Under the Knife(69)

The other Rita said, in Finney’s voice, which was in her left ear only, Push the scalpel into the liver.

Rita took her hand off the table and placed it on the Swiss Army. With both hands, she began to advance the Swiss Army toward Mrs. Sanchez’s liver, using the image on the screen as a guide. Because, well … why not? The other Rita, the one standing next to her, had told her to. It seemed a reasonable thing to do.

That’s it, the other Rita crooned in Finney’s voice. Good.

But then Rita stopped, the tip of the scalpel centimeters away from the liver.

No, she said to the other Rita, the one speaking in Finney’s voice. I can’t do that. It would kill her.

Then, suddenly, Rita wasn’t in the OR anymore, but at her medical-school graduation, clutching her diploma, reciting the Hippocratic Oath with her class, when she promised that she wouldn’t ever intentionally hurt any of her patients.

An instant later and in her mind she was in the hallway, outside the room of the patient who was coding, watching that commanding surgeon with Mediterranean-blue eyes puke into the sink.

And then she was in pre-op, with Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez, Mr. Sanchez clutching his wife’s hand and talking about his daughter at UCLA.

Not pre-op now, but her bedroom; and Spencer was there, lying next to her, on the bed, naked, his enormous, gentle hand running through her hair, down her cheek. He cupped her chin and brought his lips close to her left ear. His breath was warm and inviting and tickling her earlobe.

Do it, he murmured, but it was Finney’s voice, not Spencer’s. Do it now. Push the scalpel into her liver.

No, Rita said.

And then she was back in OR 10. The other Rita who had been standing next to her, the one who had been speaking in Finney’s voice, was gone.

The pain in her head was back.

She wanted to scream.

She wanted to throw up.

She wanted to die.

“Do it!” Finney yelled. The sound of his voice crammed her head, violating her mind in a way that felt more vulgar and obscene than if he’d violated her body.

Then from a distance, a long distance away, Rita thought she heard Spencer say, “Rita! What are you doing?”

Spencer? But it couldn’t be Spencer. Because what would Spencer be doing here?

“Rita! What’s going on? Rita!” That was Chase. Why was Chase here again? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter, anyway, because she was thinking about something else.

She was thinking about her eyes. How she wanted to cover them.

She wanted to cover her eyes because she knew what was about to happen, and she didn’t want to see it because it was going to be terrible, and she had no power to stop it.

She felt her hands jerk forward.

In an instant, on the screen, the scalpel tip crossed the small gap remaining between it and Mrs. Sanchez’s liver.

Someone in the room gasped.

Was it her?

Then, just before the scalpel hit the glistening, pulsating brown surface, she said, “God help me.”





SEBASTIAN


Sebastian saw her hesitate, hands trembling, as if struggling with herself.

He watched, stunned, as Finney turned up the signal strength again.

“Do it,” Finney screamed.

She did.

And Sebastian watched as their plan, the one they’d been mapping out for nearly a year, was executed.

Flawlessly.

Sebastian couldn’t tell whether he felt good about that, or bad.

But he didn’t want to see any more. He slipped from the room as everything went to hell.





SPENCER


“Rita!” Spencer bounded toward her.

She mumbled something he couldn’t make out, something about God, as the scalpel entered the patient’s liver and disappeared beneath its undulating surface.

Spencer had known Chase Montgomery for a decade. In all that time, he’d never seen the man at a loss for words. Until now. Montgomery made a guttural, caveman grunt. Then said: “Well, we, uh—huh.” Or some variation of that.

Spencer was just as stunned. He’d never seen anything like this, never even conceived of anything like this.

But he’d seen it with his own eyes.

Rita.

The liver.

The scalpel.

Rita pushing the scalpel into the liver.

What on earth had possessed her? Pure craziness. He knew that for Rita, a surgical complication was a personal affront by God and Nature. She never gave up her fight for absolute perfection, and Rita’s complication rates were some of the lowest around.

Until this insanity.

So now what?

He stared at the screen. For the moment, at least, there wasn’t any bleeding.

Which was good. Because the astonishing illogic of what they’d just witnessed had left all the surgeons stunned and speechless. Between himself, Montgomery, and the other surgeons here, Spencer estimated there was at least one hundred years of combined clinical experience. This patient’s life was now in danger. They all should have been rushing forward to help Rita.

But, instead, there they were, standing around like idiots, waiting for something to happen.





RITA


After the tempered, diamond-tipped steel of the scalpel had buried itself in Mrs. Sanchez’s liver, Rita couldn’t remember exactly how it had gotten there.