Meeting a Stranger

I stood beneath my attending’s towering frame. My knees were buckling from standing and the crease in my new sneakers were sharpening as I periodically rose on my toes for a clearer window. I was unaware of the plan for this patient, as I’d walked in with his body face down on the operating table. I’d never met this man; but even if I did, all he’d know of me would be concealed by a mask and gown. All I’d known of him would be a tragic tale carried in the hush murmurs of the hospital walls.

I’d watch my attending squarely adjust his scalpel in between the crease of his palm. Each fiber of fascia yielded softly to the blade. His wrist revolved with each pierce to the natural curve of the skull. A light mirrored in the scissors I interlocked with my slim fingers, while I shuffled tirelessly in my shoes for my cue. I kept my arm tucked to open a sliver, inching with a tremble. As I push the blades together, the strings fall apart under the pull of tension. I do it again, then again, leaving a row of uneven tails dangling from the scalp- until a voice cuts the stillness thick with focus.

“The art of surgery lays in the focus of precision and uniformity. That’s what you are striving for when you’re in this OR.”

I nodded, kneeling to unlatch the safety belt when I faced a cross tattooed on the patient’s wrist. My gaze lingered there before shifting up to a face I had failed to see—on a human I had forgotten to recognize. I looked around, wondering if I was the only one to have gotten misguided by my unawareness. I’d wondered if the naivety nestled into my identity of a student would continue to construct and dismantle my own understandings of medicine. Like how the art of surgery may actually lay in an imbalanced dichotomy, a constant negotiation between a defined precision and raw humanity. That the skill of healing may never be fully detached from the disarray of empathy.

“You got some blood on your shoe.”

I look down to the darkened splotch. I sigh, carrying it with me as I treaded out.