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Grace took a deep breath, his hand shook with the scalpel in it. He had watched a video on appendectomies. He should be able to figure it out.
With the help of Rocky’s sonar, Grace figured out where his appendix sits and has marked up his abdomen for where he should cut.
Armando’d given him painkillers, a bit of lidocaine straight to the area of incision but not nearly enough to completely numb Grace out for it. It was better than nothing. Grace thought about Illyukhina’s Heroin before shaking the thought from his mind. That was a terrible idea.
And yet somehow, this was a worse one.
Armando held a mirror in front of Grace’s stomach. Rocky had been able to deactivate Armando’s response programming. It would only step in and help Grace, when Grace verbally asked for help.
Grace stopped his hand from shaking and steadied himself. Rocky sat (freakishly) silent in his compartment opposite.
The blood dribbled down his lower stomach, mixing with the layer of cold sweat before hitting his pants that sat just on his hips. He hissed through the pain but continued. He couldn’t see much given his blood was coating everything, but he could make out the subcutaneous skin layer. Grace could see his own fat right now, or at least what was left of it given he was rationing his food supplies.
At least he was through the skin now though. Now it’s just moving his muscles around to find his appendix. Grace handed the scalpel over to Armando who held it near him for when it was needed again.
Grace carefully stuck his gloved finger into his wound, trying to ignore how warm his insides were. He needed to act quickly before he went into shock, if he went into shock it would likely kill him. Grace took the metal retractor from another of Armando’s arms and placed it within his wound. He used the suction tool to clear out some blood from the wound before putting his fingers back into the wound.
Grace bit his tongue and held back a scream as he found his appendix. It was clearly inflamed, he didn’t need to look at it to know it was. He could feel it was based on the size and pain radiating from it.
“I found it—” Rocky stood up on his side. Clearly happy for Grace but not wanting to distract Grace from his task. “I’m going too—” Grace sucked in a breath as he took back the scalpel from Armando. “I’m going to remove it and then get Armando to—”
The rest went unsaid between the two of them. Armando would patch him up all good and proper when asked too. The robot may not have been designed to remove his appendix, but it was designed in mind of stitching up wounds, even internal ones if needed.
Grace took a few deep breaths and looked back in the mirror again, he could now see his appendix. On Earth, he probably would’ve found it cool to see his own appendix after actual surgeons completed the surgery. Here though, it made him queasy to say the least.
Grace made the incision around his inflamed appendix, the pain burning through his abdomen like he had lit a match inside himself. He didn’t stop though. He couldn’t. The sooner he got this done and out of him, the better. He groaned and hissed as he continued the surrounding cut.
As soon as his appendix came away from the rest of his body, Grace finally relaxed. The sheer exhaustion of it all crashing down on him.
“Armando, help…” He could feel himself slipping now. He tried to fight off the shock for as long as he could. His vision started going hazy around the edges. He saw his feet above his head for a few moments, one of Armando’s arms under them to help keep his blood flowing to his organs.
Rocky was skittering about next to him. Grace could hear his taps and notes as he tried to see what Armando was doing to him.
The last thing Grace saw before passing out was one of Armando’s arms coming toward him with a needle.
Rocky tapped frantically, Armando was a quiet machine when it worked. It made it difficult for Rocky to see exactly what it was doing to Grace. He had seen that the robot made Grace sleep and had placed a breathing mask on his face. Rocky knew this was good as it is what Armando had done for Grace previously.
There were two different appendages inside of Grace’s wound now. Rocky could sense a small, curved bit of metal with a very thin line coming off it. It was going through Grace’s insides and holding it together. Rocky watched as the machine tied off the thin line on Grace’s squishy insides.
Armando then repeated the process, cleaning and sanitising the wound as it went. Rocky watched as the incision was pulled together from the edges by the thin line and created smaller lines over the incision. Rocky had noted a similar pattern on all of Grace’s fabric items. It must be how humans hold soft and squishy things together.
Rocky observed as Armando placed a piece of fabric over the incision, it was a slightly thicker piece of fabric than that of say Grace’s clothes. Armando then wrapped the thicker piece in thinner pieces of fabric. Rocky would need to ask Grace about this later.
For now though, Rocky settled in. He knew Grace may be out for a long time. He had tried his best to explain the process to Rocky but the Eridian didn’t understand all the words he had used and Rocky hardly thought it was the time to ask about the new words.
“Mary, Grace will be okay, question?” The ship gave him no response, so Rocky sat in silence. The only thing keeping him calm was the beating of Grace’s heart in his chest.