The Surgeon
By
Alyse Winters
The surgeon came down on the last train of the day from Louisville. It was an unseasonably cool June evening when she arrived. The valley roiled with mist and the trees appeared hunched and plump from recent heavy rainfall. The surgeon rode in second class comfort but her seatmate had been a frightened old woman who talked more and more as the daylight faded. Consequently, the surgeon was not at her best.
She wore a mustard yellow traveling suit, now wrinkled from her time on the train, and the felt hat on her head was slightly dented. She was a tall, horse-faced white woman with a slight lisp and a wide forehead.
When she made up her face she could be handsome, especially if she drew attention to her plump lips and glossy dark hair, but otherwise most men and women looked at her pityingly, for her height, plainness, and broad stride- she walked like a man, leaning forward slightly, shoulders back.
The station was painted in peeling green; the surgeon stood in the gravel outside, holding her suitcase and her medical bag. She imagined she could hear the instruments of her trade sliding together with that pleasurable metallic clink inside, and it soothed her frazzled nerves. She had performed several surgeries before, but this would be her first without the supervision of a senior physician. And the patient was a child, which further raised her anxiety.
She watched as the few other late arrivals to the small town were whisked away in cabs, and in one case, a horse-drawn cart, which brought a slight smile to her lips. The surgeon was a city slicker, but when she was a little girl, milk and sometimes groceries had been delivered by carts, not trucks. But now the only horses in Louisville were policemen’s. The surgeon shifted in her damp black pumps, one big foot to the other. She peered into the dusk.
A few minutes later, yellow headlights approached. The surgeon raised a gloved hand to shield her eyes, and heard a car door swing open.
“Missus?” someone asked doubtfully.
The surgeon lowered her hand and looked at the man sent to collect her. He was very young, a college boy, maybe a decade her junior, with curly red hair. His voice was slow and liquid, like many young Southern men’s, but his eyes were bright and sharp in the darkness; he was not stupid.
The surgeon did not insist he address her as Doctor; she had never received a medical degree. She stuck out a hand. He shook it, then escorted her into the car, a mint green Chevy. She settled into the backseat, crossing her legs uncomfortably, given the lack of room.
“Bubble gum?” he asked, as he fiddled with the radio.
“Please.”
He handed her a piece. She wanted to make sure her breath smelled minty when she arrived. She’d had a drink on the train to settle her nerves, and though she was not drunk or even tipsy, worried they’d think her a floozy.
The college boy finally found a station he enjoyed. The song of the hour was a big band crooner called “Wheel of Fortune”. As the car pulled out of the muddy lot, the surgeon rested her chin on her fist, and let her breath mist out against the icy cold glass pane.
“The wheel of fortune goes spinning around… Will the arrow point my way, will this be my day?”
The surgeon thought about her own fortune. Like most in her position, she’d been born into her career. Her father was a surgeon; her mother was a seamstress. To think that at this very moment, she might instead be carefully hemming some debutante’s skirt amused her greatly.
“Where do you go to school?” she asked the college boy, as they turned down the humble main street. This was a poor miner’s town; she knew they’d be headed to a big house on a hill somewhere. This was not a place where wealth was common, unlike Louisville, where new money sprouted up like weeds between the sidewalk.
“Murray State,” he said. “I’m a freshman.”
“You look older,” said the surgeon, which was the sort of thing you ought to tell young men.
He smiled wanly in the rearview mirror at her.
“How about you?” he asked.
“I was taught at home,” she said, and he winced, as if her honesty forced him to confront the truth of what she’d come here to do.
“Are you married?”
He looked relieved when she shook her head; perhaps it confirmed her oddity to him. An unmarried woman near thirty, possessing not even a college education to justify her strange career choice.
“How many?” he asked.
The faint lights of Main Street had since faded. The car wound its way up a hillside. The wet dense trees bent around the road, as if shielding it from the stars appearing in the bruised sky overhead.
“How many what?”
“Patients. How many?” he clarified. The Chevy bumped over a pothole.
“Four,” she said. She was lying. This would be her fourth.
Now how his voice cracked like a boy. “How many lived?”
“While the wheel is spinning, spinning, spinning, I'll not dream of winning fortune or fame…”
“Two,” she said.
He said nothing for a long while, his sharp little Adam’s apple bobbing in his white throat. Then, finally, he said, “I don’t know if I like those odds, Miss.”
Me neither, she thought. But what could she say? She said nothing. The fear gripping her heart at the station had faded; she was committed to the course of the night’s events.
The Chevy reached the top of the hill, and she saw the white colonial house, back up against the side of the mountain. Its white paint glowed in the dark green of the evening, and the wrought iron gates hung open, awaiting their arrival. The surgeon had never treated a case at so fine a home before. Her last surgery had taken place in a dingy cellar underneath a saloon.
The college boy stopped the car on the circular drive. There was a fountain in the center of the drive, but it had run dry and was splotchy with rust stains and mildew. The surgeon stepped out of the car, clutching her suitcase.
“I’m Ray,” said the boy, realizing he had never introduced himself.
“I know,” she said, not unkindly. Together they went up the steps, under the flickering light, and then the door swung open and they were inside the house.
The house smelled like a musty room that had been shut up while a storm raged outside. All of the windows were sealed, all of the curtains drawn. Ordinarily a house of this size would have staff, but no maid or butler came to greet the surgeon. She heard muffled footfall upstairs; pacing.
She looked around the starch white foyer, and then nodded at Ray. “Where is the patient?”
“Upstairs,” he said, and she followed him up the creaking, freshly polished steps.
At the top he paused, his hand flexing on the banister, and said, voice cracking, “He’s my little brother. You have to help him.”
“I’ll do my best,” said the surgeon.
There was a thumping noise, rhythmic, from one of the rooms.
Something shuffled in the darkened hall; only a single lamp glowed at the far end, under a narrow silvery mirror. The surgeon tensed, but a woman, bent with grief, stepped out of the shadows. Her lipstick was smeared, her blonde hair in disarray. Her blouse was speckled with blood and vomit.
“You’re here,” she gasped, and embraced the surgeon like a daughter.
The surgeon tolerated the hug, then cleared her throat. “Are you the mother?”
“Yes,” the woman rasped.
“Where is your husband?”
“Gone for a priest,” the woman said hollowly.
“You’re Catholic?” The surgeon was surprised. The woman shook her head and sobbed aloud.
“Take me to the child,” said the surgeon. A priest would be of no assistance here. The woman gripped her arm, leaning on her, and led her, trembling, down the hall.
“Is he restrained?” the surgeon asked, her hand on the brass doorknob.
Ray cursed under his breath. “Of course. But he’s not an animal, we can’t pen him up in a cage-”
“I understand,” said the surgeon. She had never treated a child before. The last patient she had attended to had been shackled to a radiator, because the family was poor and did not know what else to do with him. She turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom.
The boy was restrained to the bed by the wrists and legs. The family had not used medical straps, however, and despite attempting to cushion the makeshift bindings with silk scarves and pillowcases, the surgeon could see the ropes biting into the child’s wrists and ankles.
He didn’t struggle as she entered the room, shutting the door behind her. At least the mother and Ray had enough sense not to rush in after her. That was frequently an issue with her previous patients. These people were too well-bred and cautious. Fearful of authority, they’d pace in the hall instead, at least for a little while.
The surgeon sat down beside the bed. The whites of the boy’s eyes bore identical red blemishes, like scabs. He wasn’t redhaired, like his older brother, but blonde, so pale a blonde that it appeared wispy, like an old man’s hair, slicked to his head with sweat. She put him at about twelve years old, though he was small for his age.
The surgeon searched for any other signs of infection. His mouth was cherry red with a rash one usually only saw in babies who’d been drooling and teething. His fingernails were streaked with white lines, as if the nails themselves were wilting. And his ears… something was peeking out of his left ear. A fungus. Coiled deep within the ear canal.
“Open your mouth,” she said to the boy.
He stared at her with silent hatred. The surgeon waved a hand in front of his mouth. Reflexively, his jaw snapped open. She could see the roots, like black veins, clinging to his tonsils and tongue.
“I expect you got this from a bad swimming hole,” she mused aloud, not expecting a response. The boy could likely still understand her, but his speech would be garbled by the infection and nothing he said would be helpful.
She pulled down the covers; the boy wore loose, bloodstained pajamas. Tensing, she pulled up his pajama shirt, ignoring the yowling growl he uttered, and was relieved. She could see the infection site, just above his hip. She wouldn’t have to untie him to find it.
The surgeon stepped away and opened her suitcase. She found a clean syringe and a vial of sedatives, and walked over to the light of the lamp- the shade was decorated with tiny airplanes- to prepare it.
Behind her, she heard the boy’s jaw snapping open and shut, his ragged breaths. She turned back around, syringe in hand, and found that he’d arched his spine so he was propped up by the balls of his feet and the points of his elbows, as if he were trying to levitate off the bed.
“Don’t be silly,” said the surgeon. She seized him by the scruff of the neck with a big hand, and slid the needle into his skin.
He bucked furiously, screamed, and then sagged back onto the bed, eyelids fluttering.
There was a frantic knock at the door.
“We’re fine,” the surgeon said sharply. “I’ve just sedated him.”
She returned to her suitcase, peeled off her traveling gloves, and replaced them with sterile ones. She put on her smock, tied it around the waist, and slid a white mask over her mouth and nose. Belatedly, she removed her felt hat as well, thinking how ridiculous she must look, though there was no one to see her but the unconscious patient.
Scalpel and tray in hand, she approached the boy. She lifted his shirt again, and slit open the infection site. A smell like a pool of stagnant water radiated from it. Her eyes watered. She cut deeper, searching for the bud. Once she removed it, the roots in the boy’s body would wither and die off, and in the best case scenario, he would slowly recover.
She probed the wound, searching, and then she saw it. It looked like a small white pebble; so innocuous.
The surgeon seized it with a pair of tweezers, and pulled it out. The boy’s whole body seized. He sat up, or tried to. The surgeon’s eyes widened. She was certain she’d given him the correct dosage. The pain he would be in if he awakened now-
The boy’s eyes opened. They were entirely red. His body jack-knifed; he roared, and one of the thin ropes restraining his arms snapped. His small fist hit her in the jaw, sending her slumping forward onto the bed, scattering her instruments. She swallowed her bubble gum.
The surgeon shrieked, and the bedroom door flew open. The boy was trying to drag her close enough to bite, his teeth snapping, spit flying, his small fist rooted in her hair, yanking out hunks, clawing at her temple.
Ray grabbed his brother’s arm; the surgeon heard it pop out of the socket. The boy keened. The woman ran in and flew at Ray, cursing him.
The surgeon saw the boy’s chest heaving, his throat pulsing. She scrambled across the small bed, wrapped her arms around his upper stomach in the Heimlich maneuver, and squeezed as hard as she could, grinding her fist under his ribs.
The boy let out a choking rattle.
“You’re killing him!” screamed the woman, as Ray dragged her towards the door.
The surgeon palpated the boy again.
He spluttered, and expelled a writhing black mass of roots and fungi onto his bedroom floor.
Then he slumped back against her, unconscious.
Slowly, the surgeon eased out from behind him. Her head was bleeding profusely, and she had lost the tiny bud. She had to find that before she left. They’d need to burn it.
But the white streaks in the boy’s nails were already fading.
“Go into my suitcase,” she told Ray, who had let go of his mother. The woman was leaning on the doorframe, panting. “And get me a new pair of gloves. And a needle and thread. I need to close the wound.”
She remained grateful to her mother, the seamstress, who had taught her to stitch.
Alyse Winters lives and writes in New England, where she spends much of her time walking in cemeteries, hoarding books, and arguing with her boyfriend about dragons. You can find her previously published work in anthologies such as Shattering the Glass Slipper and Sunshine Superhighway: Solar Sailings.
By
Alyse Winters
The surgeon came down on the last train of the day from Louisville. It was an unseasonably cool June evening when she arrived. The valley roiled with mist and the trees appeared hunched and plump from recent heavy rainfall. The surgeon rode in second class comfort but her seatmate had been a frightened old woman who talked more and more as the daylight faded. Consequently, the surgeon was not at her best.
She wore a mustard yellow traveling suit, now wrinkled from her time on the train, and the felt hat on her head was slightly dented. She was a tall, horse-faced white woman with a slight lisp and a wide forehead.
When she made up her face she could be handsome, especially if she drew attention to her plump lips and glossy dark hair, but otherwise most men and women looked at her pityingly, for her height, plainness, and broad stride- she walked like a man, leaning forward slightly, shoulders back.
The station was painted in peeling green; the surgeon stood in the gravel outside, holding her suitcase and her medical bag. She imagined she could hear the instruments of her trade sliding together with that pleasurable metallic clink inside, and it soothed her frazzled nerves. She had performed several surgeries before, but this would be her first without the supervision of a senior physician. And the patient was a child, which further raised her anxiety.
She watched as the few other late arrivals to the small town were whisked away in cabs, and in one case, a horse-drawn cart, which brought a slight smile to her lips. The surgeon was a city slicker, but when she was a little girl, milk and sometimes groceries had been delivered by carts, not trucks. But now the only horses in Louisville were policemen’s. The surgeon shifted in her damp black pumps, one big foot to the other. She peered into the dusk.
A few minutes later, yellow headlights approached. The surgeon raised a gloved hand to shield her eyes, and heard a car door swing open.
“Missus?” someone asked doubtfully.
The surgeon lowered her hand and looked at the man sent to collect her. He was very young, a college boy, maybe a decade her junior, with curly red hair. His voice was slow and liquid, like many young Southern men’s, but his eyes were bright and sharp in the darkness; he was not stupid.
The surgeon did not insist he address her as Doctor; she had never received a medical degree. She stuck out a hand. He shook it, then escorted her into the car, a mint green Chevy. She settled into the backseat, crossing her legs uncomfortably, given the lack of room.
“Bubble gum?” he asked, as he fiddled with the radio.
“Please.”
He handed her a piece. She wanted to make sure her breath smelled minty when she arrived. She’d had a drink on the train to settle her nerves, and though she was not drunk or even tipsy, worried they’d think her a floozy.
The college boy finally found a station he enjoyed. The song of the hour was a big band crooner called “Wheel of Fortune”. As the car pulled out of the muddy lot, the surgeon rested her chin on her fist, and let her breath mist out against the icy cold glass pane.
“The wheel of fortune goes spinning around… Will the arrow point my way, will this be my day?”
The surgeon thought about her own fortune. Like most in her position, she’d been born into her career. Her father was a surgeon; her mother was a seamstress. To think that at this very moment, she might instead be carefully hemming some debutante’s skirt amused her greatly.
“Where do you go to school?” she asked the college boy, as they turned down the humble main street. This was a poor miner’s town; she knew they’d be headed to a big house on a hill somewhere. This was not a place where wealth was common, unlike Louisville, where new money sprouted up like weeds between the sidewalk.
“Murray State,” he said. “I’m a freshman.”
“You look older,” said the surgeon, which was the sort of thing you ought to tell young men.
He smiled wanly in the rearview mirror at her.
“How about you?” he asked.
“I was taught at home,” she said, and he winced, as if her honesty forced him to confront the truth of what she’d come here to do.
“Are you married?”
He looked relieved when she shook her head; perhaps it confirmed her oddity to him. An unmarried woman near thirty, possessing not even a college education to justify her strange career choice.
“How many?” he asked.
The faint lights of Main Street had since faded. The car wound its way up a hillside. The wet dense trees bent around the road, as if shielding it from the stars appearing in the bruised sky overhead.
“How many what?”
“Patients. How many?” he clarified. The Chevy bumped over a pothole.
“Four,” she said. She was lying. This would be her fourth.
Now how his voice cracked like a boy. “How many lived?”
“While the wheel is spinning, spinning, spinning, I'll not dream of winning fortune or fame…”
“Two,” she said.
He said nothing for a long while, his sharp little Adam’s apple bobbing in his white throat. Then, finally, he said, “I don’t know if I like those odds, Miss.”
Me neither, she thought. But what could she say? She said nothing. The fear gripping her heart at the station had faded; she was committed to the course of the night’s events.
The Chevy reached the top of the hill, and she saw the white colonial house, back up against the side of the mountain. Its white paint glowed in the dark green of the evening, and the wrought iron gates hung open, awaiting their arrival. The surgeon had never treated a case at so fine a home before. Her last surgery had taken place in a dingy cellar underneath a saloon.
The college boy stopped the car on the circular drive. There was a fountain in the center of the drive, but it had run dry and was splotchy with rust stains and mildew. The surgeon stepped out of the car, clutching her suitcase.
“I’m Ray,” said the boy, realizing he had never introduced himself.
“I know,” she said, not unkindly. Together they went up the steps, under the flickering light, and then the door swung open and they were inside the house.
The house smelled like a musty room that had been shut up while a storm raged outside. All of the windows were sealed, all of the curtains drawn. Ordinarily a house of this size would have staff, but no maid or butler came to greet the surgeon. She heard muffled footfall upstairs; pacing.
She looked around the starch white foyer, and then nodded at Ray. “Where is the patient?”
“Upstairs,” he said, and she followed him up the creaking, freshly polished steps.
At the top he paused, his hand flexing on the banister, and said, voice cracking, “He’s my little brother. You have to help him.”
“I’ll do my best,” said the surgeon.
There was a thumping noise, rhythmic, from one of the rooms.
Something shuffled in the darkened hall; only a single lamp glowed at the far end, under a narrow silvery mirror. The surgeon tensed, but a woman, bent with grief, stepped out of the shadows. Her lipstick was smeared, her blonde hair in disarray. Her blouse was speckled with blood and vomit.
“You’re here,” she gasped, and embraced the surgeon like a daughter.
The surgeon tolerated the hug, then cleared her throat. “Are you the mother?”
“Yes,” the woman rasped.
“Where is your husband?”
“Gone for a priest,” the woman said hollowly.
“You’re Catholic?” The surgeon was surprised. The woman shook her head and sobbed aloud.
“Take me to the child,” said the surgeon. A priest would be of no assistance here. The woman gripped her arm, leaning on her, and led her, trembling, down the hall.
“Is he restrained?” the surgeon asked, her hand on the brass doorknob.
Ray cursed under his breath. “Of course. But he’s not an animal, we can’t pen him up in a cage-”
“I understand,” said the surgeon. She had never treated a child before. The last patient she had attended to had been shackled to a radiator, because the family was poor and did not know what else to do with him. She turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom.
The boy was restrained to the bed by the wrists and legs. The family had not used medical straps, however, and despite attempting to cushion the makeshift bindings with silk scarves and pillowcases, the surgeon could see the ropes biting into the child’s wrists and ankles.
He didn’t struggle as she entered the room, shutting the door behind her. At least the mother and Ray had enough sense not to rush in after her. That was frequently an issue with her previous patients. These people were too well-bred and cautious. Fearful of authority, they’d pace in the hall instead, at least for a little while.
The surgeon sat down beside the bed. The whites of the boy’s eyes bore identical red blemishes, like scabs. He wasn’t redhaired, like his older brother, but blonde, so pale a blonde that it appeared wispy, like an old man’s hair, slicked to his head with sweat. She put him at about twelve years old, though he was small for his age.
The surgeon searched for any other signs of infection. His mouth was cherry red with a rash one usually only saw in babies who’d been drooling and teething. His fingernails were streaked with white lines, as if the nails themselves were wilting. And his ears… something was peeking out of his left ear. A fungus. Coiled deep within the ear canal.
“Open your mouth,” she said to the boy.
He stared at her with silent hatred. The surgeon waved a hand in front of his mouth. Reflexively, his jaw snapped open. She could see the roots, like black veins, clinging to his tonsils and tongue.
“I expect you got this from a bad swimming hole,” she mused aloud, not expecting a response. The boy could likely still understand her, but his speech would be garbled by the infection and nothing he said would be helpful.
She pulled down the covers; the boy wore loose, bloodstained pajamas. Tensing, she pulled up his pajama shirt, ignoring the yowling growl he uttered, and was relieved. She could see the infection site, just above his hip. She wouldn’t have to untie him to find it.
The surgeon stepped away and opened her suitcase. She found a clean syringe and a vial of sedatives, and walked over to the light of the lamp- the shade was decorated with tiny airplanes- to prepare it.
Behind her, she heard the boy’s jaw snapping open and shut, his ragged breaths. She turned back around, syringe in hand, and found that he’d arched his spine so he was propped up by the balls of his feet and the points of his elbows, as if he were trying to levitate off the bed.
“Don’t be silly,” said the surgeon. She seized him by the scruff of the neck with a big hand, and slid the needle into his skin.
He bucked furiously, screamed, and then sagged back onto the bed, eyelids fluttering.
There was a frantic knock at the door.
“We’re fine,” the surgeon said sharply. “I’ve just sedated him.”
She returned to her suitcase, peeled off her traveling gloves, and replaced them with sterile ones. She put on her smock, tied it around the waist, and slid a white mask over her mouth and nose. Belatedly, she removed her felt hat as well, thinking how ridiculous she must look, though there was no one to see her but the unconscious patient.
Scalpel and tray in hand, she approached the boy. She lifted his shirt again, and slit open the infection site. A smell like a pool of stagnant water radiated from it. Her eyes watered. She cut deeper, searching for the bud. Once she removed it, the roots in the boy’s body would wither and die off, and in the best case scenario, he would slowly recover.
She probed the wound, searching, and then she saw it. It looked like a small white pebble; so innocuous.
The surgeon seized it with a pair of tweezers, and pulled it out. The boy’s whole body seized. He sat up, or tried to. The surgeon’s eyes widened. She was certain she’d given him the correct dosage. The pain he would be in if he awakened now-
The boy’s eyes opened. They were entirely red. His body jack-knifed; he roared, and one of the thin ropes restraining his arms snapped. His small fist hit her in the jaw, sending her slumping forward onto the bed, scattering her instruments. She swallowed her bubble gum.
The surgeon shrieked, and the bedroom door flew open. The boy was trying to drag her close enough to bite, his teeth snapping, spit flying, his small fist rooted in her hair, yanking out hunks, clawing at her temple.
Ray grabbed his brother’s arm; the surgeon heard it pop out of the socket. The boy keened. The woman ran in and flew at Ray, cursing him.
The surgeon saw the boy’s chest heaving, his throat pulsing. She scrambled across the small bed, wrapped her arms around his upper stomach in the Heimlich maneuver, and squeezed as hard as she could, grinding her fist under his ribs.
The boy let out a choking rattle.
“You’re killing him!” screamed the woman, as Ray dragged her towards the door.
The surgeon palpated the boy again.
He spluttered, and expelled a writhing black mass of roots and fungi onto his bedroom floor.
Then he slumped back against her, unconscious.
Slowly, the surgeon eased out from behind him. Her head was bleeding profusely, and she had lost the tiny bud. She had to find that before she left. They’d need to burn it.
But the white streaks in the boy’s nails were already fading.
“Go into my suitcase,” she told Ray, who had let go of his mother. The woman was leaning on the doorframe, panting. “And get me a new pair of gloves. And a needle and thread. I need to close the wound.”
She remained grateful to her mother, the seamstress, who had taught her to stitch.
Alyse Winters lives and writes in New England, where she spends much of her time walking in cemeteries, hoarding books, and arguing with her boyfriend about dragons. You can find her previously published work in anthologies such as Shattering the Glass Slipper and Sunshine Superhighway: Solar Sailings.
