• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Extract

A scalpel is a beautiful thing.

 

Dr. Stanley Mackie had never noticed this before, but as he stood with head bowed beneath the OR lamps, he suddenly found himself marveling at how the light reflected with diamondlike brilliance off the blade. It was a work of art, that razor sharp lunula of stainless steel. So beautiful, in fact, that he scarcely dared to pick it up for fear he would somehow tarnish its magic. In its surface he saw a rainbow of colors, light fractured to its purest elements.

‘Dr. Mackie? Is something wrong?’

 

He looked up and saw the scrub nurse frowning at him over her surgical mask. He had never before noticed how green her eyes were. He seemed to be seeing, really seeing, so many things for the very first time. The creamy texture of the nurse’s skin. The vein coursing along her temple. The mole just above her eyebrow.

 

Or was it a mole? He stared. It was moving, crawling like a many-legged insect toward the corner of her eye . . .

 

‘Stan?’ Dr. Rudman, the anesthesiologist, was speaking now, his voice slicing through Mackie’s dismay. ‘Are you all right?’

 

Mackie gave his head a shake. The insect vanished. It was a mole again, just a tiny fleck of black pigment on the nurse’s pale skin. He took a deep breath and picked up the scalpel from the instrument tray. He looked down at the woman lying on the table.

 

The overhead light had already been focused on the patient’s lower abdomen. Blue surgical drapes were clamped in place, framing a rectangle of exposed skin. It was a nice flat belly with a bikini line connecting the twin flares of the hip bones – a surprising sight to behold in this season of snowstorms and winter white faces. What a shame he would have to cut into it. An appendectomy scar would certainly mar any future Caribbean tans.

 

He placed the tip of the blade on the skin, centering his incision on McBurney’s point, halfway between the navel and the protrusion of the right hip bone. The approxi-mate location of the appendix. With scalpel poised to cut, he suddenly paused.

 

His hand was shaking.

 

He didn’t understand it. This had never happened before. Stanley Mackie had always possessed rock steady hands. Now it took enormous effort just to maintain his grip on the handle. He swallowed and lifted the blade from the skin.

 

Easy. Take a few deep breaths. This will pass.

 

‘Stan?’