Leucotomy

The small operating room was teeming with calm activity. A couple of nurses constantly entering and leaving, carrying shallow steel basins with utensils or bundles of cloth back and forth. The purposefulness of it all taking out the randomness of the constant bustle. At the centre of it, a young man strapped to a chair bolted into the tiled floor. He was wearing shaggy faced mungo breeches but his torso was bare. His arms and ankles were held fast by wide leather straps. Even his freshly shaven head was fixed. As the nurses scurried around the room, he was following them with tear shot eyes. A nurse carefully mounted a metal rig above his head, turning knobs and nuts to fixate it. In a plate next to the chair, she laid out long, thin needles, each ending in a tiny spoonlike knife. Then an array of scalpels and finally a geared hand drill.

“Please, nurse. I need to relieve myself.”

His voice was pleading. Thin.

“Please!”

“Mmmhh, it is really not a good time, is it George? The doctor will be here shortly.”

“Please, I really need to go miss Rutherford.”

“Well, we can’t very well have you pee in your seat, can we?”

She sighed.

“Nurse Roberts! We need to get the patient to the bathroom.”

“Now!?”

“Yes, now!”

“You too, O’Brien.”

The nurses put down their things and drying off their hands in their skirts, they briskly walked closer; both of them with an exasperated look on their face. O’Brien was a formidable woman, dwarfing most men. She grabbed the young man by his upper arm and held him in a vise. She nodded towards the others who began unstrapping him. O’Brien literally lifted the smaller man out of the seat and stood him up. Moving in behind him, she grabbed the other arm and ushered him forward towards the door. The two other nurses positioned themselves attentively on either side of the awkward single file.

There was a secure bathroom not far from the operating room. As they neared it, George turned more and more placid. Not exactly working against the brisk gait of the larger nurse, yet slowing down enough to cause her to push him forward. Before each shove, she briefly pulled her arms in and George could feel how close her chin was. As he slowed down once more, she started the shove like the ones before, by pulling him a bit closer and at that moment he bent his neck forward and shot his head abruptly backwards. He had hoped to hit her on the chin but he must have jumped up a bit as he recoiled. He could hear her nose crack loudly as it broke and almost immediately he felt the warm blood spray across his newly shaven pate. The grip around his arms loosened and he jumped forward and sprinted. He could hear one nurse reacting immediately and run after him. The other nurse apparently attending the downed matron. His bare feet was an advantage on the tiled floors. The nurse’s studded shoes would be slippery against the hard surface. He took a turn. And then another. What luck! This part of the building was full of hallways crossing each other. He zigzagged his way through his personal maze. Somewhere behind him he could hear how his pursuer hesitated more and more often. Her studded soles rapping against the hard tile, revealing her very move; his own bare feet revealing nothing. He looked back. No one to be seen. There were doors along both sides of the hallway. He grabbed a handle. Locked. Ran to the next. Also locked. Dammit! He ran further down the corridor and turned left, knowing full well that he was moving away from the exits. More doors. He grabbed one. It was unlocked! He opened it and peered in through the doorway. The curtains were drawn but the room was not entirely dark. There was a single bed along one wall and a workstation opposite. There was a desk in his own cell too but none this big. The cell was larger too. There was a strange metallic smell in the room. He eased closer to the bed. There was an old man there. His eyes were open but clouded in almost opaque white. As George moved the old man’s eyes move too. They didn’t quite follow him but it was obvious that the man was conscious. George looked at the man. His skin was smooth and adorned with fine wrinkles. Not those of an old man, yet there was an air of old age about him.

“Fuck!”

There were steps in the hallway. Not just one person this time. Many. George looked around for a place to hide. There were none!

“Okay, scoot over old man...”

George lifted the covers and glanced at the body lying there, fixed with leather straps around both limbs and torso. He lied down besides the man and tried to make himself as small as possible. No movement. The man lay perfectly still. He could hear the echoing now, of nurses and porters outside. Some of those porters were mean to the core. They would gladly beat you senseless to within and inch of your life. Slugging a nurse was not going to make them less murderous.

“Lie still!”, George whispered to the old man.

He pressed himself against the warm body next to him. There was a noise by the door and the loud flick of a switch. The room was flooded with light from the arch lamps in the ceiling. That must be the metallic smell he had noticed when he came in. The ozone from the lamps. The old man started trembling as the lights went on. First barely noticeable then more violently. Almost like he was having seizure. George daren’t move. If he could be sure that no one was looking, he might be able to pull the covers up over the old man’s eyes. Surely that would keep the light out and stop the tremors. But they just might look their way.

“He is not in here! Try down by mrs. Ashton’s room. He must be in this ward.”

The lights went off. The searing of the arc lamps stopped immediately. Only the incident light from the corridor and what found its way through the drapes illuminated the cell now. The trembling had stopped. The old man was still again. George staid still. They might still come back.

“Who are you?”

The voice was raspy and almost imperceptible. George jerked from the shock of hearing the man speak.

“Eh, I am George. Who are you?”

“Mmmhh... George, eh? You are warm. You smell nice.”

“What! Who the fuck are you? Some kind of pervert?!”

Having already dangled halfway out of the side of the bed, George almost fell out as he tried to push himself away from the old man. He managed to get a foot down and avoid the crash from falling down, and looked at the bed. The old man hadn’t moved an inch. His eyes were not even looking in his direction. Just straight up.

“You smell of sweat... and blood... and fear...”

“Stop that. I ain’t afraid of nothing. Least of all you. Pops. The blood is from nurse O’Brien, by the way.”

“Yes, I know her smell. She is the new one. The one with the lightning.”

“With the what?”

“She vanquished me not long ago. The old ones don’t like to come in here.”

“Do you mean the shock stick? I think it is for cattle, actually.”

“I feel like a dead cow, so perhaps she mistook me for one.”

“She electrocuted you!? Jeez, man.”

An expression started appearing on the old man’s face. A smile?

“Will you undo me?”

“No way, man. I don’t know who you are or why you are strapped down.”

“I am no one. I am here because I tried to bite your nurse.”

He chuckled. The raspy voice had had a bit of warmth to it now.

“O’Brien?”

“If that is the one who bled on you, then yes. O’Brien.”

“Mmhh, I guess someone who’d bite her, is a friend of mine. Okay.”

He drew the cover to unstrap the old man. He was thin. Just sinews and skin. He must have been thin his entire life, George pondered. Otherwise he’d have wrinkles. Skin not contracting with flesh and all that.

“What’s your name, old man?”

“Chelicere. Alessandro Chelicere.”

“You Italian? How about I call you Alex?”

“Yes, do that. I don’t mind.”

George unscrewed the wingnuts on the straps and loosened them all. First the torso, then hands and last his feet. Alex staid down. Lay there as if he’d forgotten how to move. Then he slowly lifted his right leg over the side of the bed and rose shakily from the mattress and lifted the left leg over and sat up straight. His hospital gown didn’t cover much. George caught himself looking at where the old man’s crotch would be behind the thin cotton but the shadows concealed it. “Hey, it ain’t a chick this...”, George grimaced to himself.

“I am skipping this hospital. You wanna come?”

“Skipping? Ah, yes. I want to skip with you.”

“We need to find some clothes for you. You ain’t coming with me flashing your butt.”

The old man looked straight at him and smiled. There was something unnerving in those unseeing eyes.