Chapter 1: Brave New World
"I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels." – Henry VIII
I don't want comfort. Leave that to those who are satisfied with complacency. I want challenge. I want real danger. I want the thrill of the feel of a beating heart within my hands. I want freedom. I want goodness. I want sin.
There's a dignity in failure, however painful it may be. At the end of the day I can learn from a mistake – and do better the next. The same can't be said for mediocrity. How do you judge a body of work that's nowhere near noteworthy, yet far too flawless to condemn? Lately, we've all become too cautious. With cancer and bus wrecks, mergers and liver transplants – it's not hard to see why surviving each day intact and employed has been the new hallmark of success. But string together too many of these days and what do you get? Endless hours of "nothing great." Weeks and months of "that was fine."
I put 12 years of higher education to use in trying to maneuver my way into a surgery. It wasn't even a good surgery. We gave an old man an erection. Can you imagine? From cardiothoracics to penile implants – how the mighty have fallen.
Burke's hands were beautiful. They were solid, strong, graceful, and deft. Most importantly, they possessed the ability to heal hearts. So what if, in the end, they were used to break mine? Even still, they cut and stitched a patchwork of armor that defied death and even God himself. Could there be anything more powerful than that? In all honesty I can say that I don't miss the man. But I do miss his hands.
Owen has always been about the team. My brother's success is my success. My failures are his as well. It's the only way to survive the world of trauma surgery. You do whatever part you can to save the most number of lives possible. It calls for speed and inventiveness, but it doesn't call for brilliance. It doesn't demand the arrogance or the ego of a heart surgeon. In this way he can't understand our way of thinking. I don't blame him for that. But Burke's hands would have understood.
The human heart beats 72 times a minute. It amounts to 2.5 billion times in a lifespan. When a patient comes in for a procedure, we stop their heart completely. You stop it so that, when it starts again, it has the chance to reach that 2.5 billion benchmark. Seattle Grace's heartbeat has stopped. And lately, I've lost confidence in the hospital's ability to restart.
There are people who can find satisfaction in family and friends alone. I don't know how they do it. Happiness, for me, exists within the four walls of an operating room. Euphoria emerges from the cracked opening of a chest. Comfort comes from the stitches sewn into a heart. Joy comes from the saving of a life. Love is expressed, not through words, but by work – through the hands. I desperately miss his hands.
It's a brave new world for everyone here at the hospital. I just can't help feeling that it's not the right one for me anymore.