Gone Before Goodbye

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I don’t hear the scream.

The nurse does. So does the anesthesiologist. I am too deep in the zone, the zone I can only enter in an operating theater, when a sternum is cracked open like this, and my hands are inside the boy’s chest.

This is my home, my office, my sanctuary. I am Zen here.

More screams. Gunfire. Helicopters. An explosion.

“Doctor?”

I hear the panic in her voice. But I don’t move. I don’t look away. My hands, the oldest medical instruments known to mankind, are inside the chest cavity, my index finger palpitating the pericardium. I am totally focused on that, only that. No music is playing. That’s weird in an operating room nowadays, I know, but I relish silence in this hallowed space, even when we’ve done heart transplants that last eight hours. It annoys my staff. They need the diversion, the entertainment, the distraction — and that’s the problem for me. I want no distractions. Both my bliss and my excellence come from that singular focus.

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