more comfortable. Robert backed through the door into the operating room and held it open for the doctor.
The patient was on the table, the anesthesiologist just finishing getting the patient under. Robert was a bit shocked - the patient was a young boy, perhaps only three. A surgical assistant removed the mid-section of the table. Doctor Foxel adjusted the patients gown to expose the skin of his lower abdomen and back. "Prepare the area for incision", looking at Robert. Robert swabbed the patient's abdomen liberally with iodine solution. "All the way 'round, Robert." Robert was confused, but did as he was told.
Doctor Foxel requested the cauterizing scalpel and went to work, making an incision 360 degrees around the young boy's abdomen, below the navel. He separated what was now two separate halves of skin slightly, exposing the sclera underneath. Doctor Foxel requested the saw, which the assistant handed to him. It was like no surgical saw Robert had ever seen before., and with a swift ferocious motion, the doctor had neatly split the boy in two.
The assistant relieved the doctor of the saw. He placed it on the half table next to the boy's legs, and wheeled out of the operating room. Doctor Foxel began sewing up the patient, back skin to belly skin, sealing up the top half. He noticed Robert had turned white as fresh surgical gauze. "Are you OK Robert?" Robert could not speak. "Perhaps I should have prepared you more, but the last time I did that, well, that's why you're here now." Robert was still in shock, dumbfounded by what he had just seen. "We do this at the patient's request. Or rather the parents, in most cases. This little boy's suffering will soon be over." Robert could feel some blood returning to his face. Although he believed the patient's suffering was only just beginning, the doctor's reassuring demeanor was somehow comforting.
"The patient will be awake in an hour. I need you to be there. Get some rest until then. You look like you need it." The experience had left Robert drained. He found a room, set his alarm, and fell asleep. Forty five minutes later, the shrill squawking of his alarm hit him like a bullet. He believed it all a dream, a nightmare, at first. Soon the fog of sleep lifted and then reality fell hard upon him. He needed the money, so he found his way to recovery room and located his patient.
The boy awoke, and was asking for water. Robert fetched a cup of water and a straw. He adjust the boy and his bedding so that he could be upright to drink. The doctor entered as Robert brought the cup to the boy. "Stop!" Robert looked at the doctor, his head tilted like a curious dog. "The patient is upside down." His head tilted a little more. The doctor re-arranged the patient into a head down reclined position, and then offered the water. The boy drank. "You see Robert, this patient will live the rest of his life this way. Upside down from our point of view, but for him, life will finally seem right." The boy smiled. "He will walk on his hands, moving through the world in a way that feels as natural to him as walking on legs and feet does to us."
Robert went straight to bed when he got home. The day had left him confused and frightened. Tomorrow he would begin the day looking for a new job.
///
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bill,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that I liked about this piece was the shock of the operation itself. It left me wondering and full of apprehension about what this doctor could possibly be doing to this kid. It was a good moment where the story went well off the rails of the conventional.
There are a number of things that I would suggest could be reworked, however. Some of these are integral, some are more incidental/mechanical. I’ll start with the former.
The believability quotient suffers at several points. The impact of the central shocker would be heightened if everything else were more true to life. If lots of things are unbelievable, the reader becomes dissociated from the story.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll tick this off as a bullet list, in the order they appear in the piece, not necessarily in the order of centrality or significance:
* I don’t think nursing is a fallback career path for med school washouts.
* Newly developed, radical surgeries are not the sort of thing a doctor would throw at a new nurse twenty minutes into his first day on the job, without explanation, rehearsal or observational experience - especially not if he has a high turnover of nurses due to the shock.
* It’s also not clear that such a novel procedure would be in high demand, as it would be unknown.
* Amputation of both legs at the hips could perhaps, maybe, possibly be a survivable procedure, in the short term (even though the loss of the major bone marrow reserves would badly screw up red blood cell production). That would be both horrible and potentially believable. However, bisection through the abdomen would be fatal.
* Is this treatment something the doctor is imposing on a delusional patient/victim? There needs to be more explanation of what, exactly, this procedure is supposed to be accomplishing. If it’s just a horror, then the futility of it needs to be explained. The motivations here need to be more fully fleshed out, especially for such a bizarre and unfamiliar situation where they will not be understood through subtext.
*If he needs the job and the money so badly, would he really quit after just one day?
Minor points:
* “He was hired on site” edit: “on sight”
*"The patient will be awake in an hour.” It would take more than an hour for someone to recover from such a surgery.
*It’s difficult to swallow while upside-down, even a glass of water.
In general, Bill, I think there are the bones of a good shocker here, but the externals detract from it.
Thanks Tony. All good points. It's my first foray into prose since I had to do it in school. Mostly I write poetry. I've been reading your flash fiction lately, which I enjoy greatly. Then, I had this bizarre dream. For several days it would appear in my thoughts. So, with your work as inspiration, I wrote down my dream as short story. I knew it had a lot of holes, but I had trouble being objective about what they were exactly. Your sage advice will be considered carefully, and I will try to fill in the holes to make it a better told story. Thanks!!!
ReplyDelete