Impromptu Heart Surgeon

Editor's Forward: This was built off a prompt, which can be found here I've italicized the intro portion in order to differentiate the text which was not generated. This one required a bit of a nudge to get going. Unlike the Siren story which seemed to not only flow well on its own but also get to the naughty bits without any intervention, heart surgery didn't seem like a good candidate. I left it alone for the most part, but tried to add a few moments where the doctor's mind strays. It seemed to punish the effort and went way out into weird territory.

You breathe deeply, and you steady your hands. The heart - there, the heart! It's still beating. You can do this. You focus, and you cut through the sternum, the bone that separates the chest cavity into two distinct chambers. You push it aside, revealing the heart. It's still beating, and you can see all its major arteries. You cut around them and snip them, isolating the aorta. Then you clamp it. Then you connect the vent and the aorta, and you inflate the lungs. Finally, you clamp the pulmonary arteries to inflate them. All done.

You close up the chest flap and realize that you've been operating on a woman.  Wow. You must have... No, you need to focus. You need to finish this.

You clamp the heart and cut it open. You carefully cut out the scar tissue and the masses of dead flesh. You put the heart back together and find that it still beats. You can see that there are two atria and one ventricle. You see two small clots in the ventricle that you need to dissolve. You inject saline into the ventricle and wait for it to become clotted. Then you flush out the heart with potassium chloride. There. Now the heart is completely and purged of blood.

You step back, impressed with your work. It's an amazing feeling to know that you've just saved someone's life. A heart transplant. As you begin to sew up the incision, your eyes wander to the two breasts, one on either side of the Frankenstein scar.  They are real, not some sort of prosthetic. You should... No, that's... You can't... Stop staring!

"You did well, Matthews." The nurse says, as she puts a stethoscope around your neck. "How do you feel?"

"A bit tired." Tired...but captured by the allure of the body still on the table.  In your other life, you'd never had much luck with women. Now here is one just out of reach.  You'd almost grabbed her, but her friend took the hook. Now there is another in your arms. Almost. But the friend... You shake your head, trying to rid yourself of the unwanted image. Breasts are one thing, but your curiosity grows. You shift the drape ever so slightly lower and reveal a tuft of public hair.

"Let's do one more check, just to be sure." The nurse pats your stomach. "Are you okay, doc?"

"Yes, I'm fine." You lower the drap... No, stop! The drap... You can't! Your mind is made up. You've already made up your mind. There is no turning back, and yet...and yet... You lower the drap... You lower the drap...

"You sure, doc?" the nurse asks.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

The drap... You can't do it. You lower it just a bit more... Just a hair...

You shift the drap...

"It's a girl!" the nurse cries, interrupting your reverie.

"A girl?" You're sure. Of course you're sure. Her lower intimate parts are there for all to see.  You step back, and the nurse steps forward, and you notice that it is a woman, a real woman. You don't want to pry, but...

"I - is it normal?" You stammer.

"Well, she's a she, so yeah, I guess so." The nurse says. "Do you want to see?"

The nurse unbuckles her and peels the thin layer of skin away from her butt and the surrounding area. You move in closer. The girl's rear is a mass of matted hair, but you can see the shape of her anus and vagina. You're repulsed and fascinated at the same time. She twitches once, and then goes still. The nurse smiles. "She's okay. Don't worry about the skin. We're going to rename her Muffy," The nurse grins. "I'm going to go check on our other patients."

Editor's Interruption: Sorry, but wtf...

You stand there, in the surgical waiting room, waiting for further instructions. You feel woozy, and you sit down on the surgical stool. Your hands are trembling. You look at them and realize that they look... disgusting. You want to scrub them. You want to get it all over. You close your eyes, but you can't help but see the pus, the blood, the chunks of cartilage. Your mouth fills with the taste of bile and feces.

You hear a voice calling your name. "Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith?"

You start. You realize that you haven't eaten or drank anything since the surgery began hours ago. You realize that you're hungry and thirsty and delirious. You open your eyes and see a tray that's been set down beside you. There's a bowl of chicken soup and a water pitcher. You're too delirious with hunger to be disgusted. You grab the tray eagerly and begin to dig in. You haven't eaten in forever, and your hunger hits you like a tidal wave. It pushes all other thoughts out of your mind. You wolf down the bowl of soup and the water, and then you realize that you're ravenous again. You need to relieve yourself.

You stand up and walk unsteadily to the bathroom. You splash water on your face and try to tame your hair and beard. Then you notice that one of your thumbs is misshapen and purple, resembling a monster-sized ingrown hair. You wonder if this is some kind of portent. With a sigh, you decide to focus on the more important matter at hand.

You head back to the surgical waiting room. You need to find out what the plan is. Your hands are shaking again; you have no idea what you're going to do.

"Mr. Smith?" The nurse is looking at you.

"Yeah...?" you croak.

"She is dead!"

You snap out of it. "What?"

"She died about 15 minutes ago."

You're still a little delirious. It's hard to focus.

"You were right. She did have a heart attack. I'm sorry."

You can barely form the words, but you can't let this get to you. You have a mission to do.

"Do you want to see her?" You nod.

The nurse leads you down a hallway to the morgue. It's locked, so she jiggles the handle. "Go on in." She opens the door for you.

You walk inside and stand there in shock, staring at the corpse. She looks dead. There's no pulse, no breath. And she's pale, like she never saw the light of day.

"Do you want to... do you want to see her up close?" The nurse is hesitant. You feel horrible for scaring her the way that you did.

"Yeah. Go on."

She leads you closer and closer, and then you notice that she looks... different. Her skin is too pale. There are no veins or blood vessels showing through. Her lips are too blue. She's not human.

You feel dizzy. You feel like you're going to vomit. You step back, away from the morgue table.

"I'm... I'm sorry." The nurse backs away from you, too. "I didn't know. I mean, I..."

You don't know what to say. You're in a freaking morgue, for Christ's sake. You have no idea what to say.

"It'll be our little secret," she says, smiling.

You want to scream. You want to cry. You want to run away. And then, you don't know, maybe you'll scream, or cry, or run away. But it'll be our little secret. Whatever the fuck that means.

The nurse holds out her hand, and you take it.

"Come on. Let's go. We don't want to miss our little ceremony."

You follow her to the front of the morgue, to the room where the coffins are kept.

In this room, there is a long table with about a dozen red plastic chairs. The nurses' station is to the right, where a middle-aged woman is manning the desk. Two other doors are to the left, each leading to a separate room. You recognize the signs on the doors: red crosses and skulls and bones. Beyond the doors, you can hear the groans and cries of the other patients.

You and the nurse take your seats at the table. The nurse closes the door, and then she leans forward.

"Listen," she whispers. "The room next to this one is empty. We're going to take her out, and we're going to give her the heart and a new body. Then we're going to put you in her, so that when President Carter dies, the world can get a new leader. You understand?"

You nod. Your mouth is so dry that you can't speak, but you don't have to. You know what's going on. You know the plan. You just don't know how it's going to go.

The nurse takes a key from her pocket and unlocks the door to the morgue next to this one. She opens it and beckons you to come in. You stand up and slowly walk inside.

You can see the body of a woman on the cold table. She's dead. Her face and neck are blue, and her skin looks clammy. The back of her head is caved in. There's nothing you can do. You know that.

"We have to do this now." The nurse takes your arm. "Come on."

Again, she leads you to the other room. You can hear more patients crying and moaning in the other rooms. At the door, the nurse pushes you inside. You see a coffin on the floor, waiting for you.

"I'm going to open the lid. You lie down and get in the coffin. That's it."

You stand in the coffin, paralyzed.

"Do you want me to help you?" the nurse asks.

Do you want her to help you?

You...

SHIVER.

You stand in the darkness, wrapped in your blankets. You're completely exhausted, yet you remain wide awake. You're not sure what's keeping you awake, but you're unable to drift off to sleep.

You...

FLICK!

You snap awake. Your eyes fly open, and the room is instantly bathed in the orange glow of the clock radio by your bed. In the next second, the glow fades, and the room is plunged into darkness again. You realize that you must have been tossing and turning in your sleep. The clock radio was just ticking, indicating the hours and hours until sunrise.

But now, it is well after midnight. You sit up in your bed and stretch. You feel sore, yet you're not quite ready to fall back to sleep. You can't stop thinking about the dream...

And then you remember the dream. You remember that the woman in the dream... the woman who was going to give you her heart... you remember her face.

It was your mom.

Editor's Thoughts: The ending, despite being an "It's all a Dream" trope, seemed to actually make sense, although that sort of makes the voyeuristic portions earlier seem a bit creepier than they already were. Not sure what happened in the middle. Matted anus hair and fingers covered in blood and feces? Then a sacrificial body swap to replace President Carter. It did keep insisting that the patient was the President, so I had to reprocess the A.I. a few times to keep her female. I suppose that portions sort of worked in the end. What a weird one.