October, 1987

Nobody aspires to be a trafficker of body parts. Undertakers’ progeny aside, what child ever proclaimed: Mommy, when I grow up I want to sell cadavers? As Tom Finley discovered, it just happens. Of course, he was receptive to the opportunity, pursued it even. But that’s how you got ahead. He didn’t intend to squander his chances like most people did: because they didn’t arrive when expected or in the anticipated package, because their rough edges daunted.
    In his case, a forgotten Walkman set events in motion.
    A second year med student, Tom worked four nights a week in the Anatomy Department to help cover living expenses. Little more than a sinecure, the job required only that he hang around and maintain the visitors log. Piling up his textbooks on a spare desk, he would drink a couple of cokes and basically get paid to study, a sweet deal. (After a while you got used to the pervasive malodors of formaldehyde, wet rubber, and cheap pink hand soap). Sure, he might have made more as a bartender or a temp, but the cost in time, not to mention peace of mind, would have been much greater too. All in all he considered this a fair tradeoff.
    Few visitors interrupted Tom’s shift. Once in a while Ravi Gupta, the department’s full-time technician, came in to prep materials—the polite way of referring to the lab’s various repositories of preserved flesh. He and Tom rarely spoke, letting a nod or a wave fulfill the requirements of social nicety. Students and non-teaching staff occupied two very separate worlds, best to leave it that way. When Ravi needed to stay after hours, which wasn’t uncommon, he would approach Tom with a conscientious, aloof formality and relieve him of the responsibility of closing up. As soon as he was alone Ravi had the odd habit of switching off almost every light in the building. Tom found this a little creepy.
    Two conflicting feelings accounted for Tom’s generally neutral stance towards Ravi: sympathy for the technician’s plight and dislike of his attitude. Ravi had once been a med student too, one of them. Then he flunked out. This was just a year prior and due not to stupidity or laziness but a paralyzing bout of depression. Nobody knew the cause. Dejected and terrified of telling his parents, both first generation immigrant doctors with impossible expectations, Ravi had obtained the lab job after much pleading with the department chair. For the time being it enabled him to hide his disgrace from everyone back home in Ohio. With the subterfuge, however, came a thrumming anxiety that sucked all the life out of him, left him distracted and humorless. He didn’t have any friends and deeply resented his now inferior status.
    Big-nosed and bony, Ravi dressed the part of a successful physician. Ludicrously formal for the lab, his clothes were expensive but unfashionable. The students made fun of his preening. His politician’s too neatly parted hair didn’t help his reputation either. Rumor had it he’d shown up to the first day of med school in a suit. “Probably born that way” somebody snickered. But if anything, Ravi’s slacks, shirts and blazers were too well pressed; he never appeared comfortable in them. And close scrutiny revealed his fastidiousness to be inconsistent, more feigned than natural. Flakes of dandruff speckled his shoulders. His drugstore cologne overwhelmed. His socks didn’t always match.
    Tom could overlook a little feeble posturing (we’re all guilty right?); it was Ravi’s air of grievance that really irked him. Ravi gave the impression that somebody, or something—the university, god, his parents, his peers—had done him irreparable harm. Tom chafed at this cop-out attitude every time Ravi refused to look him in the eye, every time he puttered about the lab with self-pitying indifference to the task at hand, every time he unleashed one of his oh so doleful suspirations. It was as if he was trying to implicate you in his misery. No wonder people avoided him.
    The night Tom discovered Ravi’s secret, a raging thunderstorm had just abated. Spring was invasive, invigorating; it seeped in through the pores, tickled the nostrils, and quickened the pulse. Preoccupied with cramming for a difficult exam, Tom remained immune to the lure. Tendons, muscles, ligaments, blood and organs engrossed him. Even Ravi’s odd behavior didn’t register; skittish and insistent, he’d practically pushed Tom out the door the instant his shift ended. Tom never looked up from the open textbook still clutched in his hands.
    Outside, blown-down branches lay scattered across the slick, black streets. The sharp, split points where they’d been ripped from their trunks made Tom think of fractured bones.
     “I need to get a grip,” he told himself.
    He missed the Walkman two blocks later when he went to play a Talking Heads tape. Right away he knew he would have to go back. Somebody would surely pilfer it if he didn’t. This meant missing the next bus, but the Walkman was a prized possession. He listened to it several hours a day. It kept him sane by blocking out the world and he couldn’t afford another one.
    With a reluctant about face, Tom doubled back. Moving at a trot, his shadowy form bowed over from the weight of his backpack full of medical tomes, he looked a little like a soldier on a forced march. The lab was as dark as he’d left it, but he didn’t doubt Ravi’s presence inside.
    Repeated pounding on the front door brought no answer. Determined to miss no more than one bus, Tom circled around to try the back door. The wet lawn squelched under his sneakers and the damp seeped through them into his socks.
    Almost to the back, Tom heard voices. An instinctual tingle of fear made him pause. “Coward,” he scoffed an instant later. Except the feeling only grew stronger: something wasn’t right. Without really intending to, he shifted into a poor ninja impersonation and snuck forward to peek around the corner.
    An idling black hearse, its contours unmistakable, was backed up to the loading dock. Its headlights had been left on; their beams shattered against the wall of the facing building. A garbage can propped open the rusty metal door that led into the lab. Ravi and another man shrouded in darkness were coaxing a squeaking steel gurney across its threshold.
     “We need some momentum. There’s a ridge here blocking the wheels,” Ravi directed, a whiny prickle to his impatience.
    The other man grunted, but whether out of displeasure or acknowledgment it was impossible to tell, and then heaved to. With a clatter, the gurney emerged into the light. Atop it lay two clear plastic bags that reminded Tom of the inner package of a box of cereal. Then he realized that instead of Lucky Charms they were stuffed full of severed appendages and at least two limbless torsos.
    Striding up to the edge of the dock as if a proscenium, Ravi assumed the role of lookout. His companion, meanwhile, grabbed one of the bags without hesitation and chucked it into the back of the hearse like everyday garbage. This easy callousness towards the dead disconcerted Tom far more than any of the scene’s other macabre details.
     “Don’t you ever worry about getting caught?”
    Nearly shouting the question, Ravi froze in panic when he realized how far into the night his voice had just carried.
    The other man turned to reply, the second bag firmly grasped in his right hand. At last Tom could see him clearly. There was, disappointingly, nothing of the gangster about him: graying ponytail, round, wire-rimmed glasses, dangling double chin, jeans, tweed blazer over a bright red t-shirt. As he spoke he rested his free hand across the top of his considerable potbelly.
     “Not really. I’m not doing anything illegal,” he said. “Is that all of them?”
    Ravi nodded, throwing off his paralysis with effort. A pent-up burst of nervous gestures followed: he jammed his hands into his pockets; removed them; ran one through his hair; rubbed his nose; shifted his weight; attempted a nonchalant pose. Tom shook his head. The technician couldn’t have looked any guiltier.
    With an inaudible comment, the pony-tailed man handed Ravi a white envelope. Then, in a trenchant series of motions, he closed up the hearse and they parted abruptly and without pleasantries, reinforcing the illicit tone of the exchange. Tom retreated back to the front of the building.
    Fearing that Ravi might appear, he hastened on down the block. Already a scheme had lodged itself in Tom’s thoughts, a devious seed that wouldn’t be displaced. For it to work, Ravi couldn’t be allowed to suspect that his gruesome secret had been discovered. That disclosure would come soon enough. Going back for the walkman was therefore out of the question; it would have to be sacrificed.
    Tom would have been the first to admit, and proudly, that most people would have considered seeking profit in Ravi’s misdeeds to be wrong, if not flat out reprehensible. This only heightened the appeal. Subjected to a strict Catholic education, Tom had come out of the formative experience with a powerful aversion to nuns, school uniforms, and the entire concept of confession. No longer the feisty young rebel who’d once spray painted a quote from Nietszche across a gymnasium wall, every so often he still needed to do something a little dangerous or outrageous to reestablish his maverick identity, even if only for his own benefit. Even better, he liked to break the rules without getting caught. It made him feel superior. Throw in a chance to make some money and you had an irresistible lure.
    At the bus stop, an express was just pulling out. Tom broke into a sprint and chased it down as it rounded the corner. Breathing hard, he stepped into the fluorescent interior, where he was subjected to the appraising stares of the other passengers. Soon I’ll never have to ride one of these again, he promised himself.
    Once ensconced in the back across an empty row of seats, he attempted to study but his thoughts kept drifting back to the bag of limbs. Who would have ever guessed that straitlaced Ravi had it in him?
    Outside the streetlights passed in a stop-motion blur through the rain speckled windows. Just how much cash, Tom wondered, had been in that envelope? Cause it sure as hell hadn’t been a love letter.

~

Tom revealed his scheme to Meredith two days later, once he was confident he could pull it off. He expected her to disapprove but went ahead anyway, mostly because the need to confide in someone had become overpowering.
    A man, any man, would have been preferable. There simply wasn’t anyone. His friends, whose ranks seemed to thin with every passing year, were spread across the country. He might have telephoned Robbie or Will, but he felt certain both would only make him regret doing so. Robbie could be counted on to disapprove and Will always had to rush off thirty seconds into any conversation. Among Tom’s present classmates he could claim just a few acquaintances, none of whom he trusted well enough to share such an important secret with. Which left only Meredith or his mother, no choice at all.
    Meredith’s apartment was small and cluttered. Crooked stacks of books rose up from odd spots all across the floor, as if part of some demented obstacle course. Strewn papers covered the rickety, formica topped dining table; just boiling water in the tiny kitchenette was a challenge. The very far end of the studio was filled by a queen-sized futon in a cheap, unfinished pine frame. Tom never slept well in it. Nonetheless, he usually stayed over three or four nights a week and disliked when she came to his place. Without fail she made a mess and lingered longer than he wanted.
    At the moment, Meredith was seated at her desk before her computer, legs crossed. One volume of the complete OED, her most prized possession, lay open on her lap. A few feet away, Tom leaned against the back of her shabby brown sofa.
     “You won’t believe what I saw the other night,” he announced.
     “Wait a sec, just let me save this document.”
    Punching a key, Meredith set the dictionary atop the desk and swiveled about. Tom began his account, sparing no details, and she listened with polite interest and appropriate expressions of horror.
    Always a severe dresser, tonight she wore a black skirt with ornate lace trim and a tshirt, also black but of a different shade. Since she was at home she wasn’t wearing a bra and her considerable breasts stretched the shirt taut, causing her nipples to poke forth prominently. Tom found the sight extremely distracting. Attractive according to the full-bodied, Victorian ideal, with big hands, thick wrists and fleshy arms, Meredith wasn’t generally Tom’s type. Taken individually her features were all quite fine; as a composite, however, they didn’t achieve the comely harmony they promised. They were like a drawing whose perspective is off. For Tom, her bosom really was the focal point of her attractiveness.
    Intelligent, but not half the exalted degree she pretended to be, uptight and regimented in her habits, Meredith moved with calculated poise, as if she were on camera, wore her long, teak-brown hair up in a bun with two Chinese pins stuck through it and never consumed more than two drinks in a night. She rarely laughed and never from the gut. Their sex life was a little strange but generally the best part of the relationship. She insisted on showering both before and after coitus, while during she usually made a tremendous racket. But her shouting and moaning and flailing always seemed a tad forced, if not downright faked, whether for his benefit or her own Tom could never quite decide.
    Six months old, their relationship had been in steady decline for at least the last two. Several times Tom had decided to end it without actually carrying through. He could tell Meredith sensed his discontent but so far she hadn’t confronted him about it.
    Finishing his tale, Tom broached his intention to blackmail Ravi. Meredith’s features instantly hardened. It was as if he’d just said something racist. She refused to look him in the eye and began smoothing her skirt with fidgety hands. “I really hope you’re kidding,” she said with a frown. “It would be foolhardy to risk your career on such an… escapade. Not to mention immoral.”
     “Sorry to disappoint but I’m not kidding,” Tom assured her.
     “Don’t be daft,” she replied. “You can’t go around blackmailing people on a whim. And certainly not based on some questionable, aleatory encounter. There’s not even a clear mea culpa here. For all you know this Ravi might have been engaged in a legitimate transaction.”
     “Obviously I need something more substantial. And I’ve got it.”
     “It?” She pronounced the word with all the condescending skepticism she could muster. “Could you possibly be any more vague?”
    Tom recognized that she was about to enter her “classroom debate mode”. Allowed to proceed, she would hammer the issue to death. He decided he would rather take a running leap straight out her fifth floor window than undergo that.
     “There won’t be anything vague about me walking out that door,” he warned.
     “Ok, ok, fine, sorry,” Meredith relented. “Tell me what you did.”
    Tom gave her a long, challenging look but eventually resumed. The story was desperate to be let out, like a grasshopper imprisoned in a glass jar. “Last night while I had the lab to myself I borrowed the janitor’s keys under false pretenses and let myself into Ravi’s office.”
    Meredith’s eyes widened. “That’s criminal.”
     “Whatever. The important thing is that after a little digging around in his files I got the goods. Just as I suspected he’s been skimming body parts from storage and doctoring the records. You wouldn’t notice unless you were specifically looking for something amiss.”
     “Don’t tell me you stole the files?” Meredith leaned forward from the edge of her seat with accusatory menace, as if about to leap at him.
     “No, just made photocopies of the transfer records. Calm the fuck down.”
    Tom had never before spoken so savagely to her. Her lips quivered with indignation. But she sank back into her chair a little and, after uncrossing and re-crossing her legs (impatiently, not seductively), she made a visible effort to adopt a more conversational tone. “And now you’re going to demand money not to turn them in to the authorities?”
     “Exactly. It’s perfect. Look, nobody’s being hurt here. Those corpses are all as dead as they can get. It’s not like the University isn’t robbing me blind.”
     “Tom, that’s such disgusting cupidity,” Meredith huffed. On track to become an academic, her zealotry in defense of institutions of higher learning could always be relied upon. “I can’t believe how much I misjudged you. You’re a total reprobate.”
    Groaning, Tom covered his face with his hands. She was at it again with her chronic sesquipadality. Irritating enough under regular circumstances, it positively outraged him during their disagreements, sometimes so greatly that he would write down a list of her most preposterous words as she spewed them. He particularly detested a number of her pet terms and phrases, among them: “in high dudgeon”, “beyond the pale”, “spurious”, “syncretic” and, oh so ironically, “logorrhea”. Yet the embarrassing truth was that her erudition had initially been a big part of her attractiveness.
    When you got down to it, Meredith wasn’t as genuine as he’d first supposed either. Admitting to these flaws had taken Tom so long primarily because he persisted in misunderstanding her actions according to a number of hastily formed preconceptions about her. Nearly finished with her PHD in English Lit— her thesis was on obscure Elizabethan women writers—she spoke in a clipped, deliberate voice with an affected hint of British pronunciation. Hearing tow-mah-tow from a girl from the wealthy suburbs outside Detroit made him cringe. At such times his only recourse was to focus on those wonderful, jiggly breasts.
     “Yeah, well, that’s easy for someone like you to say,” he retorted.
     “What does that mean?”
     “You know exactly what it means: rich and spoiled. Jesus, I’m barely scraping by here. I need every penny I can get. I don’t have the luxury of being so self-righteous.”
    The criticism struck home. Meredith did everything possible to distance herself from her upper middle class upbringing while at the same time shamelessly relying upon the financial benefits of it.
     “What hypocrisy!” she sputtered. “Are you honestly suggesting you’re so impecunious that you have to resort to crime? Let’s be honest: you’re just doing it for the thrill, for the rebellious gesture. You’re such a child at heart.”
     “Better that than a pedant. Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I don’t give a shit what you think.”
     “Take that back.”
     “No.”
     “In that case I don’t see any point in us being together.”
     “Fine, you said it. Let me get my things.”
    Tom began to walk away, his sense of relief burgeoning with every step. The decision was a long time coming. Then he perceived the aura of enmity radiating from Meredith. In her chair she remained perfectly, balefully still, unwilling to accept the finality of the parting—or at least the manner. She liked to have the last word and this wasn’t it.
    Suddenly Tom had the terrible suspicion she was going to betray him out of spite. He halted and a nasty, calculating aggressiveness displaced whatever remaining sympathy he felt for her. She would only do so at her own peril.
     “You wouldn’t be thinking of telling on me now would you?”
    Meredith started to interrupt but he held up his hand. “Don’t even say it. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t get any ideas of revenge up there on your high horse. Remember, I know about that time you plagiarized. Accident or not, I doubt the Dean will by very sympathetic... Go there and it’s tit for tat baby. Tit for tat.”
    Meredith went pale. This was her darkest secret, harbored with obsessive vigilance; she had persistent nightmares about its discovery. For a moment it appeared she might faint; instead she began sobbing and hid her face from his view.
     “Get out of here then and don’t come back,” she ordered him in a choked voice. “You are such a bloody knave.”
    Tom started to laugh at this but checked himself when realized that perhaps the usage was sarcastic. “Well, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow when you’re at class to collect the things I have here. I’ll leave the key on the table.”
    She watched him go with teary, hateful eyes. He didn’t mind the long walk home alone.

~

Rex Dufresne lit up a menthol cigarette with a paper match and scratched his whiskery chin. A cup of black coffee rested on the table before him. Some of it had spilled over into the saucer, pooling in its grooves. He hated when that happened. Beside him, Ravi was drinking a coke. Tom had opted for an iced tea. They were seated in a half-moon corner booth at an out of the way diner off the highway.
    Today Rex sported the same outfit as three nights earlier, except the shirt was white and emblazoned with the tri-color slashes of The Police’s Synchronicity album. Bowlegged and pidgeon-toed, he’d sauntered in some twenty minutes late without apology. He had a laid back, ex-hippy air and a cordial manner. At least with Tom. Ravi received only a sharp nod in greeting.
    Nobody had addressed Tom’s proposal yet so Rex cleared his throat pointedly. Phlegm crackled and strained breath wheezed up from somewhere down in the tar pits of his lungs. He regarded Tom, cigarette smoke drifting between them. Then his lips parted a crack in a tight grin, revealing yellow teeth like old ivory. “So you want in on the action eh?”
     “Just Ravi’s action,” noted Tom. The distinction seemed important.
     “Hmm.” Taking a drag off his cigarette, Rex idly surveyed the diner. As he did so he ran his tongue across his teeth in an attempt to dislodge a strand of rhubarb from the slice of pie he’d just consumed. “Don’t you just love these old greasy spoons?” he remarked to nobody in particular before returning his attention to Tom. The younger man wasn’t what he’d anticipated. Instead of someone swarthy and conniving he was blond and good looking, in an unfinished sculpture sort of way, with a wide mouth and blunt, masculine features.
    Tom stared back and Rex looked away, but not too quickly.
     “Let’s be clear on one thing for starters,” he said. “You don’t threaten my interests the way you do Ravi’s. My business is perfectly legitimate. Maybe you’ve heard of us? A Cut Above? We service medical conferences and training sessions nationwide. Now, it is true that we sometimes have to resort to unorthodox arrangements in order to obtain our materials. Case in point Ravi here.”
    Tom noted the patronizing way he pronounced the technician’s name, stringing it out to: Rah-vee. Staring petulantly out the window, the third man pretended not to notice. He wasn’t fooling anybody.
     “But, hey, to turn a profit we tissue suppliers have to cultivate all kinds of sources. Many are in the funeral business, as you’ve probably guessed. Others are a little more unusual. It’s a legal grey area, you see, lots of room to operate, as long as you keep a low profile.”
    Rex inflected these last words with extra significance. The implicit meaning was clear enough. Meanwhile, a busboy approached, coffee pot in hand, to refill Rex’s cup. Rex waved him off.
     “The fact is, I’m in the vanguard of a promising new industry,” he declared with conviction. “I’m one of the key players, one of the people laying the groundwork. We’re practically unregulated. The longer it stays that way the better. Better for us and better for science. So I’m inclined to permit you this little extortion, as long as you don’t get any greedier and Ravi consents. However, I do have one question first: why? Why would a doctor-to-be like yourself want to get mixed up in this unglamorous business?”
     “Mixed up is a strong word,” said Tom. “Why don’t we say ‘turn a blind eye’?”
    Again the busboy came over to refill Rex’s cup and again he waved him away, this time throwing in a glower for good measure. Tom noticed a thick gold Rolex peeking out from under his outstretched sleeve.
     “Semantics. Keep talking.”
     “Hey, I’m not hurting anyone. You said it yourself: the body parts are still going towards medical research.”
     “True.”
     “Well, moral qualms aside, I’m in this for self-interest, pure and simple.” Pausing, Tom chose his next words carefully. “Basically, I grew up without a lot of money and I’m not about to spend the rest of my life that way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not greedy. I don’t have lavish tastes. I just want to be comfortable. I want to be able to enjoy life, travel some, have a little cottage somewhere on the beach, order whatever I feel like at restaurants. To do that I need to get through med school. And to do that I need to be able to eat.”
     “Yeah, I get it. Want a sure fire way to get rich? Become a doctor. Nothing original there.”
    Tom reddened. “Maybe not but that’s only half the equation. I do want to help people. I do have a moral incentive for becoming a doctor. But hey, the money has to be there too. Not everyone can be expected to join the Peace Corps. I don’t know any real life saints, do you?”
     “Ok, fine. That’s a reason I can understand.”
    Rex very deliberately pushed his cup and saucer to the center of the table. Tom wasn’t certain if the gesture represented acquiescence to his demands or was intended for the busboy’s benefit. Nobody spoke. In the background dishes clattered in the kitchen while from the front the diner’s archaic cash register popped open with a declarative ring. Tom felt acutely aware of his precise location in time and space. It had the sudden strangeness that only the most mundane surroundings can achieve.
     “So what do you say Rav? Not that you’ve got much choice.” Chuckling, Rex added, “Man, he’s really got you by the cajones eh?”
    Ravi’s lips clamped into an acrimonious frown. He tried to mask his anger but did a poor job; it pulsated in the muscles of his livid face and showed in the tightness around his eyes. Once again he was being unfairly persecuted and there was nothing he could do about it. He certainly wasn’t about to throw away his arrangement with Rex. It was much too valuable. By swindling the university he was getting both revenge and recompense. Like Tom he desired money, but far more voraciously. If he couldn’t be a doctor, then he intended to become fabulously rich. Wealth, he believed, brought his best hope of countering his family’s unending criticisms. And no immediate prospect offered more than a partnership with Rex. Although he didn’t look it or act it, the guy was loaded.
    For the first time since sitting down and retreating into his mute sulk, Ravi looked directly at Tom. And as he’d known he would have to all along, he capitulated with a shrug. “Fine. But only until you graduate. Agreed?”
     “Agreed.”
    Tom tried to keep his expression stern but his glee peeked through anyway, like a poker player’s does when he’s sweeping up a big mound of chips. He was going to pull it off!
    “Then it’s settled,” concurred Rex.
    He rose, his paunch scraping against the edge of the table in the process, and threw down a twenty from a thick wad of bills. One at a time the three men sidled out of the booth, their aloofness from one another adding to their conspiratorial air. From the swinging kitchen door the busboy raised a middle finger at Rex’s departing figure.
    Outside, the hazy air smelled of fresh cut grass and exhaust fumes. A succession of trucks thundered past on the raised highway nearby, drowning out all other sound. They parted without words in the diner’s parking lot, which was cracked and weedy, its painted stripes faded and hard to see. Each headed off in a different direction: Ravi on a ten-speed bike, Tom walking and Rex in a new model white Mercedes.
    Two weeks later, Tom’s first tax-free payment arrived: three, crisp hundred dollar bills in an unmarked envelope. Talk about easy money. He brought them to his nose. Ahh, that incomparable cash smell.
    Now he just needed to find a lady to spend some of it on.

July, 2005

The operating room’s low, paneled ceiling pressed like a coffin lid. Tom stared up at it, striving hard to maintain his composure. This wasn’t so easy. Nearby an unsympathetic blond nurse busied herself prepping needles and other surgical paraphernalia. On the wall behind her was one of those plain, white faced, black lettered institutional clocks that are used in practically every schoolroom and government building. To Tom eyes its hands seemed to move at half speed, as if it were trying to defy time.
    Things were running twenty minutes behind schedule already. He wasn’t particularly surprised. These delays happened all the time and for all sorts of reasons, usually trivial ones. But at least the nurse might have feigned a little urgency.
    Lying on the operating table wasn’t exactly comfortable either. For one thing his ass hurt. For another his balls seemed ready to peek out through the breezy opening between the legs of his threadbare, aquamarine gown, which was worn thin from thousands of washings. Just acknowledging these prior occupants gave Tom the creeps.
    Again and again his thoughts kept returning to his present crisis. The procedure he required wasn’t particularly dangerous (the survival rate was over ninety-five percent), just obscure. Also urgent: waiting even the extra day it would have taken to have it done back home posed considerable risk. It was sheer serendipity that the hospital in the small, coastal town where he, Anne and the kids were vacationing had a doctor on staff qualified to perform it. There was, however, one cause for concern: the fellow had never actually done so… In making his decision, Tom had allowed Anne to persuade him to follow his own professional assessment and not his instinct. The theoretical merits of this approach, however, were less comforting by the minute.
    So, any time now he would be going under the knife. A half hour tops. Or so he had to believe. Anything longer than that would be unbearable. An easy, simple surgery. Nothing to worry about. Barring a shaky hand or inept anesthesiologist of course…
    Relax, Tom ordered himself. Talk to the nurse. She’s cute at least, even if she’s wearing more makeup than a TV news anchor.
     “Hey, any word?” he asked
     “Very soon, I’m sure,” she said in that reassuring yet noncommittal tone nurses all adopt.
    Tom took this as a slight. She wasn’t supposed to be talking to him that way. She knew he was a doctor, privy to all the trade secrets, immune to such tactics. Show a little respect—was that too much to ask? Probably hoping for too much from all the ninnies and rubes running the place. He’d visited more impressive veterinarian’s offices.
     “Would you mind checking?”
    She stopped her preparations, her suddenly stiff bearing betraying her reluctance. “Sure, if that will make you feel better.”
     “Thanks.”
    Treading across the grey tile floor on her spotless white sneakers, the nurse departed with bovine sluggishness. Tom’s eyes lingered on the enticing curve of her rear. She would be terrible in a real emergency, he decided. Her attractiveness was nothing but a liability. And probably the only reason they’d hired her in the first place. Typical.
    Again he found his hands moving of their own volition, this time fiddling with the plastic identity band around his wrist. Surgical steel gleamed from the array of scalpels, scissors and clamps on a raised tray to his left. A steady beep emanated from the EKG; the other electrical equipment hummed; a pair of defibrillators rested casually atop their charger.
    Within moments his isolation turned oppressive. All day fear had gnawed at him, ever since the blood tests verifying the initial diagnosis had come back. But he’d managed to hold it at bay, despite its feints, flanking maneuvers, and end runs. Now it struck with a full frontal assault and Tom capitulated. His mental ramparts were overrun, his emotional walls breached, his reserves of courage ransacked. Inconceivable a day earlier, suddenly his demise could be said to be pending, to be fait accompli. This truth had an eviscerating impact. Very soon he would be dead. Deceased. Done for. A corpse. Shortly thereafter a formaldehyde injected corpse. Then a vermiculate one. Just like all those poor sons of bitches Ravi used to peddle.
    The memory was long untapped and jolting. Tom suddenly wished he could take a walk, loosen up. What had spurred it anyway? These morbid associations? Probably. Even so, he didn’t have any regrets. The money had proved invaluable, especially after his father’s sudden death. Nobody ever found out. Meredith kept her mouth shut and he met Anne. It was the perfect crime all right.
    So why this panic? The removed, clinical voice in his head, the one with the doctor’s clinical logic, provided the obvious answer: buried guilt. False, clinging, insistent guilt. Being free of these conditioned responses was easier said than done, he reflected. Like Raskalnikov, like plenty of murderers discovered, the subconscious could be even the smartest man’s undoing.
    “Get a grip buddy, you’re no murderer,” he told himself. The distinction was surprisingly comforting.
    Out in the hall, footsteps approached. The door opened with a creak and the blond nurse returned accompanied by his two doctors, the one young and genial, the other older and sterner. Both men were laconic, wore unfashionable, rectangular glasses, and kept pens clipped to their shirt pockets. While they were exchanging greetings with Tom the anaestheseologist arrived. A prim, middle-aged Korean woman with a smooth, oval face and a heady floral perfume, she introduced herself and then went straight to work. Serious and efficient, she reviewed Tom’s file and then prepped his shots with reassuring competence. Maybe there was hope after all.
    Soon, oxygen mask over his mouth, suspended surgical light positioned directly above him, blinding as the sun, Tom awaited the onset of the anesthesia. Any time now, he noted with expert detachment.
    Across the room the two doctors were huddled together in last minute discussion. Though they spoke in lowered voices, Tom could just barely make out their words.
     “Did I tell you I practiced this procedure on a corpse a few years ago?” related the younger one, who would be leading the operation.
     “No, really? Where?”
     “At one of those special training sessions down in Maryland. Between you and me, I feel much better about today as a result.”
    Tom reacted to this news with a shudder of almost apoplectic force. Alarmed, the anestheseologist rushed to check his vitals.
    Tom lay shocked and still. There was no denying what the connection represented: a death sentence. The odds were too astronomical for it to be a coincidence. There was simply too much twisted symmetry involved, too much tragic irony. When it came to operations, these were bad news. He was going to die on the operating table. It was as if the universe demanded it. Without a doubt, somebody, somewhere, was laughing at him. Better make that cackling.
    From his supine position he chided himself for even contemplating such superstitious claptrap. Coincidences like these were always a little unsettling. So what? Wasn’t that the essence of chance? Fate and sin: these were bogus concepts. There were no true moral absolutes. Comeuppance was never guaranteed, justice never to be expected. What bound people wasn’t god or any immutable higher laws, merely their belief in such abstract notions. In one sense, of course, this didn’t make them any less real or valuable for being self-imposed (or reified, as Meredith would have put it). But, and Tom felt he’d proven this many times over in his life, from Catholic school on (and certainly in his dealings with Rex and Ravi), if you could free yourself from such constraints, there was no reason to ever suffer the consequences, no matter how badly society tried to convince you otherwise.
    These were Tom’s customary rationales and they should have reassured him. Instead they suddenly sounded like a bunch of feeble excuses.
     “I always thought those conferences were overrated myself,” the older doctor remarked. He sounded very far away.
    Tom tried to reach out his hand in protest but it was like lifting a steel beam. Mumbled, incomprehensible pleas formed in his mouth but the anesthesia was kicking in too fast for them to achieve utterance. Above him, the unworldly white light dimmed away to nothing.

~

Four hours later, Tom awoke. Groggy and stiff, he tried to rise as Anne rushed to his side. Leaning over, she pushed him back down while at the same time kissing him firmly on the mouth. He could taste coffee and a cigarette. To Tom’s knowledge she hadn’t smoked in years. When she pulled back they both grinned foolishly at each other, then broke out into giddy fits of relieved laughter. Life affirming laughter, Tom thought, unashamed to be so trite. The kids soon came racing in from the waiting room.
    A precautionary night of observation followed. Deemed fit, he was released the next afternoon. He thanked both surgeons effusively and then practically bounded off down the drab hospital halls, as buoyant as if he were filled with helium. Even the dour nurse at the front reception couldn’t help smiling at his infectious good humor.
    Outside, a resplendent summer sun greeted him. Compared to the cold, sterile hospital air, its rays were tender, beatific. It almost seemed as if they were passing right through him, their salubrious warmth permeating his very core.
    Anne and the kids were waiting parked at the bottom of the hospital’s front steps. My getaway car, Tom thought. He’d insisted on walking out alone, a silly, defiant gesture but one that he couldn’t resist. All three waved from inside as he approached.
    In response, a part of him swelled with affection. Another, however, recoiled. How could they possibly relate to his experience over the last forty-eight hours? It was too intensely personal. It then occurred to Tom that he was in the middle of one of those decisive moments when people find religion. How funny, considering that his response had been the diametric opposite. Survival had only validated his disbelief, proved his last minute doubts were nothing more than mental aberrations. Not that he didn’t consider himself lucky. Though every day survived represented a reprieve from death, some were clearly more significant than others, if only for one’s awareness of the fact. But not even he dared tempt fate by gloating over this victory too much.
    Waving back at his family, he began to descend the steps, still light on his feet but careful to grab the iron railing. Very soon the euphoria of survival would fade. Perhaps the process had begun already. Perhaps his very awareness of this fact was the first sign. Tom knew better than to resist. It would be a waste of effort. Better to focus on enjoying the precious sensation in case it never came again.
    That night, despite her repeated objections, he made Anne promise that she would donate his body to science when he died. It seemed like the least he could do.



About the author:
I live in New York City. My writing has been published in Flak Magazine, the New York Observer, the Muse-Apprentice Guild, Eleven Bulls, Exquisite Corpse, Cross Connect, the New York Resident, and Gravity.

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