Author's Note: I'm not a doctor, though I do wish to become a psychologist later in life. Please, don't hesitate to tell me if any imagined medical scenarios of mine are batshit crazy. I'll try my best to at least make everything -seem- authentic. Even better, just critique me in general. I wouldn't be writing if it wasn't for opinions.
Transplantation
Chapter 1: The Attempt
A young boy hid under an illuminated bed cover, reading an old Earth book at midnight. Its spine was cracked and the pages were yellow from age. The boy handled it as if it were Prothean, or his father's. He moved his lips while he read, lost in the words.
"Perform a median sternotomy, which, of course, exposes the mediastinum. Cut open the pericardium, and dissect the great vessels…"
A flashlight flickered, and the boy cursed. He climbed out of his bed in silence, and set his book – carefully, with reverence – inside the leftmost drawer of his computer desk. He tried to go to sleep, but couldn't. He was up all night thinking of hearts, and empty chest cavities.
A man sat on one of the many padded benches that lined the Barnard Medical Center's waiting lobby. He was near the constantly revolving entrance doors, and as far away from the receptionist as possible. Every few minutes, he would sneak glances at her and then look away again, as if ashamed. After half an hour, at a quarter past noon, his name was called. He walked, slow as an elcor, toward the voice. Songbirds flew around the room, twittering and mimicking the soft songs of a thousand human cultures. Cherry blossoms (removed of allergenic compounds) flew past, guided by artificial wind currents. A small part of the man's brain recalled that Barnard had spent more of its funding looking beautiful than being effective. He dismissed it, being distracted.
"Hello!" said the receptionist. "Are you here for your expedited evaluation, Galen Proctor?"
Galen Proctor stared, his gray eyes focused on her blue fringe.
"Hello? Sir?" The asari's smile faltered for a fraction of a second. Galen blinked, and shook his head.
"Sorry. Yes, I'm here for expedition."
"Alright, sir. Head down the leftmost hallway, and enter the last door to your right." Galen thanked her. He backed out into the hallway, still staring.
The evaluation room held a single classroom desk, and a Maimonides Medical VI in front of it. The walls were a sterile white, without windows. An air conditioning unit hummed, barely audible, in the background. The mimicry was gone, and so were the blossoms.
"Welcome, Mr. Proctor," The VI said. "Congratulations on being one of the rare few to qualify for expedited evaluation. Please, take a seat to begin."
Galen did so. The VI waited half a minute before continuing. "To complete this test, please answer the following one thousand open-ended questions in whatever manner you would like. Question One: How should one perform surgery on a volus in an oxygenated planet?"
Six hours later, a hoarse and thirsty man was escorted out of the room and into the hospital administrator's office. The lady herself was old, gray, and behind a large computer screen. Her hands shook, but her pale blue eyes pierced into Galen, as if searching for something.
"Take a seat, Galen," she said, standing up and gesturing toward the pair of chairs that lay in front of her desk. Galen sat. He didn't like the way she said his name. It sounded forced, like she was struggling to be welcoming.
"Have I done something wrong, Ms.…?" Galen noticed the nameplate on her mahogany desk. "Ms. Madison?" He could hear birds chirping outside the glass wall, and abruptly felt nervous.
"That depends. Are you able to hack into one of the most intelligent machines that live within a two-thousand mile radius of the Pentagon?"
The songbirds stopped singing. "Absolutely not, ma'am."
"Then you've just become the first human in Earth's western hemisphere to answer each and every one of your one thousand expedition questions correctly. Congratulations, you're almost inhuman."
Galen said nothing for a few minutes. When he spoke, he whispered, "Wait. What does that mean?"
Madison turned around and faced the outdoors, her hands behind her back. They had stopped shaking. "You still have to take the second portion of the test to be declared ready to perform. We don't accept nineteen year olds just because they have exemplary memory. A suitable surgery will be arranged sometime within this year."
Galen stood up, fast as a lightning bolt.
"I'm sorry, but that's unacceptable," he said. "I'll be leaving New Washington by the end of the week if I'm not a registered professional of this center."
Galen could see Madison's eyes widen in the glass wall's reflection. "What? What is wrong with you? Do you think I'm going to rush a patient's schedule just for your own-"
"I'll take the first one that comes in if I have to. Listen, you know as well as I do that there's going to be an army of medical professionals watching my every move while I perform the operation." Galen could feel sweat beginning to form on his brow. "Screw the paperwork. I might be the best talent you'll ever see, and we both want this over with quickly. You need me."
"I don't think I do," Madison said, her voice frozen over like Noverian ice. Galen leaned forward, and grabbed the desk with his hands. For the first time, he noticed the thin golden specks that laid embedded into the dark wood.
"I know about Barnard, ma'am. Every doctor does. It's been bleeding credits for fifty years, and there hasn't been a good success story for half that time. You need to keep the government interested. I'm right here."
Madison said nothing. Galen made to leave the room.
"I'll be at my apartment when you want me. New Horizon Suites, room number 271." As he opened the door, a phone rang on Madison's desk. She hesitated before picking it up.
"Hello?" She asked. There was a pause. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and cursed
Galen was almost to the lobby when he heard the administrator's voice.
"Proctor! I've just been briefed on an emergency."
Galen turned around, and caught a frustrated smile. "Today's your lucky day, Galen."
For the first time, Galen smelled the blood of a turian. It was strikingly similar to that of a human's, but with a subtle difference: Human hemoglobin had the odor of iron, while turian hemocyanin was distinctly of copper. The change bothered Galen. He wasn't used to it.
A vacationing C-Sec officer's ground transport to the New Washington Botanical Gardens had exploded three seconds after he had exited it. He had already made it a short distance away by then, and his carapace had taken care of any possible burns. Shrapnel had caused the blood.
EMT's had removed many of the minor cuts and lodged metals; bandages were arrayed over his arms and legs. A gash had almost severed his head and narrowly missed the spinal cord. Medi-gel covered a breathing tube, the result of tracheotomy. Galen, however, was drawn to the heart wound.
A large shard had pierced the right ventricle and was dangerously close to cutting the inferior vena cava. Fortunately, the turian heart is as resilient as the rest of the body, and the officer's had been able to continue beating for several minutes. Emergency services, knowing their limits, avoided removing the object and had instead smothered the alien with gel. Blood flow was still compromised, and the heartbeat was liable to cease altogether.
"Hook him up for post-op transfusions," Galen said, his eyes locked to the injury, "and hand me the ultrasound emitter." An old, thin human male, with lean muscles and beady brown eyes, grabbed the tool off his belt and handed it to the volunteer surgeon. With a start, Galen recognized the man as Pierre DuPont, the lead medical director for the city.
"Don't fuck up," Pierre said, as casually as if discussing the weather in Thessia. Galen turned back to the damaged turian heart. His head began pounding, and his hands shook.
"Prepare the Medi-gel. Apply it to the heart as soon as I remove the foreign object." Galen pointed the emitter at the wound, activated it, and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. The gel receded, and dark blue turian gore chased after it, spraying out in a pulsating rhythm. Galen dropped the emitter and reached for the metal shard. He held onto its sides with the gloved palms of his hands, and gently – as if it were one of the old paper books he read as a child - pulled it out of the chest. He had stopped shaking, and his headache had gone. A few seconds passed by like a few years. All Galen could hear was the sound of his breathing, and all he could smell was copper, and all he could see was a jagged splinter of dripping blue. He deposited it on the medical tray to his right.
Everything came back. He could hear the songbirds again, and see the blossoms. "Stabilize," Galen gasped. He took a few steps back, vomited on the floor, and passed out.