together with scabs. His face was rockwellian: the bristle-brush red hair and star-spray of freckles over his cheeks. He looked like a more compact and muscular opie.
What set max apart from the other boys was his reservoir of remoteness and cool self-control. Tim didn’t believe his father had inculcated this into him: reggie longpre was a good man but flighty as a hummingbird, prone to gossip and drink. Tim had seen the same cool quality in some of his classmates at med school who’d gone on to become the top “blades” at Johns Hopkins and Beth Israel. It wasn’t exactly cockiness: more an absence of panic or hesitation. They trusted their instincts and they trusted their hands to carry those instincts into action.
Tim would try to not ask too much of the boy during the coming operation—but even asking him to be here at all was a terrible request. HAl 9000’s maddeningly reasonable voice echoed this.
Tim, I think you’re losing it. He could see HAl in his mind’s eye: a reflective glass eye, very dark, a dot of redness expanding and contracting like a dilated pupil. And now you’re taking a child down the rabbit hole with you.
Don’t listen to that bullshit, the other, more comforting voice boomed . This is your duty as a doctor—what other choice, just watch this man die? And you can’t do this alone, can you?
He couldn’t. It was that simple. Tim switched on the soldering iron to let it heat. “I’ve doped him up.”
It wasn’t true anesthetic—two crushed Vicodin discovered in a forgotten pocket of his backpack; he’d been prescribed it years ago while recuperating from a calf infarction. It could very well be expired, but what the hell, better than nothing.
“He shouldn’t wake up.” Tim gripped the blankets gathered at the man’s throat. “ready?”
max nodded. Tim pulled the blanket away.
max cOuldN’T keep the look of horror off his face. It was instinctive, what most would feel when faced with a member of humankind who no longer looked like he belonged to the species.
The stranger didn’t wholly resemble a man anymore. more like something a dull-witted child might have drawn with a crayon. His body was lines. His arms were scribbles. His fingers were calligraphic spiders. The skin draped his rib cage with terrible intimacy, pinching around each rib to show the striation of muscle. His sternum was a knot, his pelvis a gruesome hinged wishbone. The skin of his face had the patina of old copper and was sucked so tight to his skull that max could see the glaring rings of bone around his eye sockets. His ears protruded like jug handles, so thin that they curled inward, like charring paper.
“unbelievable. my God. even his cartilage is disintegrating,” Tim said in horrified awe.
He looks like the oldest man who’s ever lived, max thought.
His stomach was the only robust thing about him. A tightly swollen bulge. It looked like he’d swallowed a volleyball.
“I’m going to do something called a gastrostomy,” Tim said. “I’ll make a small incision over the outer third of the left rectus muscle. So basically here.” He drew his finger below the edge of the man’s lowest rib. “It should be a short trip into his stomach. Very little visceral or abdominal fat to get through.”
“Is there any fat?”
Tim said: “ His body must have started eating its muscle a while ago. I have to worry about the liver . . . but I can pretty much see it right now.” He pointed to a soft ridge along the man’s side. “It has probably shut down its function. It’s in a state of premortification and it’s hardening fast.”
“Can you save him?”
To max, it seemed impossible. This man already belonged less to max’s world, the living one, than to his father’s: the world of the motionless dead in the mortuary vaults.
“I can’t say. It’s some kind of voodoo that he’s still alive. But we have to do something, max.” Tim stared searchingly at the boy, his eyelid going plikka-plikka.
What set max apart from the other boys was his reservoir of remoteness and cool self-control. Tim didn’t believe his father had inculcated this into him: reggie longpre was a good man but flighty as a hummingbird, prone to gossip and drink. Tim had seen the same cool quality in some of his classmates at med school who’d gone on to become the top “blades” at Johns Hopkins and Beth Israel. It wasn’t exactly cockiness: more an absence of panic or hesitation. They trusted their instincts and they trusted their hands to carry those instincts into action.
Tim would try to not ask too much of the boy during the coming operation—but even asking him to be here at all was a terrible request. HAl 9000’s maddeningly reasonable voice echoed this.
Tim, I think you’re losing it. He could see HAl in his mind’s eye: a reflective glass eye, very dark, a dot of redness expanding and contracting like a dilated pupil. And now you’re taking a child down the rabbit hole with you.
Don’t listen to that bullshit, the other, more comforting voice boomed . This is your duty as a doctor—what other choice, just watch this man die? And you can’t do this alone, can you?
He couldn’t. It was that simple. Tim switched on the soldering iron to let it heat. “I’ve doped him up.”
It wasn’t true anesthetic—two crushed Vicodin discovered in a forgotten pocket of his backpack; he’d been prescribed it years ago while recuperating from a calf infarction. It could very well be expired, but what the hell, better than nothing.
“He shouldn’t wake up.” Tim gripped the blankets gathered at the man’s throat. “ready?”
max nodded. Tim pulled the blanket away.
max cOuldN’T keep the look of horror off his face. It was instinctive, what most would feel when faced with a member of humankind who no longer looked like he belonged to the species.
The stranger didn’t wholly resemble a man anymore. more like something a dull-witted child might have drawn with a crayon. His body was lines. His arms were scribbles. His fingers were calligraphic spiders. The skin draped his rib cage with terrible intimacy, pinching around each rib to show the striation of muscle. His sternum was a knot, his pelvis a gruesome hinged wishbone. The skin of his face had the patina of old copper and was sucked so tight to his skull that max could see the glaring rings of bone around his eye sockets. His ears protruded like jug handles, so thin that they curled inward, like charring paper.
“unbelievable. my God. even his cartilage is disintegrating,” Tim said in horrified awe.
He looks like the oldest man who’s ever lived, max thought.
His stomach was the only robust thing about him. A tightly swollen bulge. It looked like he’d swallowed a volleyball.
“I’m going to do something called a gastrostomy,” Tim said. “I’ll make a small incision over the outer third of the left rectus muscle. So basically here.” He drew his finger below the edge of the man’s lowest rib. “It should be a short trip into his stomach. Very little visceral or abdominal fat to get through.”
“Is there any fat?”
Tim said: “ His body must have started eating its muscle a while ago. I have to worry about the liver . . . but I can pretty much see it right now.” He pointed to a soft ridge along the man’s side. “It has probably shut down its function. It’s in a state of premortification and it’s hardening fast.”
“Can you save him?”
To max, it seemed impossible. This man already belonged less to max’s world, the living one, than to his father’s: the world of the motionless dead in the mortuary vaults.
“I can’t say. It’s some kind of voodoo that he’s still alive. But we have to do something, max.” Tim stared searchingly at the boy, his eyelid going plikka-plikka.
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