Stanislaw Lem - Hospital of the Transfiguration

“Do you feel a ripping and bursting in your chest, a divine fire?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, well. And now you’re in a state because she’s going to Rygier’s? Amor fulminans progrediens in stadio valde periculoso . The diagnosis is a snap. No time for preventive measures. You need treatment.”

Staszek looked at him gloomily. “Don’t be a fool.”

Stefan smiled because it had just occurred to him that if he wanted Nosilewska himself, he would have no trouble at all. “Don’t get angry. I’ll invite her tomorrow—or better yet, after the operation, once I get that off my mind.”

“What do you mean? What’s the difference what’s on your mind?”

“Oh, so you’re jealous of me too!” Stefan laughed. “I’ll get some bromural for you, okay?”

“Thanks, but I have my own.”

Staszek took a book from the shelf: Magic Mountain . He leafed through it, put it down, and took The Green Python instead.

“It’s a detective story. Terrible,” Stefan warned.

“So much the better. Then it’ll fit my mood.”

He headed for the door. Stefan’s sympathy suddenly vanished. “Listen,” he asked, “would you rather if she betrayed you or if something bad happened to her?”

“First, she can’t betray me, because there’s no connection between us. And anyway, what kind of choice is that?”

“It’s a psychological test. Answer.”

Staszek pushed the door open and slammed it as he rushed out. Stefan lay down on the bedspread in his clothes. Belatedly he realized that he had been angry with Staszek all evening because he had been unable to talk to him about the engineer. He got up, went to the shelf, and looked for the neurosurgery text. Maybe Kauters was doing the right thing. But he couldn’t believe that. The text settled nothing. The sheer curtain rustled at the open window. Someone knocked at the door.

It was Kauters.

“Dr. Trzyniecki, please come to the operating room right away.”

Stefan jumped up, but the surgeon was already gone, the fluttering folds of his unbuttoned smock disappearing into the dark corridor. Stefan ran down the stairs, forgetting to turn off the light in his room.

It was a warm, damp night. The wind carried the strong tickling smell of ripe grain. Stefan cut across the grass and ran up the iron steps to the second floor of the surgical wing, dew glistening on his shoes. White figures moved back and forth behind the frosted glass.

The operating room had begun as a small facility for procedures such as draining abcesses, to avoid having to transport patients to town. But there had been room for expansion, and Kauters had seized the opportunity. Now there was a table that could handle any kind of operation, along with oxygen bottles, a wall-mounted electric bone cutter, and a diathermal unit that resembled an oversized radio. A short passageway, lined with the usual little yellow tiles, led to a second room where rows of chemical bottles, piles of rubber hoses, and linen under a glass bell stood on metal tables. Two wide cabinets held instruments neatly laid out on perforated trays. This corner full of sharp scalpels, hooks, and pincers glimmered even in the dark. Balls of catgut were soaking in amber lugol on a separate table. Rows of glass tubes containing white silk sutures shined on a shelf above.

Sister Gonzaga rolled the instrument cart up to the massive, three-legged operating table. Next she brought up the big nickel sterilizers, that looked like beehives on their high stands. Stefan was disoriented. He could not ask the nurse who the patient was. Gonzaga had already begun scrubbing up, so he threw on a long rubber apron and began to soap his hands under a roaring stream of water. Drops splashed onto the mirror and left opal tracks as they rolled down the mercury surface. White suds formed a ring in the basin.

Suddenly he heard Kauters’s voice inside. “Take it easy, will you?” Then there was a deep sigh, as if someone was lifting a weight. Through the swinging doors, Stefan saw the bald head of the older male orderly, Joseph, who had Rabiewski’s inert form draped over his shoulder. He set him down on the table with a bang.

Kauters, pulling on white rubber galoshes, asked the nurse, “Are the first and second sets ready?”

“Yes, doctor.”

Tying the ribbons of his apron behind his neck, the surgeon stepped on the water pedal and began scrubbing up, his movements automatic.

“Are the syringes ready?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Make sure the needles are sharp.”

He spoke mechanically, without even looking at the table. Joseph undressed Rabiewski, turned him onto his back, tied his arms and legs to handles with white straps, and began to shave his head with a straight razor, without lather. Stefan could not bear the dull scraping sound.

“For the love of God, Joseph, use a little soap and water!”

Joseph mumbled—when Kauters was around, he listened to no one else—but finally decided to moisten the engineer’s head. Rabiewski’s breathing was slow and shallow. Holding a few wisps of gray hair, Joseph attached a large anode pad to the patient’s thigh and drew back from the table. Sister Gonzaga finished scrubbing with her third brush, dropped it into the bag, and walked toward the sterilizer with upraised hands. Joseph helped her on with a yellow mask, a coat, and thin fabric gloves. Next she went to the instrument stand, where three trays were still wrapped in the compresses in which they had come out of the autoclave. She unpinned the fabric and laid out the shining steel tweezers and rods in order of their importance.

Stefan and Kauters finished scrubbing at the same time. Stefan had to wait while the surgeon rinsed his hands in undiluted alcohol, and when his turn came, he held his fingers under the thin, stinging stream. Shaking his hands dry, he looked at them with concern.

“I have a splinter,” he said, angrily touching the red spot near his fingernail. Kauters was putting on his rubber gloves, having a hard time with it because they were out of talc and his hands were wet.

“Don’t worry. He certainly does not have PP. Anyway, things like that don’t happen in the brain.”

Joseph, unsterilized, was standing back from the table.

“Lights!” the surgeon commanded. Joseph threw a switch, the transformer roared, and the large flat Jupiter angled over the table ringed them in a bluish light.

Kauters turned to the window for a moment. His face, masked up to the eyes, seemed darker than usual. The doctors approached the patient from opposite sides of the table. Joseph leaned nonchalantly against the sink, the reflection of his bald head like a sunflower in the mirror.

They began covering Rabiewski with compresses. Fishing them from the sterilizer with long forceps, Gonzaga was virtually hurling them into the surgeon’s hands. The large squares of overlapping sterile cloth were laid from the patient’s torso to his face. Stefan was pinning them together on the other side of the table.

“What are you doing? To the skin, to the skin!” the surgeon snapped sharply but quietly, plucking the fold of skin with his pincers. Though he had long grown accustomed to the sight of bodies being cut open, Stefan could never stop himself from shuddering when the compresses at the site of an operation were pinned to a patient’s skin, even when he knew the patient was under anesthesia. And the engineer was merely unconscious. At just that moment the figure under the cloth trembled, grinding his teeth like flint scraping glass. Stefan automatically looked at Kauters. The surgeon looked back, then gestured as if to say: Go ahead and use a local anesthetic if it makes you happy.

After putting iodine on the portion of the head that stuck out of the tight ring of compresses, Stefan injected novocaine in several places and lightly rubbed the bumps the needle left on the skin. When Stefan had thrown away the iodine-stained pad, the surgeon reached back without looking. Sister Gonzaga placed the first scalpel in his hand. He touched the steel blade to the forehead, then made an oval incision. Kauters cleared away the connecting tissue down to the bone, using anatomical pincers that made a dull grating sound. Then he laid the instruments on the patient’s chest and reached for the trepan, an egg-shaped motor connected to an auger by a steel snake. Gonzaga stood immobile, several instruments in each raised hand. Stefan had just managed to blot the bright red streaks of blood around the incision when Kauters turned on the trepan. He held it like a pen. The auger bit into the bone, pitching out little particles that formed a line of bloody paste along the incision.