The Rusted Scalpel

by Timothy Browne

  “Whoa there, cowboy. How long have you been blind, Nicklaus?”

  “Five months, I guess, but who’s counting?”

  “Aren’t you tired of smashing your shin or nose into things? You can see with more than your eyes. I know you are hopeful that your next surgery will bring back your sight. I am hopeful for you as well, but even if it’s successful, let’s take advantage of this time.”

  Chang slipped his arm through Nick’s. “Now, close your eyes.”

  “Funny, Chang.”

  Chang laughed and said, “It is a beautiful day, don’t you think? Tilt your head up to the sky and let your face turn toward the sun.”

  Nick did as instructed.

  “You got it? Now, your appointment is for 10:00 a.m. Can you show me which way you think north is?”

  Nick turned until he thought he could feel the warmth of the sun equally on both cheeks and then estimated where the sun would have risen in the east. He extended his left arm out and then his right in the opposite direction toward the west. Like a compass needle settling on its bearings, he adjusted his stance until he thought he was correct. “North would be behind me,” he said and turned to point.

  “Yes, that’s pretty close.” Chang adjusted his arm by ten degrees. “That’s true north, and now you’re pointing over Whitefish Lake and the ski hill. If you hone this sense, your internal compass will serve you well. Now tell me what you smell.”

  Nick sniffed. “I can smell the pine trees as the sun warms them. I can smell a wood-burning fire. Is it coming from your house?” He pointed in the direction he thought it was coming from.

  “Yes, good.”

  “I can smell you.” Nick smiled. “You must have burned sandalwood while you meditated this morning…and was that before or after you had bacon for breakfast?”

  Chang laughed heartily and squeezed his arm. “You may make an adequate blind man yet.”

  “Why’s the heart surgeon eating bacon?”

  “We all have to die of something, Dr. Hart. Now please come in, come in.” He urged him into his home.

  * * *

  Even with the disastrous start yesterday, Chang convinced Nick to return to the pool and encouraged him to grope around the edge of the pool room to get his bearings. The surge of fear, like a little boy separated from his mother in an enormous department store, evaporated, and he was able to enter the pool again. He took a deep breath and eased—or at least tried—into the headrest and the foam noodles supporting his weight in warm water. He focused on relaxing a muscle in his leg and his neck tensed. He didn’t realize how difficult it was to let his entire body go limp.

  “That’s it, Nicklaus. Let go. I’ve got you.”

  “Said the blind man,” Nick said, stifling a laugh so he didn’t slip off his supports. “Okay, I’m trying,” he said, calming his shoulders and his face. Chang placed a larger raft under Nick’s head, understanding that having his ears out of the water was less disorienting. Nick could feel Chang push on the noodles to send him in lazy circles around the water.

  “Where is all this tension coming from?” Chang asked.

  “What tension is that, Master Chang?” Nick said, trying to make light of their relationship while stress surged through his body like untethered electricity.

  “You know that stress accounts for over 95 percent of all diseases. That is why it is called that.”

  “What’s that?” Nick asked.

  “Dis…ease—lack of ease. The word comes from the French word desaise, meaning ‘lack’ or ‘want.’”

  Chang’s hand came to rest on the center of Nick’s chest above his heart.

  “So what is it that you lack, Nicklaus?”

  “Well, I can think of two things,” Nick said, raising an arm and pointing to his eyes.

  “Yes, yes,” Chang said and pushed Nick’s arm back down to rest on the noodle. “I want you to listen to what is coming from here,” he said, putting his hand back on Nick’s chest. “This is where the scriptures say, ‘Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.’”

  Chang’s hand pushed deeper into Nick’s chest, almost causing him discomfort.

  “You know, I often think about the hundreds of chests that I cracked open to repair people’s hearts. I was like the mechanic trying to fix an engine that the owner neglected to put oil in. The damage was already done.”

  “Do you miss medicine?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, my ego cries out occasionally to stand once again as the captain of the surgical ship. To be recognized for my skills. Power and glory are intoxicating, but I understand that now I am doing more healing than I did with my scalpel. Back then, I was treating the symptoms; now I am treating the causes. Besides, the practice of medicine has been corrupted. It has become an industry rather than a healing art. You can’t have something as sacred as medicine driven by profits. It corrupts the spirit of it.”

  “Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are becoming rich on the backs of the sick,” Nick said.

  “You know, insurance companies won’t pay for many holistic or even preventive approaches. My patients tell me their insurance companies turn their nose up to functional medicine—stress reduction, diet, exercise—terrible things like that. I guess they would rather pay for a $120,000 open heart surgery or a $10,000-a-day cancer treatment.”

  Chang touched the space above Nick’s eyebrows. The tips of his fingers bore into Nick’s forehead as if they had come out of a forging oven.

  “Take a deep breath and relax these muscles, Nicklaus.”

  Nick let go, and the energy from Chang’s fingers flowed down his face and jaw, through his chest, and hit him square in his solar plexus. He didn’t understand what was happening, but the energy was a spark igniting the red-hot rage hiding there. Images flickered through his mind and vision, and his blood went from temperate to boiling. In an instant, he was back in the operating room where the monsters from ISIS tortured him—and blinded him.

  Nick fought for air.

  He thought he was sinking and flailed his arms and legs until he was off his supports and standing on the bottom of the pool.

  “Yes, that’s good Nicklaus,” Chang said, holding him around the waist. “I think it’s time to remove that boulder, don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Chang.”

  “Anger…it has to go.”

  Chang guided Nick to the side of the pool and put his hands on the tile surrounding it. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Nick put a life grip on the edge. “Yeah, thanks.”

  The sound of the waterfall tumbling into the pool increased, and spray from the water feature wet his face.

  Chang returned to his side and held his arm. “You ready to get angry?” he shouted over the waterfall. “Here, take hold of this.”

  Chang placed one of the foam noodles into Nick’s hand and guided him closer to the waterworks. “I want you to take that noodle and beat the crap out of the people that did this to you.”

  The waterfall roared in front of Nick. He began to panic when Chang let go of his arm.

  “I’m right here, Nicklaus. Don’t be afraid. I’m not afraid of your anger, and neither is the waterfall.”

  Nick took a pitiful swipe toward the sound of the roaring water, and the force of the water nearly ripped the noodle from his hands. He readjusted his hands like he was holding a samurai sword and took an aggressive swing. He shrugged and tried to give his toy sword back to Chang. This is stupid.

  “Oh, come on, Nicklaus. These people took your vision. Isn’t that what you lack? Didn’t you just tell me that?”

  Yes, that did make him angry. He hefted the samurai noodle and swung at the water with all his strength. And then again, even harder. Again and again. The foam slapped hard against the water. The lump in his solar plexus grew the more he beat the terrorists. He saw the smug look the White Snake had given him after she’d killed Vladimir.

  “You stupid
bitch!” he yelled.

  “Yes, that’s right, Nicklaus, tell her what you feel. Scream at her!” Chang yelled from behind him.

  White-hot rage filled Nick’s mind as visions of her laughing, sneering face floated in front of him. “Look what you did to me!” He swung harder and harder. His arms began to burn with lactic acid. He wanted the gun that he’d held before the rescue. “I should have put a bullet through your head!” he yelled.

  “Scream louder, Nicklaus, she can’t hear you.”

  “AAAAGH!” A primordial scream shot out of his mouth as he opened his throat to the pain lodged deep within him. He summoned the remainder of his strength for one last slice with his sword. As he swung at her face, his right foot slipped on the pool floor, and the waterfall sucked him under. In seconds, the catharsis shifted from relief to terror.

  As the force of the waterfall pushed him to the bottom of the pool, pinning him to the tile, Nick found himself in the operating room at the hands of the terrorists. The wet, black hood over his face, preventing air from moving in or out of his lungs—he was suffocating. It was happening all over again. Anger gave way to fear.

  Let go…concede, that’s it. Fear gave way to surrender. God, just let me die. He had nothing to live for. Everything of value in his life had been stripped away: his profession, his value to the world. Many of his colleagues had abandoned him. Father, what am I to hold onto? No answer came, but surrender yielded to peace. The complete relaxation he had so desperately searched for now spread through his body and his mind.

  Just as he thought he might be losing consciousness, strong arms grabbed him around the waist and pulled him to the surface.

  Nick sucked in air, sputtered and coughed.

  “Nicklaus, I’ve got you. You okay?”

  “Is that what you had in mind?”

  “Well, yes, except for the near-drowning part,” Chang shouted over the waterfall. He laughed, guiding Nick back to the side of the pool. “Don’t let go and I’ll turn it off.”

  Nick gripped the side of the pool with both hands. The pounding waterfall turned to a small trickle, and Chang returned to his side. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t realize that rage boiled so superficially. But I’m not sure if it dislodged the boulder or grew it.”

  “You’re right,” Chang said. “This cathartic therapy’s value is to identify the anger, not remove it. But now we know where to work.”

  “Great…I thought we were done.”

  “We can finish anytime you like, Nicklaus. You are the one that will decide how deep we go. But before we stop for the day, can I ask you a sensitive question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Were you ever physically or sexually abused?”

  The question shocked Nick. “Uh…gosh, I don’t know…I’ve never thought about that…I don’t think so.”

  “Nicklaus, when I put my hand on your heart, I can see your anger. It is more than a burning ember—it’s a raging fire. It could strictly come from what happened to you in Turkey, but in my experience, that sort of anger often comes from abuse, either physically, emotionally or sexually…or all three. The sad fact about the state of the world right now is that one out of four girls and one out of six boys are sexually abused before they reach adulthood. Nicklaus, you may have been one of the lucky ones, and your anger is from something less hideous, but the anger is there, nevertheless.”

  “I don’t know.” Nick tried not to let his anger betray him.

  Chang put his hand over Nick’s chest and pressed. “Nicklaus, we all carry pain of some kind. If you are alive, you can’t escape it. You may or may not ever know where this pain originates. You certainly have plenty of sources to account for much of it. When we first talked over the phone, you told me that you struggle with intimacy and have an unhealthy attraction to sex. It sent up red flags for me. Spend some time tonight giving it thought and prayer.”

  “And if it’s true?”

  “Whether it is true or not doesn’t matter. What’s important is we help you displace this anger with something else,” Chang said, pushing harder on Nick’s chest.

  “Something else?”

  “Love, of course. The Beatles were right after all.” His deep laughter returned. “Nicklaus, when I was meditating this morning and praying for you, I saw you sitting alone. And the Spirit of God told me, ‘There is a man without hope.’ Love is the only thing that can restore hope.”

  CHAPTER 4

  BLUE BABY

  A swirl of wind and driving rain echoed off the heliport’s roof as the storm tried to take one last swipe at them. Wright cocked his head toward the ceiling, relieved to be out of the elements, but the damp armpits of his linen shirt and his intense body odor betrayed his cool demeanor. The trip from Singapore to Sarawak, Borneo, was only a little over two hours—four hundred and fifty nautical miles.

  Robert held the heavy door from the heliport to the facility’s breezeway, but Wright waited for Leah to come from the other side of the helicopter. She moved more slowly than usual. She limped as a result of childhood polio that shortened and deformed her right leg, but Wright guessed that the bumpy ride must have aggravated her herniated lumbar disc and made her abnormal gait more pronounced.

  “You okay?” he asked and pushed his long hair back over his shoulders as she made her way to him.

  “Nothing a little stroll won’t fix.”

  “I can have Robert get the golf cart for you.”

  “You go ahead, and I’ll make sure the copilot has the helicopter ready for our return. Besides, your little heroic rescue won’t take long,” she said, looking at the diamond-encrusted Rolex that he had given her six years ago as part of the enticement to work for him. “I’ll wait.”

  Wright smiled at her. Boxler’s German edge annoyed most others, but it was part of the reason he worked so hard to scalp her from the Geneva Bank. He found it refreshing and always knew where she stood. It saddened him that her brilliant mind was hindered by her failing body.

  “Suit yourself. The turnaround time should be quick,” he said over his shoulder and walked toward the open door.

  “The baby is in the clinic, Master Paul,” Robert said.

  Wright squeezed the man’s bony shoulder. “Thank you, Robert.” Wright had often told the old Iban warrior to call him anything but Master Paul and eventually quit trying. The Zelutex Research Center had been built ten years ago on Robert’s land, for which he was paid handsomely. As far as Wright knew, the only thing the money had bought for Robert was an oversized suit and a new bed for the longhouse upriver where he lived. Wright had offered to help the man invest the money, but it was probably buried in a barrel under his house.

  Wright had visited Robert’s house many times for dinner, and even though at home, the old man shed the butler suit for shorts and sandals, the formality remained. Robert’s Iban name was Rentap. It meant “shaker of the world” as he explained proudly and often. When the missionaries came, he’d taken his Christian name.

  “Thank you, Robert,” Wright said as he stepped into the expansive crystalline tunnel. It was just a walkway, but it was one of his favorite structures of the complex. Perhaps it reminded him of Alice and her magic portal into Wonderland, or simply that he loved being in Borneo. Traversing the tunnel was like coming home. He looked through the arched glass panels and saw the fast-moving storm was moving on, and small patches of blue glistened in the south through the emerald-green jungle canopy.

  Robert’s footsteps followed quickly behind him. “How’s your family, Robert?”

  “Well, sir. We’ve missed you,” Robert said. “When will you visit for dinner? My wife will fix something special for you.”

  Wright looked back and smiled at the man. He knew something special for dinner meant they would kill a chicken and fry the pieces like they always did. He loved traveling upriver to spend time with Robert’s family. It was like stepping back in time to a much more innocent and simpler life. In the rainfo
rest and his natural state, Robert wore only shorts or a floral wrap around his waist, a string of large pearls looped around his neck. Traditional tattoos covered his shoulders and arms. Even though the skinny old man was a foot shorter, Wright wouldn’t want to get into a tussle with him because he was all muscle and as tough as the roosters they ate on his visits.

  “Thank you, dear Robert. Tell your wife it will be soon. What else is new?”

  “Just the baby, sir. It is so kind of you to help. We have been deathly afraid that he would die before you arrived.”

  “Do we know where it came from?”

  “Far, far upriver,” he said and motioned with a bony finger.

  Robert slipped in front of him with surprising agility and opened the thick door to the research center, and Wright stepped through the tunnel into the large glass atrium that overlooked Batang Ai Lake. It was a magnificent view, taking his breath away every time. The storm was rapidly moving north, and fingers of sunlight illuminated the blue-green lake.

  But he didn’t have time to enjoy it because the baby didn’t have the luxury of time, so he quickened his steps to the clinical lab.

  Robert once again caught the door to the lab and allowed him to step into the hermetically sterile environment. Wright blinked against the bright fluorescent lights and white walls. He didn’t understand how Dr. Amy could stand this lack of ambience, knowing the fierce beauty that surrounded them outside. But as the medical director, she had her choice and had designed it this way. She had little life outside these walls. Her obsession with work was good for the company.

  He heard voices from one of the exam rooms and stepped inside.

  “Thank God you made it,” Dr. Amy Anderson said. Relief resonated through her upbeat Kiwi accent. “I wasn’t sure you’d get through the storm.”

  “We were fine,” Wright said. “Just don’t ask my passengers. Our ride back to Singapore should be smooth.” He looked at the blue-tinted baby on the exam table and then at the young, frightened Iban mother standing next to it and smiled at her. Dr. Amy was at the head of the table attending the newborn, holding an adult oxygen mask near its face.