Surgery on a Child

By Dominic Hedges

The Surgeon has one more soul to gather...

In a world where people's souls are tangible and disabilities can be turned in for a profit, a cynical surgeon embarks on what should be a routine operation. But the innocent child in pre-op reminds The Surgeon of his own fate at the hands of The Gentleman, a shadowy figure of medical folklore who stands at the centre of these controversial procedures.

With each slice of the scalpel The Surgeon relies on science to escape the memories of the past. Little does he know that every equation will lead him towards the same, terrifying conclusion...

The child must be saved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dominic Hedges
• Release date: Oct 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463566404

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Copyright Dominic Hedges (2018) © All rights reserved.

This story is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to actual persons or institutions are fictional.

Written by Dominic Hedges

Edited by Stephanie Cohen

Cover Design by Cat Sergeant

Photograph uncanny valley, boy head in berlin by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

www.dominichedges.com

For my brother, Paul.

Β

My hand doesn’t shake when I’m nervous. My heart rate doesn’t quicken, either. My adrenaline and epinephrine levels are always balanced. Nobody dabs my brow, and I don’t sip water through the plastic articulated straws that suspend down above the operating table because I never get cottonmouth. I don’t take deep breaths to regulate my neurohormones – the pituitary gland in my brain performs as-is. My blood pressure does vary, but only between safe parameters. I didn’t need to have a medical done for my insurer to cover me. I have a habit of incessantly blinking. My eyesight has deteriorated over these last few years, but only marginally, and I lie to them about that, anyway. Optometry is excruciating and it is one of the few practices I fear. As a result, I sometimes use their bioloupe, but not often and only when my assessments are needlessly challenged. I am often the first of two or three opinions. Mine is always the one settled upon.

***

When I go to meet your parents, Cressida comes with me. I’m to be entirely trusted, of course, as an employee – that’s why they have invested so much financially, spiritually – but we’re meeting nervous clients here who sweat and stammer so, you know, Cressida comes with me. As we walk down ¥ Corridor I note that she had been wearing a perfume that’s now wearing off, one I can’t place at all, which I conclude means she has bought it brand new. This makes sense, as her bonus from my last procedure would have cleared midnight three days past, (despite the fact that it’s unlikely the UKSSA have ratified it successful, Mark’s Trust often pay bonuses forward, especially for the likes of Cressida) and as she often mutters into her coffee, she so rarely gets to do anything for herself. The scent is faint; she wore it last night but not today. I reckon the product wrung out a large amount of that bonus and she’s using it sparingly. I pin the chance that she had a romantic meeting with another person into an unfair percentile because I don’t much like her.

Nice perfume, I say. She turns sharply; her right arm jolts down and locks in place. I’m sure that she’s deliberately overreacting, but I don’t cue my offence. I already predict her response will be similar to last time, the immortal I’m-Still-Getting-Used-To-It being her line of defence, albeit issued with a smirk. There’s an outside chance that all of my perfume assessments were actually correct, but an even slimmer chance she guessed