Three Ghosts and a Debt

Chapter 9: Second Opinion

The needle went in and the vein rolled away from it.

He pulled back and pressed gauze down with two fingers. The gauze came up clean. He held it there a second longer than he needed to.

"Sorry," he said. "The scarring. It changes the map."

That part was true.

She lay still with her eyes down. She had a lot of practice at still.

"It's been like that since the fire," she said. "You learn your own map."

"Sure."

"Before you start. I can't get a full breath. Not a real one. It's like a hand on my chest, all the time, pushing."

She talked, and air went in and out of her, and her chest didn't move.

"Mm," he said. "Little pinch."

He tried the inside of her elbow. The skin there was tight and shining, webbed with scar that had healed in the wrong direction, and the vein he was looking for had sunk under it like a wire under a rug. He got the tip in and lost it. He got it in again and lost it again.

"Sorry. One more."

"Take your time," she said. It didn't sound like permission.

He moved to the back of her hand. Two tries. Then he came around the table for the other wrist, and his heel came down on something on the floor, and the something answered him with a low note, half wood and half breath.

He looked down. A harmonium sat there with its lid folded shut, close enough to her knee that she could have put a hand on it without moving her shoulder. He stepped over it and set his thumb on the inside of her wrist.

The burn was oldest there, pale and ridged, and the needle skated off a ridge and she made a small sound through her nose that she didn't apologize for.

"How many is that," she said.

"I don't count."

"I do. Five."

"I'm going to get it."

"I want you to know that I know."

He set the syringe down and wiped his hands on his pants and picked it up again. "It's not a normal arm," he said. "I'm working with what's here."

"I'm not complaining about my arm."

"Okay."

"I'm complaining that you're not finding it."

"Tell me you're a resident," she said, after a moment. "Tell me the surgeon's coming and you're just the one they send in first."

"That's not how this works."

"Then tell me how it works."

"It works better with you not talking."

He heard it come out of his mouth and he didn't take it back, because taking it back would cost him and he had already spent what he had. Her hand closed on the rail of the table. The knuckles went pale and stayed pale.

**BREAK +40**

**BREAK POINTS 138**

**the Hymn — 50%**

**FORCED CONTRACT AT 99%**

The last line sat in the corner of his vision, small and patient, and did not do anything else.

He needed two things from her that lived on opposite sides of his mouth. He needed her to keep believing he was a doctor, and he needed her to keep getting angrier, and any one sentence could only ever do one of those jobs. Every time he pushed, he spent belief. There was no other currency in the room.

He went to the tray and rattled a hemostat against a scalpel, twice, then a third time for the shape of it.

"You're smiling," Blood-Eye said, from inside his head.

Milo pulled his mouth flat and hunted through the instruments like a man looking for a thing he'd already found.

"Don't enjoy this," he said, under the clatter.

"I'm not the one smiling."

"Then don't watch."

"I can't not watch. We're sharing a face."

Milo put the hemostat down. He picked up a length of tubing and set it against the side of the table where it wouldn't be in the way of anything, and hung the bag of saline on the rail, and did not connect them.

"Okay," he said, in his doctor voice. "Let's get the history straight before we cut. How much are we taking?"

"Half."

"Half of what?"

"Half of it. A reduction. Both sides, even, fifty percent." She said it the way people say a thing they have already said six times to people who weren't listening. "I wrote it down. It's on the chart. There's supposed to be a chart."

"There's a chart. I'm holding it."

"You're not holding anything. I can hear your hands."

"It's a clipboard. It's quiet." He turned a page of nothing. "Which side do we start on?"

"Both."

"One side or the other. I need to know where to start."

"Both," she said. "What is wrong with you. You cut one and you cut the other and you make them match. That's the whole thing. That's the only thing I've asked for since six o'clock."

**BREAK +40**

**BREAK POINTS 178**

**the Hymn — 60%**

He reached over and picked up the saw.

It was heavier than it looked, a long steel blade set in a housing with a pistol grip, and there was dried something in the teeth of it that he decided not to look at too closely. He found the switch with his thumb. The saw came awake in his hand with a sound like a wasp inside a coffee can, and he held it there, running, at the level of her ear.

"What about top or bottom?" he said.

The saw buzzed.

"Top or bottom," he said again. "Because I can go in from up here, or I can go in from underneath, and there's a difference in the recovery."

Her mouth opened. Nothing came out of it.

"She can't answer that one," Blood-Eye said. "Nobody could."

"Top or bottom," Milo said. "Ma'am. It's a simple question."

She breathed out through her nose, and the paper under her arm lifted at the corner and lay back down.

**BREAK +40**

**BREAK POINTS 218**

**the Hymn — 70%**

He switched the saw off and set it on the tray with the blade turned to the wall.

"Front or back," he said. "Actually, I don't love the front. The front's a mess. You get a lot of—"

He stopped himself, because he had almost said something that was true.

"Front or back," he said.

**BREAK +40**

**BREAK POINTS 258**

**the Hymn — 80%**

She turned her head away from him, toward the wall with the burned streaks on it, and did not say anything at all, and he understood, with a small clean drop in his stomach, that he had arrived at the part where she stopped helping.

"Do you want it to leave a scar?" he said. "Because we do it two ways. One way you heal fast and it looks like a road map. The other way you heal slow and it looks like nothing."

"Slow," she said. "Do the slow one."

"You'd be in here longer."

"I don't care how long I'm in here."

"Why slow?"

She was quiet a moment. "Because I'd like it to look like something happened," she said. "Because in a year I want to put my hands on it and know."

He turned to the tray and moved things around and did not look at her. For about two seconds he saw it the way she had put it together: a woman on a table with her eyes down, and a year from now, her hands on a scar in the dark, knowing.

Then he thought: that's ten points sitting there, and I've got a mouth, and she's got a whole life she's not telling me about.

"Is there a husband?" he said. "Partner? Somebody who's going to want a say in this before I start?"

He heard her swallow.

"A name for the form," he said. "Or I write none and we move on."

"There's someone," she said.

"Great. Name."

"He's—" Her mouth stayed open a beat past the end of the word. "He's been in the waiting room."

"Since when?"

"Since six."

"That's a long time in a waiting room."

"He's very patient," she said, and then she said it again, quieter, like she was checking whether it was true. "He's very patient."

Milo looked at the wall. He had come up through that corridor on his way in. Chairs with the stuffing out of them. A fish tank with a dead filter. A carpet with a dark bloom in the middle where something had been left a long time ago. Nobody in any of it.

She's confused, he thought. Confused is good. Confused is next door to angry.

**BREAK +40**

**BREAK POINTS 298**

**the Hymn — 90%**

"Okay," he said. "Different idea. Why are we cutting half?"

"Because half is what I need."

"Half's a compromise. You don't strike me as a compromise kind of woman." He put both hands on the rail. "What if we did the whole thing. A hundred percent. One surgery, one recovery, nothing left to come back for."

"All of it."

"All of it. Be done."

She turned her head back toward him. Her eyes were open. They didn't find him.

"Nobody's ever suggested that," she said.

"I'm a problem solver."

"And what would I wear."

"Wear?"

"After," she said. "If there's nothing left. What do I wear."

Milo wiped his forehead with his sleeve. There was a thin ringing at the edge of things and he didn't investigate it. "There's a financing plan," he said. "Twelve months, no interest. Your insurance is going to fight you on this, so I'd get in front of that. There's also a laser package for the scarring after. Two sessions, and the second one's basically free."

She didn't answer.

"Some people take the package," he said. "Most people take the package."

She still didn't answer.

"She's not buying it," Blood-Eye said.

"I noticed."

He opened his mouth. What came out was: "Keep your arm still."

The paper rustled. She had both hands flat on the table now, and she was pushing herself up onto her elbows, which a patient doesn't do, and the gown slid off one shoulder and she didn't fix it because she couldn't see it.

"Is this a joke to you," she said.

It wasn't a question and he was smart enough not to answer it.

"I have been in this room since six o'clock," she said. "Six o'clock. Where were you at seven?"

"Staffing," he said. "I told you, it's a—"

"Where were you at eight."

"Ma'am—"

"Where were you at eight."

"It's a big night," he said. "You don't know the night I'm having."

"I've been sitting here with my hands on the table all night," she said, "waiting for a man to come through that door and tell me he was sorry he was late, and instead I get one who puts a saw by my ear and asks me top or bottom."

"Get out," she said.

**the Hymn — 99%**

**FORCED CONTRACT AVAILABLE**

The window opened in the corner of his vision and hung there and did not close.

He could have. It would take no time at all. A HIGH-GRADE, and then the rest of the night would be a different night, and he would be the one holding it.

He didn't move.

She pulled her arm out from under his hand — out from under the gauze, out from under the needle, which came away with a wet click and left a bead of nothing behind — and she sat up.

Then she reached down.

She didn't feel for it. She didn't pat the floor or sweep her hand across the tile. She put her arm straight down into the one spot on the floor where the harmonium was, because it was hers and she had known where it was the entire time.

The lid came up under her fingers.

He still had the needle in his hand.

Her hands found the keys.