Impuls

She is flattering herself: just because it is power, it is fashionable, prestigious, rich; but inside, the first sparks of a fire have already been kindled.

That's just the affection she lacked; that damn admiration for someone, the idolatry, the awe. Clark is just a doctor.

She's just a nurse.

Her nurse.

The surgery is minutes away-the third operating room has been cleaned to a shine, and the instruments spread out on the tables have left a pleasant heaviness in her palms.

And now she's afraid. Scared. Ashamed.

And so she clings to her white coat, unable to control her emotions.

In a straight line.

Not to the bottom.

She locks the robe in her locker and walks out into the pre-op space, where Sarah helps her with her clothes and gloves.

Clark is already here, behind the glass – washing her hands, chatting intermittently with Gilmore standing next to her.

Emily knows the sequence by heart: rubbing her palms together, rubbing the back of her left hand with her right, then the interdigital spaces and inner surfaces, hands in lockstep, thumbs, rotating rubs, circular motions. Long fingers slide over soapy skin – up and down, back and forth.

Gilmore finishes early, wiping his hands, working his nails, applying antiseptic to his hands and forearms, rubbing, telling jokes.

Clark doesn't even smile, just nods, thinking to himself: frowning eyebrows, confident movements.

The whole procedure of putting on a sterile gown, tying it, and pulling on gloves takes no more than thirty seconds. Emily and Sara are in sync: pull it up there, tie it there. Johnson smiles inwardly: She remembers that Clark likes to tie the sash on the side, so she very quickly slips one piece of fabric into the other. All she gets in response is a snort.

Sarah clips on the optics: binocular magnifying glasses with flashlights; Emily adjusts-checks the masks and hats; Kemp fidgets nonchalantly in her chair, whistling a tune. Harmon bustles about – urgently pulled from his department, delighted by the news of his promotion, he runs around with a huge spread-out form, recording the data.

There's a woman on the operating table; the shaved area of her head is marked with lines – a perpendicular line from the bridge of her nose to the base of her skull and a line connecting her ears. The whole space is squared, so it's easier to work with a scalpel.

– I forgot," said Dylan. – Are we going to wake her up?

– You're out of your mind," he replies.

– I was joking.

Emily takes one last look at Mayo's table – the sterile surface is lined with instruments; this time there's nothing superfluous, everything's in strict order. Gilmore has one just like it, only with recesses for electrical instruments. Dylan pushes the buttons; the screens flash, showing an image; Clark finishes calibrating.

– Tumor in quadrant six, fits like a fuse, preparing for additional bone resection.

The Leica buzzes, Sarah takes her place at Gilmore's, Emily becomes a few centimeters away from Clark.

Harmon looms behind them, muttering to himself about some fascias and squares.

Slowly, slowly, the screen renders a grid; Clark tilts her head sideways and – Emily is sure – with her lips slightly open, lets out a short exhale.

– Here we go.

Chapter 12

I'm tired of being afraid of you.

it's the finish line.

Let's call it a draw.

If I fall in love again

shoot me,

– You know, when I first finished my internship, I was assigned to assist some surgeon. So there was a team of ten, and when he said "scalpel," all ten of them repeated like idiots: "Scalpel. Then the surgeon was like, "Clamp!" and then they were like, "Clamp, clamp, clamp…"

– That's so you don't forget what you need, genius.

– Genius, genius, genius…

– Can you saw in silence?

– Tell my ex-wife that," Riley mutters. – Dissecting tissue.

The surgeon's entire craniotomy operation takes no more than thirty minutes: Sara silently, without comment, hands him the instruments; now the tissue is removed, a dilator is placed, auxiliary openings are made. The sharp sound of a saw, and the smell of sawed bone hits my nose.

Emily forceps pick up a fragment of skull, dips it into a bath of special solution, returns it to its place – in perfect synchrony Clark and Gilmore seal the bleeding vessels. The smell of burned flesh and heated metal.

– Current.

More than anything, Emily fears her hands will start to shake; but, contrary to her fears, she holds on even more than firmly: handing over the device, casting a glance at the socket, another at the screen. She can't catch Clark's attention: the neurosurgeon is fully immersed in the Leica while Gilmore talks to Harmon.

– Clamping and taking off at once with a hat.

Emily prepares for coagulation: she serves a small, film-wrapped laser; Sarah puts a gauze drain, blotting it out, Gilmore laments that we can't use a dilator – that would make the access area even larger.

The gauze is barely changed in time: the amount of blood in the area decreases too slowly; some of the many vessels are too thin for the laser and bleed desperately.

– It sucks," Gilmore concludes.

– Let's not go back, it's about twenty minutes of work," Clark says. – Dry it.

Sarah removes the thin tube from the machine once more, presses the button with her foot; the drainage machine begins to vibrate, taking in air; a little further away, Gilmore already places the clamps that have been applied, stopping the blood flow on the neoplasm.

– I laser," Clark says. – We'll clean at different stages, what's at risk, we'll scrape out by hand. That's it, we can close.

The pungent smell that hits her nose makes Emily's eyes go dark for a second, and both Clark and Gilmore stick to the eyepieces of the Leica. Johnson sees all their manipulations on the screen: here's Clark picking up the tumor, and here the beam of the laser scalpel flashes, illuminating the image with red light. Gilmore deftly rakes the affected areas and tosses them into the cuvette, the very small remnants picked up by Sarah's drain.