50.03 Art and Bile

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50.03 Art and Bile

Post by shoeless.db » Thu Mar 17, 2022 5:45 pm

I hated going down there, under centerfield, to the lab. The smell of sterility, the fluorescent lights. And the blood. I’d never gotten used to the blood. Dripping off the table. Splattering into a puddle on the floor, onto blue shoe covers, onto everything. But it was necessary, my visit. As was the blood.

"Organs tainted," the green-eyed woman said as I entered the surgical room. "Ruined. A shame. An amateur's work."

I lowered my gaze, unable to look at the body laid prone on the surgical table, pale and naked, forceps shining from his chest. His gut. A peripheral glance was enough, too much. Guilt billowed inside me, prodded me, churning acid. I wanted to hurl, needed to hurl. But I had done this. Me. I sent him here. To her.

"What can be done?" I asked, another droplet of blood splashing to the floor. A masked technician dropped a towel onto the puddle, swirled it around with her foot, morphing the floor into a canvas. A deep red spiral, alive, beautiful if not for its medium, the work of a madman, or woman, like the man, or thing, on the table.

“There are things,” the green-eyed woman said, her outstretched hand awaiting a scalpel from a second technician. “There are always things.”

There were always things. A tweak of a nerve. The extension of a muscle or a tendon or a bone. Or, in extreme cases, things much more. Beyond anesthesia and surgeries. Beyond sterile smells and fluorescent lights. And beyond blood, as we think we know it anyway, the way I thought I knew it, before.

Before her.

“And I am to choose.” I said, the words tumbling, or running, out, ahead of the bile, which flew out from me, adding to the blood, and the art.

The technicians laughed. As did the green-eyed woman. The man on the table did not, could not.

“There is but one choice,” she said, pausing, her mask rising from a smirk, “for this Hugh Mangrouthormone.” The technicians laughed again. “A name, and man, so like Frankenstein, don’t you agree?”

Turning to one of the technicians, she added, “Prepare the chapel.”
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