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Feofan's eyes fluttered, teared in reflex at an incredibly bright, incredibly /white/ light punching through his lashes.
It was the sounds he processed first. A steady and rhythmic, electronic beeping. A strange and undecipherable /wooosh/ and click at a considerably slower rhythm. "Retracting," -- a voice more familiar than his own.
Pressure in his chest, creaking of machinery, biological and stainless steel alike. A different kind of clicking, more solid, much closer to his face. His stirring mind reacted by squirming and brushing his hand across his chest to feel for a culprit, but nothing happened at all -- he couldn't feel his chest, he couldn't feel his hands, he couldn't feel the culprit of that pressure.
He was vaguely aware of music -- Slilenikov's piano concerto in G minor, third movement, he was sure -- in some distant corner. An excellent choice, one he enjoyed listening to Zandik's segments play, but he could tell none of them were at the helm of it.
"Good morning, little clamshell," 35 drawled to him from somewhere high up above. Feofan's eyes felt leaden, and he felt impossibly far away, a mere witness to the greeting. "That was excellent timing."
"How do you know he's awake?"
"An increase in heart rate."
"But consider differentials for increased heart rate; pain, surgical stimuli--"
"Or we acknowledge that the propofol CRI was turned off ten minutes ago."
"What protocol are you using for the paralytic?"
"Does it matter? Back up, you're too close -- I'm /sterile/, remember." he heard a hiss. Even in his wakening, twilight state of consciousness he prickled at the nattering little crows. Their voices spun around his head as though on a carousel. It was absolutely annoying sometimes, the way they could devolve into relentless bickering and madness.
/Sterile... Sterile.../ he toyed with the word over and over in his mind, as if it were an object he could decipher simply by turning it around and looking at it from all directions.
/...I'm in surgery./
Beep-- beep-- beep-- the ECG telegraphed, the rebreathing circuit 'whooshed', and the sticky exhalation valve clicked. The familiarity of these sounds was at once astonishing and deeply confusing. How did he get here? Why was he awake?
He thrashed forcefully, fully expecting to come up against restraints. Nothing happened at all. He couldn't even open his eyes, although they were still fluttering, spasming, almost nauseating him with the way the light twinkled and filtered beyond them.
"You can record observations in a moment, get the strips and the lubrication so we can open his eyes." 35 was muttering impatiently. Pantalone couldn't easily tell who he was talking to, but he knew for certain 35, 45, and 25 were present.
"That's not the proper use of those strips--" it felt like 25 was behind him. Probably monitoring anesthesia and unhappy about it.
"8 was supposed to be on inventory. They're not the usual brand but they'll suffice."
"How can you misuse tape?" 18 piped up, pointing out the ridiculousness of 25's sullen complaint. He seemed to be somewhere off to the right.
He was trying to wiggle his toes, open his mouth, mentally cataloguing bodily functions he apparently no longer had any agency over. He felt like a ghost in a mechanical shell, and it filled him with a strange kind of anguish and dread. He tried screaming. Not only didn't it work, but it afforded him zero relief, zero feedback.
He didn't like this at all. For the first time in a long time, he felt a pang of fear. It didn't matter that he was in familiar company.
In what must have been one of the strangest moments in his life, the ceiling of the surgical suite flashed into existence in two pulses -- each corresponding to the long, slender fingers of 18 peeling his eyelids back one at a time and applying adhesive to hold them open, repeating for the right eye what had been done for the left. It was completely devoid of any sort of sensation at all.
A dollop of lubrication was deposited into each miotic lavender eye; when the distortion to his vision settled, he regarded a white rectangle suspended high up in a beige sky -- it was the fluorescent light in the ceiling.
That image lurched and he felt the strange sensation of stumbling and losing his balance, as though falling from height -- he anticipated a landing that never came, and that anticipation felt like a hitched breath that never released, despite the steady whooshing carrying on undisturbed.
"--tilt him down more, I don't think he can see them well from that angle," directed 45. 35 was reaching deep into what initially appeared to be a hole in his chest.
/Did I get shot again?/ He was struggling to make sense of it.
"He's going to need his glasses."
"He's not /that/ blind."
Pantalone was trying to resolve the blurry, black shapes occupying his visual field, a strange throbbing just at the periphery of gaped, ambered tissue. He knew, at an intellectual level, he was looking into his ribcage, but he could scarcely make out the details.
"He is /absolutely/ that blind." 65 was here -- he sounded like he was in a corner, the furthest away of all the voices so far. Having 65 here lifted his mood, and he wished he would come closer.
35 dropped his face in line with Pantalone's, loomed impossibly large, blot out nearly everything. He could practically feel the stare of those crimson eyes obscured behind his beaked mask. The mask drew in close until it brushed against the other man's nose, the inanimate object somehow scrutinizing him. "I really need you to know how much I enjoy you in this state," he remarked privately, as if they were the only two people in the room.
The banker's heart spasmed furiously in his chest at that, sent ripples of adrenaline careening everywhere and nowhere at once. So far the only thing that tethered him to the real world, that made his existence of any sort of consequence at all, was the intensifying pace of his heart being parroted by the ECG. He felt taunted by this.
"If you're going to head the surgery, can you at least take it seriously?"
He heard 8's curious little creature voice, coming matter-of-factly in a far corner of the room. "He's tachycardic. I think we're scaring him."
The idea that all six segments were collected around his opened, powerless body, that they were now witnessing his heart race at something they said, made him feel far too seen. It sounded like 45 was snickering, and Feofan heard him mumble, "Of course the boy would think that's due to fear. Don't think I didn't notice your erection, Feofan."
/My /what/?/
"That's a joke. Although I did see it twitch."
"How is that possible?"
"It's under involuntary control. The paralytic doesn't affect that sort of thing. Not this one, anyway. See? His eyes are dilating, because he's watching us. He should be aware of everything that's happening."
35 bent even closer, flicked a tongue over his right eye. Feofan imagined slapping his face; backhanding him, slapping him, punching his rings into that smug visage just to even their position. /You know I'm awake, so why won't you talk to me?/ he lamented, his mind spinning. What was the point of this?
"--Are you serious? Is that not a /major/ breach in protocol?"
"One forty-two over one-oh-one. Is his pain being managed properly?" 18 was reading a blood pressure off the monitor.
"If it isn't, it's because 25 is too busy sulking to do his job properly."
"--he is /not/ painful," 25 was defensive. "I've reviewed his previous charts. He's prone to hypertension while under anesthesia. Ketamine doesn't seem to agree with him."
“You reviewed his charts…hah. Hahahah,” 45 taunted almost gleefully. “/I/ have them memorized.”
"What plane would /you/ say he's in?"
"Surgical. You'll know with certainty if he starts feeling any pain or if the paralytic wears off." -- 45 spoke with authority, sounding as though he wanted to put the topic to rest.
"While they squabble over your anesthetic, let me explain your new nickname," 35 now receded again to that position way up high so that he could gesture sweepingly toward the regrator's opened chest. "We need a new nickname for you, to replace 'smoke stack', and 'chimney'."
"--here are his glasses." 65's footsteps came over. "And never let me see you lean over a surgical field again. You'll need to lavage him thoroughly. Hi, Feofan."
Pantalone appreciated the tepid warmth with which the segment had said his name, clung to it as though now that 65 was involved, he had somebody who might put an end to things if 35 got carried away. That 35 was easily the most terrifying of the bunch -- Feofan loved him dearly, but he didn't wholly trust him, and the segment had already given him more than enough reason to be edgey.
Somebody perched his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. The alien landscape before him took on a technicolor and dazzling new life.
He was gazing at a crystal-sharp, intractable puzzle of meat, metal, betadine and drapery. It formed a perimeter that was locked and fastened into position, and what he once thought was a hole wasn't quite hole at all.
"Note the preparation's resemblance to a clamshell," 35 explained, like a tour guide. "Although I did modify the approach so you could see better."
At center, he could see the bottom edge of his heart, watched the reddish-brown tissue of his pericardium ripple in time with the ECG in the background. Flanking it on both sides were large, mottled swaths of blackened and oily tissue. It first appeared to be bubbling, but as he watched for longer he realized that while his lungs were filling and depressing, a cauliflower-like growth was lurching and writhing between his lobes.
He found himself momentarily enraptured by the appearance of the /thing/ -- surely it was a kind of cancer? Somewhere behind each tortuous cycle, that sticky valve hissed in lagging lockstep. Had he not been frozen in place, he still would have stared at it. He felt compelled to lean in closer.
/Incredible./ He was awestruck by the sheer profanity of the sight.
"That's why you shouldn't smoke so much," said 65. "What did I tell you?"
/You told me I'd get cancer. You completely left out the possibility of sprouting sea urchins./
The swarthy tissue twisted rhythmically. The wrinkles in the barnacle practically shivered in recognition. He reached out fruitlessly, wanting to caress the odd growth, vying to understand it better, utterly fastened to this moment. It wasn't even a consideration that previous to this, he'd been privately spurting up blood after the mildest feats of physical exertion, and 10kg of weight had evaporated within the span of a month.
"/These/ are the ugliest organs I've ever seen," 35 criticized him, his tone expository. "They are truly magnificent. One might say an abomination to nature."
/This just makes me feel impressive./ Feofan thought to himself darkly. He wanted to rub it in his face that he planned to have a cigarette after this -- hell, maybe he would double-fist them. He deserved it for putting up with this nonsense.
"They're quite friable. You won't be able to appreciate that until I start detaching them, but you'll find they come apart /very easily/," 35 spoke. "Actually I expect that this tumor here might just disintegrate altogether. See--" 35 ran his gloved, bloodied fingers over the uppermost growth. He dug a finger into its fleshy wrinkles, causing the tissue to stretch laboriously until it appeared to bloodlessly tear altogether. "It's necrosing."
"Another one over here--" 45 directed, nodding at 35 to look where he was looking.
35 obliged, followed the gaze and dug a hand just underneath his left lung, the squelch of this contact preceding a new, strange and heavy pressure. 35's gloved hand carefully rotated the tissue, allowing the light to illuminate a slick, red glaze that collected in the crevices of another pale, wrinkled patch. The segment grunted in affirmation. "Actually, that's infected."
"What part of this am I writing down?" 18 chimed in with an exasperated tone.
Laughing. He was practically wallowing in soundless, internal, profane laughter. The sheer absurdity of it all, the depraved depths his life had brought him to -- was this /actually/ happening right now, or was it just another one of those strange dreams? --It didn't matter. It was hysterical.
"It's a routine lung transplant, why are you recording at all?"
"Why am I recording? Why am I /completing medical records/? Do you hear yourself?"
45 found that comment hilarious. The only sound he made to show for it was an amused, "ho--"
Feofan heard someone withdraw somewhere near his side, and was fairly positive that was 65's social battery officially bottoming out. /Wait -- where are you going?/ -- he knew he wasn't purposefully being ignored, but felt ignored all the same. /Come back!/
"I want to remind you all that just because it's Feofan doesn't mean we shouldn't put /some/ measure of effort into the procedure."
"It's not because it's him, it's because it's a tedious procedure that's beneath our capabilities."
"So why didn't you let 25 give it a go? He could use the practice. Today was supposed to be his surgery day and you exercised your seniority to bump him."
"Frankly, he would have done a poor job." 35 said this, withdrawing a bloodied glove from his chest, holding his fingers out. "Swab," he requested.
"/You're/ not even paying attention, you just wanted to torture him."
"It isn't torture. You know he likes this sort of thing." 35 was passed a cotton swab and now delicately swiped it around at something Feofan couldn't quite see.
"I don't know, he gets testy when we tell him to stop smoking. He's probably at least a little bit annoyed right now that you're shoving it in his face like this."
/I have absolutely no idea /what/ I am right now./
"So think of it like this -- if you think I would do a poor job, then why aren't you investing your time in teaching me?"
"All right -- you want me to teach you something?" -- 35 snapped, suddenly angry, like a switch had flipped. He shoved the bloodied cotton swab almost out of frame, although Feofan could see he was aiming it into a tube. "Then watch and learn. 8, glove up."
Silence. Finally, "me?" in a small voice.
"You know the reason why I think you would have done a poor job? It's because you're stubborn, and you're cocky, and you think that putting on a front of being serious and adhering to these idiotic rules of conduct makes you a good researcher and a better experimentalist." He was laughing menacingly, relishing in catharsis. "But you're neither. 25 year old me was full of hubris, and thought he was an infallible genius, but he accomplished little. I should have achieved far more in that time than I actually did."
" 'I'? You mean, 'we'?"
/Oh my.../ he felt like he was watching one of those new pulpy operas. This whole dreamlike ordeal might have just paid for itself by this one exchange. It was somehow even more enrapturing than the alien lungs.
"Then explain why I have a /far higher/ survival rate than you do." 25 was quiet, enunciating his words defensively, as if we was making a point the other might consider a rebuttal.
"Hah! A useless metric when your cases rate pitifully low on complexity."
"I can't reach the gloves," 8's tiny voice came from across the room. "Size 5 please,"
"Is it really a good idea to get 8 in here? This cartilage is like tissue paper."
"Don't look at him, look at me. I'm in charge of surgery today. Wash your /fucking/ hands, 8. Come on. Let's go, we don't have all day. I could probably walk an ape through this, so there's some hope for you yet, 25." Oh, 35 was livid.
"I could probably practice my suturing." 8's attempt to broker some peace between the adults might have been adorable if the topic of conversation involved literally any other surgical patient than himself.
"Let him continue. 25 does need a dressing down -- it /was/ an integral part of our early professional development."
"Save your breath." A clattering of a clipboard. "Fuck /all of you/, do your own damn anesthesia." Silence as the segment's footsteps stormed away. Crashing, like a cart had been shoved into a wall. The glass sliding door slammed shut, and for a moment, the blissful denouement of the concerto's fourth movement keyed out a woeful motive.
/How dramatic!/ The sheer excitement of it doubled down his desire for a celebratory cigarette. He'd just witnessed something absolutely priceless. He was looking forward to ruining 25's next few months teasing him about his childishness.
There was a merciful moment of peace. In the background he heard the tap turn on. He was happy to hear that 65 hadn't actually left the suite -- his voice could be heard quietly walking the child segment through hand washing. In the foreground of his vision, 45 shuffled into view with freshly-gloved hands held at chest level, appearing ready to assist. "18, you're on anesthesia now."
"35 is in charge."
"/I'm/ taking charge, actually."
Feofan positively cackled as he watched 35 and 45 both turn their heads in the exact same way, at the exact same time, presumably looking at their senior. Their faces were both covered by their beaked masks, but the regrator was absolutely sure he knew the kind of looks they were flashing -- something like when a child is behaving like a filthy little fool, and its parent walks in to catch them red-handed.
"What an embarrassment this has been." -- a loaded pause as the segments stopped what they were doing to listen to the oldest segment. "18, get a stool for 8 and place it directly here. 8, you are to stand on the stool and listen closely to 35 and 45. You are only to assist /as needed/ and if I catch you breaking sterility, you will be removed. Questions?"
"Nope!" -- That boy was always so eager, all smiles when he got to assist.
"Excellent. 18, titrate propofol bolus and get the CRI back on. Once he's at a reasonable plane again, remove the paralytic -- it will no longer be necessary. When you're done that, get two litres of saline. 35, you're going to lavage, and if I see you /licking/ our patient again I'll throw you out, too."
"Oh -- hold on," said 35, as if 65 had just proposed something hasty and misguided. "I wanted to keep him awake for the entire procedure, it might teach him a lesson to stop smoking. I got carried away because of 25."
"A shameless, transparent lie. We all know what you wanted and why you got carried away," 45 said, sounding as though he was smirking, although he absolutely was not innocent either; it's just that he'd managed his own transgressions internally.
"Night night, Feofan. I'll try my best!" chirped 8, stepping up into view, presumably onto the stool.
An alarm was now going off in the background, flashing 'APNEA'.
Cold in his veins. His vision swimming again. The sensation of melting into a little puddle of a man, and that puddle dribbling down, dribbling /through/, through the table, through the floor, through black.