THE SURGEON

As a surgeon, he’d never thought there’d be a day when he was scared of blood.

When, in that too excited moment, the scalpel split like some unsympathetic, invasive tongue under the skin’s first layer, he knew that there was more than there should have been. He knew that the white earth beneath would be hard, clotted as cold wax — it would be sallower than the sore sheen of his own coat. There’d subsist a colder glow than the blanche of his fingernails, stiffer than the base of his throat. Strange, void of that usual sensitive attachment, really… as if operating on a doll, sickly, unmoving, as he let the anxious red line slip and slide and writhe its dribbling tail down her conspicuous knurl of a collarbone.

He knew that the sound of flesh slapped, utensils clattering against the operating dish shouldn’t have woken the woman — not for now, at least. The most that his displays of restlessness brought — shows of carelessness, maybe even impatience, for the faster crumbling of every minute, second, thought, breath —, was uneasiness. Fidgetiness, if we’re going to push it. The paranoid gulp of his young, inexperienced assistant, Juana, when she handed him a glinting pair of scissors for the fifth time, clean of every red stroke to its mouth, wouldn’t translate to yet more fear of her true… incapacities. Ineptitudes. Disqualifications. Mere… technicalities. She’d probably been tumbling the thought over and over in her head— what if she didn’t give her enough? What if it didn’t do its job? She just had to stop it. Get over herself.

She’d given their patient more than enough anaesthesia.

She had to get used to the reality that certain pains weren’t snuffed out by gas.

The Surgeon couldn’t count how many times he’d operated on Salomé Àlvarez, but he knew it’d been more than any other patient that’d sifted through his doors. Whilst one or two procedures, maybe three, tended to satisfy some at least through the healing period, Salomé’s unusual habits had seen the Surgeon performing a full facial alteration at least once every six months. It was consistent — too consistent. Almost to the day. To the hour. Always the same pinched, charming voice—

“Four-thirty sharp, sweetheart. My usual request. And be creative, my love. Always remember: the next face far gone from the last.”

“You didn’t like the last one?” He would always ask. “Are you reacting to something— or was it the filler, the bust? Should I have set the brows a little higher?”

“Oh, no, no, no, my love—“ a light, twinkling flutter of a laugh. “Everything was just perfect. Exact. Just as I wanted it to be. It’s just that women like me — you know, we get bored so quickly. There’s always someone more exciting we should— we could be.”

The surgeon would peel a chortle from the sides of a stale, suspicious tongue. The phone would be cold to his ear, and the difficult amenity he made wring into his tone made the call that much harder to bear. The insincerity of it all… it wrestled with him inside. “I see.” He’d say. Although he didn’t. Couldn’t. Though he’d never complain.

Because she’d always pay more than what he deserved. And some things carried glisters so blinding, potentials too beguiling, that it hurt his conscious more to simply look the other way.

Salomé Álvarez was a women, like many, enslaved, defined, and enraptured by her own beauty. If she could cough up the change, why question her for it? After all, the Surgeon, for the past fifteen years, had been gleaning too many benefits to cease contact because of a sudden change of conscience. Morality should have kicked in when he realised the extent of Àlvarez’s criminal activity, eight years before.

It should’ve stopped him from ever confirming another appointment. It should have convicted him of what exactly, who exactly, he was trying to live for.

Indeed, the second he’d realised that he’d been raising imagined characters out of dead women.

In every appointment scheduled by Miss Álvarez , a different name, a foreign identity, introduced themselves as an innocent customer. Only to be deconstructed, perfected for the appropriate occasion, as per his services…

And the product of his scalpel and thread emerging six months later wanting a different face. A new recycle.

She didn’t have to know what he was doing. No, that was all part of the excitement, the true excellence— sheer unpredictability of the entire operation. Even as a passive participant in her artifices, he felt the exhilaration of moving from experience to experience, possibility to actuality. He felt the thrill of an ever-changing identity, somewhat, lived vicariously through her — a welcome cleave to his own monotony—

He’d never felt panic.

Never felt he was doing anything illegal. After all, he’d never spoken to Salomé Alvarez about it. He’d never dared to ask. He’d known it was better not to know than to shackle one’s mind in too tightly, all because ignorance had kept the conscience light, unburdened. All he knew was what he assumed…

And what he assumed was a woman either too clever for her own good, or immoral for her own integrity.

Salomé Álvarez was reported dead fifteen years ago.

She’d been on a family vacation with her young boys, still preteens then, her three-year-old girl, and medically acclaimed husband of thirteen years. It all went down at a fine luxury resort, Mauritius, where the rich escaped their public ostentations to a more private reminder of privilege, and freedom, and security that never ceased to comfort.

For most of them, it was the peace of not having to account to anyone of their absence in person, release from the suffocation brought upon by too endearing, too obsessing proximity to the world that enviously deified them. They were on an island, after all. No one could come knocking at their door over a message left on read. A certain isolation beyond pretentious walls and overdone security was always welcomed. Here there was always opportunity for greater escapes, shallower horizons. But that wasn’t what had attracted Salomé to the islands. No, it was the promise. The escape.

The prospect of zip-lining over the island’s tropical forest.

“You only live once.” She’d said. “These are the kinds of things people like my mother regret having not done. More than health. Sometimes, even more than grandchildren,” were the words she’d mulled over her husband. He’d been tired, then, not quite willing to argue, or to acquiesce. But their marriage had been on the rocks, you see. Especially after the demands of his job at the hospital, of which she took no knowledge or interest in, removed him from the family. He’d had plans to specialise, to open his own practice, in reconstructive surgery— but he couldn’t. Not then. Not yet. Salomé, alone with the kids, had just been so tired, so exhausted—

Frustrated.

The kids were wearing her down.

Maybe a bit of adventure was all the housewife needed.

Salomé went zip-lining with the two twelve-year-olds, and left the little girl with her husband in their luxury suite. The course went over the outer coast’s tropical forest and along the beach line, the cable bending into the island and twisting round the resort’s parameters…

And ended where it started.

Only that three went on that zip-line, and not one returned alive.

There was an accident — an honest mistake… just a tragedy, really. No one’s fault. You see, the zip line chords weren’t strong enough. They’d given away and too sadly, too unfortunately, a mother and two innocent children perished in the aftermath.

Two bodies were found. Antonio and Manuel were laid to rest on the fifteenth of the following month.

As for Salomé, however, and to the ignorance of all who attended her memorial, life went on as normal.

Well, as normal as normal could be for someone who every six months, became a different person.

To the ignorance of them all, and likely chagrin of her family, Salomé Alvarez had faked her death and reimagined herself entirely. It was only three weeks or so, maybe more, after the incident aired on virtually every news channel on Brazil, that the Surgeon had a strange woman book an appointment, asking for an… unconventional change.

“You only live once.” She’d said.

And in saying yes, the Surgeon had sealed his fate.

The first operation had been simple enough. It was a mere deconstruction, followed by what she called ‘something familiar, but different’— vague enough to show her trust in his expertise, and non-specific enough to expose that she herself, hadn’t a clue what she truly wanted. The surgeon though, didn’t question it. The money was enough. It silenced the needling doubt. So, he did his work, pulled out the scalpel, the scissors, and turned Salomé Alvarez into something unrecognisable—

Until six months later, the same unrecognisable, under a different name, and a different tragedy, booked an appointment at half-past four.

“Gianna Elaine.” She’d said. “I’d like an entirely new face.”

It didn’t matter that a woman and her family of five had recently perished in a hang-gliding accident in Italy, the terrible news airing only just a few days before…

She paid him a deposit of five hundred thousand dollars.

And it became easy to forget that he was operating on people who should have been six feet under, unwinding their lives, decomposing flesh, and regrets, in some far off cemetery.

Six months later, and Jasmine Fontain came to see him. The same request. A new face. A new look, really. This one had asked for breast augmentation and a slight hip reduction. Even though about to protest, to warn her of the dangers of a one-time combinations in a single operation—

She’d said no.

She’d coughed up the cash.

And the Surgeon went mum. Wondering when the cycle would end.

For fifteen years, the cycle continued. Sometimes it was scuba diving. Other times, water rafting. Always some outlandish activity that landed a single father and his family killed, or a sorry victim, a bachelor, a divorcee, six feet underground. It always had to be dramatic, earth-shattering — disturbing. The kind of news that made one shudder for the unfortunates, and in it, wonder what it really meant to live life to the fullest when that kind of living landed you dead.

The Surgeon could predict her visits to the hour. To the minute. The second.

He knew when Salomé would be coming, and as the years pulled on, knew exactly what she wanted of him before she said it over the phone. He never asked why she did it, or how many more people she intended to deceive. He didn’t need to, anyway. Because today would be different. Today, the fifteenth year of manipulation, and of Juana’s training, the operation would follow a different program.

Today, Salomé Alvarez would pay for every grief and confusion she’d brought the way of her victims.

You see, people were starting to blame him.

The Surgeon.

For hiding her. Resting in her shame.

Reports had surfaced that Salomé Alvarez wasn’t really dead and in fact, several had confirmed sighting her at the Surgeon’s personal facilities. At first, people had been understandably skeptical, but after fifteen years and no body found, the theories began to gain some traction… some momentum.

And momentum into allegation.

Allegation into investigation.

Investigation into prosecution—

But not yet.

No, the Surgeon wouldn’t let that happen.

He would perform one final operation on Salomé Alvarez, removing all he had altered, correcting as much as possible from years of facial reconstruction, and leaving something at least half resembling of the original craft on his operating table.

Then he would leave with the millions of dollars he’d blackmailed her into giving him for his silence, and disappear from the scene, never to be seen again.

And the person — the police, his next patient, or some curious unfortunate, would come across the operating table and find indeed, a note and a body:

‘The fatal death was in the life she had first.”

And Juana, not so little anymore, would leave the operating room with relief in her eyes.

The antiseptic had been enough.

Daddy had taught her just fine.

END

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