The Surgeon

In the background a heart monitor beeps in an off-key harmony. The lights are so bright that when you walk inside the operating theater, you squint immediately, blurring the edges of everything. Even once your eyes have adjusted, the outline of the surgeon remains blurred somehow – the light always seeming to come from behind him. On the outside he wears green scrubs, a rubber apron, a mask and a clear plastic visor. His hands are white latex gloves. The patient lies beneath him, unconscious but alive. Only a shoe-box sized part of the patient is exposed to him, the rest is covered by pine green cloth. The face must be distracting to him. The surgeon closes his eyes and takes a deep breath near rumbling the gurney before him. It is time to begin. He needs only to articulate an instrument and it is placed in his hand. It is placed in his hand with an upward glance at his face, for the approval which never comes. With abstruse precision he cuts, sows and enchants flesh into the healed form. When he has sown up the last piece of this unnamed rectangle of skin he gazes upon it. The meticulousness of his work impresses even him. No-one can do what he does.