Chapter 1
The diagnosis was a shock. The grief settled across my skin like ash. I was told there was nothing more they could do for me. I mourned a body that used to have vitality, and now that body had betrayed me. I had thought maybe it was just temporary, but learning it was a permanent situation... that was something else. What could I do?
They were wrong, they had to be. Maybe they've read my charts wrong. It had to be that. I mean hey, they call it medical practice, not medical perfect. Even I knew that. Perhaps it was a clerical error. I'm fine. I'm just getting older that's all this is. It had to be that.
The brief sting of self-pity instantly shifted into a sharp, defensive internal aggression directed in my own mind. “What the hell is wrong with you? I refuse to feel sorry for myself because that isn't who I am. This whole thing is ridiculous. I am not going to just stand by helplessly.” I know I'm stronger than those other doctors think. Maybe, MAYBE my body isn't responding the way I want, but I'm not broken damn it.
I sat on the sofa after my relentless pacing. My mind drifted into a desperate, silent auction with whatever force had rewritten the rules of my flesh. I started offering up pieces of my life like currency, trying to negotiate a loophole out of the agony. “Take my home entirely,” I thought, “lock me out forever if you have to, but just give me back three unbroken hours of a clear head so I can do my job again.” I even promised to surrender the rest of the week to complete, motionless compliance if I could just buy one painless afternoon. But the transaction was entirely one-sided. No one was sitting across the table to accept the trade, and the quiet house just stared back, completely indifferent to the deals I was trying to strike.
I took inventory of my lost hobbies, diminished abilities, and my shrinking physical territory. My universe had been parsed down to a handful of things I could still do versus the mountain of things I couldn't. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Am I truly this pathetic?
No, no I'm not pathetic. I'll prove it. The question was how. How can I prove that I wasn't pathetic, that I was still as strong and capable? An idea formed. I can do this. I grabbed some things and threw them into my backpack.
The drive was short. I grabbed my bag from the car and headed inside. I took the elevator up to my office after flashing my badge to the security officer. Inside, the familiar weight of my coat settled over my shoulders like sterile armor. I slipped a scalpel, a local anesthetic vial, a couple of syringes, and a sterile specimen container from a locked cabinet into my pockets. My movements were fluid. For a brief moment, the tremor in my fingers vanished, replaced by the absolute clarity of the plan. Once my hands are steady again, the board will have to let me back in the OR.
They will accept me again. They’ll have no choice.
I took the service stairs down to the surgical ICU, avoiding the main hallways. At 3:42 AM, the nurse's station was quiet, the skeleton crew fighting off sleep under the soft blue glow of computer monitors. They didn't see me slip past the privacy curtain of Bed 4.
There lay my ticket back to normalcy. The patient was a Jane Doe, completely brain-dead from an accident, kept alive only by the rhythmic, mechanical sigh of a ventilator. She had so much healthy tissue. They won't even miss a few centimeters of nerve. I can transplant it into myself. She doesn't need her hands, but I do. If the universe required a sacrifice to restore my status, I would be the one to engineer the trade.
I drew the heavy curtain completely shut, sealing us in a pocket universe of shadow and need. I didn't hesitate. I wiped her inner wrist with an iodine swab, the dark orange stain looking like rust against her pale skin. I didn't bother with an anesthetic for her since she couldn't feel anything, but I kept my own syringes ready. My breath hitched as I pressed the tip of the cold steel blade against her flesh, making the first, clean incision to harvest the pristine median nerve buried beneath. Soon, my hands would be perfect. Soon, everything would go back to exactly how it was supposed to be.
