Under the Knife(67)

“Dr. Wu,” Lisa whispered.

“How well do you think a machine like Delores would have done with my wife’s surgery?” An agonizing pause. “Better than you?”

Oh God, oh God, oh God …

“Dr. Wu,” Lisa whispered fiercely. “They’re all waiting.”

“Rita?” Montgomery asked. “Is everything okay?”

She glanced up. Chase was staring at her.

So was everyone else.

So many people …

God, how she wanted to stop.

But she HAD TO OPERATE ON MRS. SANCHEZ.

“Yes.” She inched the instrument forward.

Farther into Mrs. Sanchez.

And closer to her liver.

Finney said, “I think we both know that Delores can perform quite well under routine conditions, Dr. Wu. The simulations proved that beyond any doubt. What I’m really interested in knowing is how well Delores will perform during an emergency. That’s a more interesting question. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Rita had a wretched feeling in the deepest pit of her stomach. The worst she’d had, maybe, since the two grim-faced men in uniform had shown up at their door to tell her that her father’s plane was a smoking pile of debris scattered across ten square miles of desert and that she and Darcy—

(Darcy, oh God Darcy, hope she’s still okay)

—were orphans.

Her heart pounded. Sweat gathered in large drops underneath her surgical cap.

The tip floated into view on the wall screen.

“So. This is what I propose we do, Dr. Wu. I propose we test the true limits of Delores’s capabilities. Here. Now. For this audience.”

Oh, God.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rita saw that Chase had turned his attention from the screen and was chatting with a member of the crowd.

“Deploy the scalpel for Swiss Army number three,” Finney said.

“Dolores, deploy scalpel for Swiss Army number three,” Rita said.

It was her voice, all right, but the words seemed to have come out of someone else’s mouth.

What made me say THAT?

With a click of gears, the scalpel materialized from the tip of the third Swiss Army, its sharp tip shining menacingly.

Like a switchblade.

“Scalpel deployed for Swiss Army number three,” Delores responded.

One badass switchblade.

As one of the young male engineers on the project liked to describe it.

Delores, unflappable, observed, “Please note that scalpel deployment is in violation of this operative protocol.”

Yes, Rita thought. It most definitely is. SO WHY THE HELL DID I JUST DEPLOY IT?

“Dr. Wu?” Floating above her surgical mask, Lisa’s eyes were wide, and fixed on the scalpel, which on the monitor was as big as her hand.

“Good,” Finney said. “Now, I want you to push the scalpel into the patient’s liver.”

“You want me to do WHAT?” Rita hissed.





SPENCER


Spencer’s right knee was starting to throb. He’d been standing too long. He placed more of his weight on his left leg and folded his arms. His attention meandered from Montgomery, who was chatting with the hospital CEO and university chancellor (Damn, how many VIPs are here today?), to the video screen.

He saw a scalpel pop out from the tip of the instrument and heard the robot announce its arrival.

What? The butterflies in his stomach, the ones that had been fluttering around since his conversation with Wendy, suddenly exploded into a frenzied swarm. This did not seem right.

Violation, the robot had said there was a violation.

Not right at all.

What’s she doing?

He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out.

He wet his lips and tried again. “Rita?” he said softly. “What are you doing?”

No one heard him.





RITA


“Dr. Wu? Why did you do that? Why is the scalpel out?” Lisa sounded remarkably calm. Much calmer than how Rita felt.

“It’s nothing, Lisa,” Rita whispered. “It must have, uh, accidentally deployed. I’m working on it.”

She ordered herself to say the words to retract the scalpel, but her mouth and tongue refused to respond.

“Push the scalpel into the middle of the liver, Dr. Wu,” Finney said.

She almost laughed out loud.

Is he kidding? Absurd. Finney was asking her to deliberately impale a vital organ—one of the most vital—in Mrs. Sanchez’s body, as if it were some kind of slab of meat for a shish kebob. The scalpel would tear through Mrs. Sanchez’s liver like a butcher’s knife through cottage cheese.

Has any surgeon in history, totally on purpose, caused a major complication during an operation?

Probably not. She did not want to become the first, or violate every moral fiber in her being.

And yet …

There was something ugly inside of her that did.

Some terrible nameless thing.

It wanted her to plunge the scalpel into Mrs. Sanchez’s liver. It wanted to so badly. It was an awful, rapacious urge. Not a specific thought, or emotion.

It simply was.

She felt her hands, which were still resting on the third Swiss Army, the one holding the scalpel, twitch, as if of their own accord.