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“It’s not brain surgery”--a common saying meant to reassure people that the task at hand isn’t particularly complex and doesn’t require intensive expertise to execute. Being a surgeon, he’d known the validity of that statement well. Anything dealing with the brain had to be very precise, in the matter of a fraction of a millimeter, or else you could kiss the chances of the patient surviving goodbye. Maybe they’d survive, on a rare occasion, spared by chance, but life would never be the same again for them. You had to be steady and sure of what you were doing, above all else.
It was something on his mind as he scrubbed up for the operation. Because the surgeon was unsure of what he was doing. Nobody had ever attempted anything like he’d attempted before--the joining of two minds as one being, a creature strong enough to withstand what was to come.
“Are you finished cleaning up yet?” A loud voice suddenly spoke.
“Don’t rush them, my angel, the last thing we need is an infection,” a second, softer voice pointed out. “We have to be patient.”
The surgeon turned to the figure on the gurney behind him, blanketed in a white surgical sheet, her two heads watching him with intent. Her hands were tightly clasped together over the sheet, a silent and loving self-embrace she often engaged in.
“That’s right,” they said to her, digesting their own words as they spoke. “I cannot risk anything in this procedure. Your safety is of the utmost priority.”
They wished they could kiss her, hold her in their arms again, let her know that everything would be alright. But he wouldn’t dare to, not while preparing for as sterile a procedure as he could manage. And the time for preparations had ended.
“Beginning anesthesia.”
She closed her eyes. Her mouths moved, whispering something to herself in repetition, voices soft and slipping into rehearsed unison. A prayer? They couldn’t quite make out what it was before her voices trailed off.
“See you on the other side, my love.”
They watched as her hands came unclasped.
Asleep on the table, he took a fraction of a second to admire how serene she looked before going back to inspect his previous handiwork.
The joining was successful, yes, but another procedure was needed. Their brains weren’t communicating properly with each other. It wasn’t enough; their senses of self, their minds, their souls, weren’t yet combined enough. It would all be for nothing if the surgeon sat back and accepted defeat.
He had to try again.
The surgeon began his first incision into the scalp.
She had to try again, too. And it wasn’t easy for her. Sleepless nights spent in anguish, spent blood, sweat, and tears, relearning to survive from scratch. She was brave. She tried to be, at least. But she was suffering.
He held her head in his mechanical hand with unnatural precision, never shaking or faltering. In this body, this new form, he was nearly perfect.
Her chemical concoctions, able to take his mind and body places that man only dreamed of; her steadfast engineering, beautiful enough to help him sever himself from the limitations of his human body entirely. It wasn’t a surprise why he’d fallen in love with the two women in the first place, and with his surgical skills, anything seemed possible.
But brain surgery is still brain surgery. It was something the surgeon had yet to master himself--regrettably, he had yet to figure out how to replicate the brain via mechanical means in a way that left vital elements like personality and emotions intact. His own brain sat in the box of metal he called a skull, fleshy and vulnerable, the last remnant of his former form. The only thing left unchanged.
Their bride couldn’t help them this time, not like before. In the weeks leading up to the surgery, she’d made an attempt to draft plans for an implantable cranial device, one that would send electrical signals to her brains and a slurry of experimental chemical agents directly into her bloodstream in an attempt to synchronize her two selves. In her weakened and uncoordinated state, however, she couldn’t finish. The surgeon was left with a disarray of notes and had to organize them into a final draft they prayed would be sufficient.
He could only hope it would be enough.
Soldiering on, the ticking of the clock in the room was the only reminder of how long they’d spent working. Their legs grew no more tired, their hands no more shaky, and their gaze was perpetually fixed upon the operating field, everything illuminated in tricolor by their headlamps.
He’d poured over countless anatomy textbooks, articles on conjoined twins, groundbreaking scientific papers on neuroscience, anything that could help him. Hours of research, hours of labor, hours of practicing. All leading up to this. He was searching for a miracle. They both were.
The device was switched on; he then applied the last staple and closed her up.
The vitals on the monitor told him her two hearts were beating at a stable rhythm, and breathing and brain activity also registered as normal. If he had a breath to hold, he would have held it. His own artificial pulse quickened, supplying his brain with a rush of adrenaline. His hands nearly shook as he cleaned up the operating room and washed the blood from his hands.
She was taking longer than expected to wake up.
So they sat next to her, numbing their frayed nerves with a cocktail of pills. Their eyes were fixed on hers, still shut and unmoving. Another pill, another hour. The surgeon was starting to lose track of how long it was, and how much and what exactly he’d been taking. He was entirely lost in his own thoughts when she began to stir, quiet at first, her fingers twitching ever so slightly. She whispered something hoarse and nearly inaudible.
Their eyes were fixed on hers, still shut and unmoving. Another pill, another hour. The surgeon was starting to lose track of how long it was, and how much and what exactly he’d been taking. He was entirely lost in his own thoughts when she began to stir, quiet at first, her fingers twitching ever so slightly. She whispered something hoarse and nearly inaudible.
Noticing this, he grasped for her hands, placing them both in his and running his thumbs gently over her knuckles. Her brow furrowed.
“My love,” he breathed. “How do you feel?”
Her eyes shut tightly, each face twisted in agony. She opened her mouths, but instead of speech, a duet of cries and wails flooded the room. Without another word, the surgeon quickly administered more painkillers through her IV, but she would not quiet.
She cried until her voice grew hoarse. Nothing seemed to have an effect on her. Once she ran out of tears and screams, she began tearing at anything within her grasp with frantic hands, kicking and thrashing as wildly around as she could.
“Please,” the surgeon begged. “You’ll hurt yourself!”
They attempted to restrain her, taking the worst of her beating in the process. She struck them countless times, lashing out at anything within arm’s reach. They struggled to grab her hands and restrain her body at the same time; never had they had such a violent patient before, and they were at a loss as to what to do.
A particularly deft fist to the head left him reeling. He clattered down to the floor, his vision spinning and darkening. He could hear choked sobbing in the background as he lay there, too stunned at first to move. Struggling to sit up, he stared back at her, his beloved wife, his cherished bride. Her knuckles were red and chapped, her hands shaking violently with exertion, but she’d left her incisions and IV alone; she was uninjured by her outburst. Thank God for that cruel irony.
They stood slowly, as if approaching a caged beast. Her eyes opened to look at them, red from crying. But she was still, her labored breathing slowing, as if all the fight in her body had left her.
“...My love?”
There was no going back. This had to work. This was the last resort, the last-ditch effort, the Hail Mary, the only thing he hadn’t tried yet--
She was looking directly through to where he felt his soul should have been. For a moment, she looked as if she might speak again, her mouths hanging open and her eyes transfixed on her husband. Then her head dropped, her breathing quickening as she began to wail again.
“Dear God,” he finally cried out, his own voice straining to its limits. “What do you want me to do!?”
There was no answer.
There was no answer. Her vitals were dropping; likely due to intense stress and pain she was in. If she kept this up, she’d kill herself from exertion.
The surgeon turned back to the IV and administered more anesthetics, balancing on the line between “very harmful dosage” and “entirely lethal dosage” like an acrobat on a tightrope. The pills he’d taken earlier had worn off; his nerves were shot again. He felt as if he was unraveling. Yet he refused to take his eyes off her until she was asleep again, only grabbing for the bottle when her own eyes had fluttered shut.
Their body was starting to feel tender from the beating they received earlier. She didn’t mean to do it, they thought, but it was deserved regardless. The thought of her writhing in agony from what they’d done made them feel sick. They wanted to tear themself apart, to rip open their skin until there was nothing left to grab on to. To tear open their wiring, anything to feel on a physical level the pain they carried in the pit of their metaphorical stomach.
“I can’t be having these thoughts,” he muttered to himself, wrenching open the bottle and swallowing a handful of pills.
Once the monitor showed she had fallen into a deep state of unconsciousness, they carefully carried her limp body out of the operating room, one hand under her knees and one supporting her back. A bridal carry, they noted, hand tightening around the pill bottle still firmly in their grasp. They refused to think further along that train of thought.
He carried her all the way out, all the way down the stairs into the basement room where she was supposed to recover for the night. Setting her upright and tightly secured in a frame that was once meant to help her relearn to walk, he quickly reattached her to more monitors and devices, securing another IV in the process. He’d have to come back here every once and a while; the anesthesia and antibiotics could be administered on a timer, but she would need more care than that if she was to be in a coma long-term.
He put his face in his hands. God’s sake. Another waiting game. But for what? What was he even waiting for? Another miracle? He figured his luck had run out years before, if not during the first procedure. He couldn’t give in; letting her die or reversing the procedure would mean welcoming the end of the world. A slow, painful end as God wasted away before them. No ritual meant no hope for survival. They both knew this. She wouldn’t want him to give up either.
So he was rolling the dice on another miracle. For something new to come along and fix everything. He was going to keep looking for a solution. But for this moment, all that was left to do was pray, pray and self-medicate until he hardly felt like he ever was a human being to begin with.
The bride’s heads hung limply and undignified in the frame, her long black hair framing her faces in shadow. What were they even supposed to say? That they were sorry? That they hoped she’d forgive them? That it wasn’t supposed to go this horribly wrong? That they loved her?
It’s not like she can hear me anyway, he tried convincing himself. So the surgeon said nothing, letting the rattle of the pill bottle in his hand fill the silence as he closed the door behind him.