Impuls

Aster

– Go, I'll replace it. – Gilmore, not even looking closely, takes her place. Sarah doesn't move either, and Emily remains the only one who can help.

And the neurosurgeon, still not turning her hand over, is already running to the pre-op – that's where the anti-AIDS kit hangs on the wall; Emily runs out after it and, after a change of gloves, opens the plastic lid.

Clark is pale as a sheet, even under the mask, but her hand does not flinch, and she stands as if nailed to the floor; she just reaches for Emily's injured hand – to pour alcohol, apply iodine, bandage it; cut the robe on Clark, push the neurosurgeon – right in the mask, shoe covers and cap – into the hallway, and from there – under the elbow, without panic, on bad legs – to the dressing room.

Clark's face slowly matches the color of her light green hirsute suit; and Emily, once again changing her unfortunate gloves, with a familiar movement of her foot, rolls up her table.

Everything she needs is already arranged in the container – all that remains is to decide on the nature of the wound. Emily carefully cuts the bandages, removes the remains of the glove – the wound, though cauterized with iodine, still bleeds – and places her hand on a special table with linens.

Emily opens the dry-room, rips open the kraft bag with the carpel syringe, takes out the lidocaine carpel, sets it inside.

There's a click.

She's so damn calm – no panic, no fuss; with one hand she holds the palm open, with the other she gives four shots to both sides of the wound – deep, but unexpectedly perfectly flat.

Clark silently observes the actions of the nurse: take out Hegar, pick up the needle, choose a sixteen-millimeter, clasp the needle holder in one hand; it remains to put the thread in the corner between the ends and the needle, pull lightly – and in a moment the thin fiber is already through.

Emily says out of habit:

– It doesn't hurt. Do not worry, please.

She's stitched enough wounds in her life that she doesn't even have to think about it; the body works separately from her: all the movements are honed, adjusted to the millimeter. The needle slides back and forth, piercing the thin skin with ease, Emily smiles, assuring her that everything will be fine, the tendons intact, which means it will soon heal.

– But the scar will remain," she says seriously, without stopping.

Seven stitches in less than five minutes, Emily makes the final knot, which she does with a needle holder, wrapping the thread around the ends, angling it to catch the loose edge and pulling it toward her.

A flick of the scissors, a final work on top, and Emily removes her gloves.

Clark, previously silent, pulls the mask off with one hand, tosses it into the garbage can, and asks in a hoarse voice:

– Who taught you how to load a needle this way?

– Uh-" Emily doesn't know whether to run or rejoice, "I guessed it myself somehow. It's faster that way. Will you allow me…? – She generously pours a piece of gauze fucorcinol and looks questioningly at the neurosurgeon.

Clark nods.

And so they sit, Emily, slowly touching Clark's arm, and Lorraine, keeping her gaze fixed on her with her dark gray eyes.

The neurosurgeon's hands are icy, frozen in space, detached, as if alien; Emily's are warm, light touches, more for prevention than necessity; and sparks flare in the thin fabric from each press on the stitched cut.

And then they meet, and Emily begins to burn from the inside out.

But she can't tell if it's the stars or the flames of hell.

It is as if she is lifted up to the sky and then squeezed by a vise, breaking her ribs under her skin, an instant addiction that makes a man a slave and from which it is impossible to escape on one's own. As a needle rips into crystal skin, as a grenade fragment falls into the frozen sea, exploding the ice.

The world cracks at the seams – as thin and neat as the palm of my hand, rejecting all attitudes, mixing "right" and "wrong."

Emily had never known it to be like this; she had always thought that falling from such a height was bloody dangerous, almost fatal, but now, without trying to break free from the vise that gripped her chest, she lets herself go.

It hurts.

And scary.

Because she doesn't know the feeling – and she can't define it: to sit like this, eyes colliding and silent; only to feel herself torn apart by the flood of words she wants to say.

Clark is still motionless.

A stone.

A monument.

A rock.

And the rain splashes on the bottom of her gray eyes.

Emily knows: you can't touch her hand – but she can feel Clark flexing it a little, as if trying to catch it, to stop the movement.

Latex and perfectly clean skin.

What could be worse than Clark's fragile, glassy fingers with their mirrored, transparent veins? Emily doesn't know how to take hold of herself, because she's not sure whose to take hold of.

She has been explained: how to extract the root of a number, how to seal vessels, how to mix solutions, how many quarks are in a proton, how much grief it takes to be exalted; but all this knowledge has now proved zero, because she has not been explained the main thing.

Why doesn't every damn cell in her body belong to her anymore?

And when Clark opens his dry, weathered lips, cracked in an instant, and begins to tell her something, Emily still can't calm her atoms .