Реймонд Хаури - Empire of Lies

This patient didn’t need reassurance or seem nervous. If anything, he seemed coiled up, on edge, watching, studying. Confrontational. And all of it in that unsettling silence.

What’s his story? Ramazan kept wondering, although he wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.

Anbara came in and said, “They’re ready for you.”

Ramazan nodded to the nurse and turned to the patient, noticing from the monitor that the man’s heart rate spiked up at her words—which was not uncommon. But it was unusual in that the man had appeared to be totally undaunted until then.

“I’m going to give you a short-acting sedative now,” Ramazan told him. “Then we’ll wheel you in.”

He was about to squeeze the plunger into the intravenous feed when the man’s arm suddenly lashed out and grabbed Ramazan’s wrist. He held it firmly in place, his grip so tight it hurt Ramazan. His eyes narrowed with menace as, with his other hand, he moved his oxygen mask off to one side, exposing his mouth. Then he spoke for the first time.

“Make sure you don’t screw this up, hakeem, ” he said in a low hiss. “Make sure. Because you and all the rest of you, all of you—you owe me.” He pointed a threatening finger at Ramazan’s face. “None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. None of this—none of you would even exist if I hadn’t done what I did. So get it right. You understand me?”

Ramazan couldn’t breathe. He just stood there, nailed to the spot, paralyzed. Then his free hand came to life and he squeezed the plunger, sending the sedative on its way—the whole lot, in one go. The drug was fast-acting, and within seconds Ramazan felt the man’s grip loosen. He pulled his hand free and, trying to recover his poise, placed it by the patient’s side. He glanced nervously at Anbara and saw his mystified, rattled look reflected in her face.

She didn’t say anything. He didn’t either. He just held her gaze for a second, then dropped his eyes back to his patient.

The man’s gaze was still fixed on him, but it had softened.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Ramazan told him, trying to sound unfazed by what had just happened. “I’m going to give you a painkiller along with the anesthetic, and inshallah ”—if God wills it—“this will all be over before you know it.”

The man’s eyelids had drooped down, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. His mouth was bent in a disturbing half smile. “Make sure, hakeem, ” he muttered, the words coming out slurred. “You owe me. All of you. Even the sultan. He knows.”

Even in this half-gone state, his scowl was still unsettling. Then his words faded into a low mumble, and he drifted off into a stupor.

Anbara replaced the breathing mask over his mouth as his eyelids shuttered. She looked up at Ramazan, her expression one of confusion tinged with fear.

“Let’s wheel him in,” he said.

Throughout the surgery, Ramazan was in a cloud.

Fonseca carried out the valve replacement calmly and expertly, as he had countless times before. Ramazan, however, had to struggle to stay focused. He was still unsettled by the stranger’s weird outburst.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Fonseca. He would, of course—but he didn’t want to do it just before the surgery. He needed some time to process it himself.

Ramazan had enough experience to know that people’s true nature generally did come out under heavy sedation and, to an even greater extent, anesthesia. He’d seen it before surgery, as they spiraled into unconsciousness, and even more strongly after, when it took hours for the drugs to get out of their systems. In that twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, natural tendencies and true temperament were unmasked. Kind, relaxed people were often giggly; aggressive people, hostile. Kids woke up crying for their mothers. Truths were also sometimes revealed, but they were often nothing more than truths that had left their mark on their victims’ bodies as well as their psyches: unwanted pregnancies, cancers, physical abuse. Outwardly brave-faced people confessed their terror at the prospect of never waking up; others shared secrets as if they were in a confession booth, perhaps seeking absolution before possible death.

After the drugs wore off completely, patients generally forgot what they had said.

Somehow, and regardless of how absurd or senseless the stranger’s words had sounded, he’d sensed a puzzling honesty in them. He had a nagging sense that the patient thoroughly believed what he’d said. Which could mean nothing more than that the man was mentally unstable. A nut.

But it wasn’t just what he’d said. Far more perplexing was how he’d said it.

The man spoke in a very strange dialect. Ramazan couldn’t place it. It wasn’t the vernacular Turkish he was used to, the language that had supplanted French as the lingua franca of the region but that, over the centuries, had become infused with an abundance of French words. Instead, it was Ottoman Turkish, the complex imperial language whose use was nowadays limited to bureaucratic documents, scholarly works, and the pretentious conversations of the highly educated elite. Ramazan had rarely heard it spoken in casual conversation. And it wasn’t even the normal Ottoman-Turkish Ramazan knew: the man’s syntax and vocabulary were highly unusual; his manner of speech, formal and rigid. Ramazan considered himself a well-traveled man and had ventured as far as Istanbul and Cairo, but he’d never heard it spoken that way before. It was thoroughly bewildering, and reminded Ramazan of some of the old classical texts he’d read as a student.

Then there were the mirror-image tattoos.

Ramazan couldn’t help but be intrigued. He’d often been told that he had obsessive traits—by Nisreen, who ribbed him about it often; by his father; and by his brother, back when they were close—and, given the precision involved in his work, such traits weren’t uncommon. His colleagues at the hospital often teased him about the ten-minute ritual he followed each time he put in an intravenous cannula. Whether or not he was obsessive, his eyes kept getting drawn to the tattoos throughout the procedure, which ended up taking almost five hours. Although the man’s chest had been freshly shaved by the nurses, Ramazan couldn’t really see much at all. The man’s chest area was open, and what skin was visible was folded and obscured by the retractor, antiseptic solution, and surgical drape.

After watching Fonseca stitch the man up, Ramazan started weaning him off the main anesthetic. Ramazan would keep him intubated and heavily drugged, of course. The feeling of having a breathing tube down his throat, the discomfort, and the very nature of being a patient in intensive care would be as unpleasant as the operation itself. It would be hours before he would wake the man up—how long exactly, he couldn’t tell, since each situation was unique. Although there hadn’t been any complications during the surgery, given the mystery patient’s age and condition Ramazan didn’t expect him to be conscious soon, not before at least five or six hours had passed.

Fonseca left the operating room, leaving the stranger and his recovery in Ramazan’s hands. By the time they wheeled him into the male patients’ intensive care unit, it was late, and Ramazan was exhausted. It was time to go home.

But he couldn’t leave. Not just yet.

He couldn’t resist wanting to know more, despite the voice deep inside him that was warning him to stay away.

He needed to have one last look.

Ramazan watched calmly as the cardiothoracic nurses hooked the patient up to various monitors and IV drips and looped restraints around his hands so he wouldn’t pull his breathing tube out. Nisreen needed to know that Ramazan would be home even later than he’d earlier assumed. He didn’t want to risk waking her up, so he pulled out his mobile phone and sent her a text message. She replied promptly and said she was going to bed. He replied with a “good night,” and the response was a solitary he texting shorthand for bawsa, meaning a kiss, common across the Ottoman Empire, as opposed to the x symbol used in the Americas, which had a Christian, religious origin. Not the most passionate exchange, but then again he didn’t expect her to be in the best of moods, not after the day’s events. And their marriage had long lost what little passion it did have. At least they were still together.