It was a precise surgery, so I wasn't too surprised when I fucked it up. Granted, it's not like Operation, where you screw up and the sides buzz and you feel like a bit of a fool. No, you touch the sides here, you nick a critical vein, and blood flows like you've just struck oil. That being exactly what had just occurred.
I did my best to patch it up, as sweat collected on my brow. I really did try, but it wasn't any good. After a couple minutes of hectic running about, shouts of "Pass me the god-damn gauze", and glances out of the corner of my eyes at the monitoring equipment behind me, he flat-lined. I sighed, and ten minutes later -
"We did the best we could," I recited, shaking my head. I was too deadened to this to actually feel the loss just yet. That wouldn't be until later, when I was driving home, or when I was laying in bed that night trying to sleep. "I'm truly sorry for your loss."
And then, I walked away, because it didn't matter how deadened I was; you don't watch a widow lose her son, her last ties to her husband, without feeling the cold embrace of sorrow. You just don't.
No, instead you find a quiet place - in my case, since my shift was officially over for a few days, this was the parking garage down the street - and you sit. Which I did. I leaned against one of the big cement pillars and stared at my shoes, wondering if I could have saved him. The short answer was yes, I could have. All doctors screw up now and then, and it certainly wasn't my first kill. I still couldn't help but feel ... I don't know.
I was stronger than most of my colleagues. About 80% of them were involved in something bad. Drugs, alcohol, scandalous affairs that they made sure to let slip around the office for gossip purposes, and other things. I didn't have that crutch. Or maybe I did. Do model trains count? Definitely less scandalous. Regardless, I wasn't one of those doctors they were going to find dead in the morning, next to an empty bottle of pills and a note saying, "Gee, I just couldn't take it anymore." I'd walk in in a couple days and go back to saving people, because I was good at it, and because ...
Well, when it's the right thing to do, the only good rationalization is 'because'.
But today was still a bad day, and I allowed myself a bit of moping about before I headed for my car, walking in line with another man who had just appeared from around the corner. "Everything happens for a reason, friend," he said, winking at me with a beady, black eye, before vanishing into thin air.
I blinked. I needed to get some sleep.
"How d'ya figure?" I asked no one in particular, before shaking my head and opening the car door. I reached my apartment building after twenty or so minutes of being held up at red lights, and the three flights of stairs up to my room nearly killed me. I threw my briefcase into the middle of the living room and shook off my jacket, letting it fall to the floor. I headed straight for the bathroom to draw myself a bath, and yawned as I stood up from the slowly-filling tub.
My world went white. I blinked owlishly, feeling very calm, though a small voice in the back of my head told me I shouldn't be, that this was some seriously weird shit, and that I should call the cops. But everything here had a very surreal, dreamy quality, and before I could seriously contemplate reaching into my pocket for a cell phone that I knew was actually in the jacket sitting outside the bathroom door, a man appeared.
It was the same man from the parking garage. His face was a ruddy red color, and he wore slim black trousers and a puffy white shirt with the sleeves rolled up; he looked like a man from the Renaissance fair who had decided to slip out and take a coffee break. Everything happens for a reason, he had said, and I noticed his thick mustache twitch beneath his beaklike nose.
"Well, it does."
He had a thick accent that I couldn't quite place, but I managed to understand what he was saying well enough. There were billions of questions dancing for attention in my head, all having to do with my present whereabouts and what this strange man was going to do to me. I hoped he would leave behind enough evidence for the police to eventually find my body.
"Oh, please stop whimpering. I do not want to murder you," he said, waving a hand. The mustache twitched. "Yet."
And then he burst into laughter, and I laughed nervously with him, because I had just noticed a long saber hanging off his belt. "No, no, I am joking! You are good man, Dr. Allen. Very hard to find good man these days - did you know that? Very, very difficult."
I nodded. "Yes," I said.
"I worried maybe there was no such thing as good men anymore. But I was wrong, eh? Here you are! But alas, I can stay only a moment. There is business elsewhere to be had. Listen carefully. You must find the others. All of the others, do you understand? One boy, he is getting first glimpse of things to come as we speak! They are already laying out their hands, it seems ... Ah, it does not matter, though, it does not matter." He waved his hands dismissively, and I nodded again, because it seemed like a good tactic so far. "You must find the others and bring them to the coast. Can you do that, my friend?"
"Yes," I said again. "I can do that." I don't know why I agreed. There's something about a man with a mustache, a very sharp weapon, and an 'I'm fucking crazy!' air about him that makes one pretty much agreeable to anything he may have to say.
He let out a a bark of a laugh and clapped his hands together gleefully. "Good man!" he shouted happily, "I knew you would come through! But now I must say good-bye. Do not worry, my friend. We shall cross paths again!"
He bowed, and vanished. I was in my bathroom again, and the water had filled the tub and was just starting to slip over the edge, onto the floor tiles. I shut off the water and let it drain, and then went straight to bed.
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