The two guards squinted at each other, puzzled.
Bright headlights interrupted their conversation and another Explorer pulled up beside them, dust swirling.
Mobydick climbed out and fist-bumped the two men before turning to the senator. “I received your call you want inside.”
Evans nodded and repeated what he had told Rock and Detective. He brought out the crumpled handful of cash from his coat pocket he had received a few moments ago and held it out toward Mobydick. There was a price for everything.
Mobydick took a few steps closer to the senator and inspected the bundle of cash. He nodded and gestured to Rock, who stepped forward and took the cash out of his hand. “No problem, Senator. We’ll get you in and out of there in twenty-eight minutes.” Mobydick gestured toward Detective. “Stan, unlock the door.”
Once they were in the short, partitioned hallway, the senator stood, puzzled. “Take me on a tour.”
Mobydick raised his hands, gesturing around them. “This is it, Senator.”
Evans hesitated. His eyes hardened, and he drew a gun from his pocket. “I’d like to see Stefan, if you don’t mind.”
Mobydick’s eyes grew large. “Do you mean the doctor?” Mobydick said, shrugging. “Hey, I’m on your side, Senator. No skin off my nose.”
Both the crazy senator and the crazy doctor were paying him off. The doctor may have paid him to keep people away, but the senator paid him more. He had always told everyone politicians were the most crooked. He didn’t know what was going on, but for the right price, he’d keep quiet—all day long.
Chapter 27
Heads in Jars - Oakland
Nikko was silent as he filmed the operation. The only caveat to his filming projects was he was not to publish or share his videos anywhere until the doctor gave the go-ahead. Nikko understood this, and felt proud the doctor trusted him, and why wouldn’t he? Nikko was Dr. Farkis’s Number One Fan.
The doctor promised Nikko that once someone survived the somewhat gruesome operation, he could upload his documentaries to YouTube. He would turn into a millionaire, the doctor assured him. This groundbreaking surgery would be quite the event.
Nikko had expressed his gratitude to the doctor for allowing him to film, and so far, he had twenty-four hidden movies, since he hadn’t thought up this grand idea until after the doctor had a few surgeries under his belt.
His real goal was to become a doctor like Dr. Farkis. Some of Dr. Farkis’s colleagues called him a freak and a “complete nut job” behind his back, but Nikko had unwavering faith in him. In fact, he thought Dr. Farkis was a genius. Someday, head transplant surgeries would be successful and needed, and what would the naysayers think of him then?
Dr. Farkis would be known the world over, and many well-known leaders in the news and entertainment world will be clamoring for interviews. He’d told Nikko he’d be busy accepting awards and traveling, but assured Nikko he would still be his assistant and he could travel with him. Nikko was honored Farkis had chosen to be his mentor, excited about what the future would bring to the world of medicine. He also knew the doctor needed him in his own special way.
Nikko panned around the operating room, which was a huge spot in the warehouse they’d turned into a room. Surrounding the area were plastic-covered partitions to give the illusion of a sterile operating room, a room within a room. The doctors and nurses who worked here were only allowed to follow the red-taped line on the floor. The red trail led them to the staff lounge area with a few cots, sodas and snacks, a small refrigerator and microwave.
From the staff lounge, the red directional line led down a long hallway past a restroom and down to a ramp. One direction led to the door to the back alley, and one led to a spooky underground dirt and beamed garage.
The garage reminded everyone of an old, abandoned boat pier leading down to a dry reservoir. They had to use flashlights to locate their cars, and had to jump around and over the scurrying rats. The doctor was adamant they not park outside. Thirty-some vehicles parked behind a so-called abandoned warehouse would call attention to themselves. None of them wanted to take the risk. Not being able to hone their skills—or worse, going to jail if the authorities discovered what they were doing—was simply not an option and had them all complying with the rules. They didn’t want their dreams of becoming rich and famous to crumble in an instant from a stupid slip-up.
He turned the camcorder on the doctor and focused on his hands as he operated. They were so dexterous and experienced; everything his fingers touched had precision and purpose. Nikko followed a flow of blood as if it were a meandering stream trickling over hills and through valleys. He followed the flow as the blood gravitated to the open cavity of the neck area and panned the camera in further as the deep wine-colored trail dripped over the edge of the surgical table.
For convenience, the floor beneath the surgery table was recessed, similar to a space one drove over for an oil change. A decorative drain cover concealed the crudely-made hole in the floor. The hole underneath the drain cover was ten feet deep and anything but pleasing.
When a surgery was done and everyone else had gone, Nikko splashed bleach and water into the hollowed-out concavity and the drain, almost like cleaning his bathtub at home. Except this drain had not only hair but blood, skin scrapings, and even body parts such as toes, fingers, and ears.
This is when Nikko had decided the doctor was a true genius. He had installed a huge—what he called in layman’s terms—“garbage disposal” in the drain. Nikko chuckled every time he pulled the switch on the wall, listening to the grinding beneath his feet. As the waste was grinding away, he’d daydream he was in a giant’s house, mulching all the giant’s dinner leftovers in his giant garbage disposal.
Nikko roused himself out of his daydream and focused on the doc and his team again. There was a whole slew of doctors in the room. Most wore shields or goggles since they expected a lot of blood to flow and splatter. They knew how to cut the veins and arteries and transfer the heads, but they had to work as fast as they could to keep everything alive. Sometimes things got awkward since many of them hadn’t worked together before. There’d be an occasional bumping of elbows and whatnot, as they sped to and fro. Swiftness doesn’t equate to being neat and tidy.
“What about the tattoo, Dr. Farkis?”
“Yes. Nurse Phillips, please use the appropriate colored sharpies to note on the clean body where this vine tattoo should be.”
The nurse inspected the body on the operating table and made a circle with a red marker around the left ankle. There were colorful marks and circles all over the body. Red meant a tattoo was needed; purple, mole removal. Other colors and body imperfections were cross-indexed on a poster board hanging on the wall. The headless body lying on the other table was also marked up, and a mirror image.
“Come on, team, we know what to do. Nikko, set the timer for fifty-six minutes.”
“But doctor, that means cutting our time down seven minutes! Impossible,” exclaimed one of the dozens of doctors in the operating room, his green eyes bright and prominent.
“Get out of my operating room.” With his wild hair tamed under a scrub hat, the doctor acted the part of a professional surgeon today. The wrinkled, dingy lab coat told another story, though. Dr. Farkis was, and always had been, a contradiction, so this statement didn’t surprise anyone.
It would have been better if he had shouted, but Dr. Farkis’s command was said with a calm and muted voice. Most of the medical team shivered from the aura in the room. The only reason they were here was because they each wanted to hang onto his shirttails for as long as possible. They needed more experience before branching off on their own. Once the surgery was successful and hit the public, they’d all get so much business, it’d be crazy. Their name in lights…
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Farkis barked at the startled doctor as he held out his hand, palm up. The nurse picked up the Kelly Serrated Blade Scissors and placed them in his hand. He clip
ped the skin around the neck area.
“Almost ready,” he said.
The junior doctor stared at Dr. Farkis for a minute, defiant, but in the end, he wanted to jump on this bandwagon too. He wanted to be famous for this magnificent breakthrough. To be able to offer a new body to people with life-threatening diseases would be a miracle. He’d never asked where the bodies came from. He admitted to himself he didn’t want to know. All he needed to know was when the next “procedure” was ready. All he needed to know was as soon as his pager went off, he’d drive as fast as he could towards Oakland Warehouse Row. Another thing he couldn’t deny: Dr. Farkis was a rising star, a genius. And who was he to question genius?
“Practice makes perfect,” said the young doctor as he walked back to his place at the operating table.
The nurse nodded and gestured towards Nikko. Nikko was the only one in the room who had been with the doctor since day one, and had assisted with every surgery to date. The doctor liked the fact he didn’t squirm over the headless bodies. Nor when it appeared the eyes in the severed heads watched their every move. He kept his cool and knew the doc was proud of him.
Their bonding continued to grow as the doctor found out more about Nikko as time went on. He had qualities Farkis admired, because they were his qualities as well. Top of his class in high school and college at fifteen-years old; Mensa society; a loner. Nikko was thirsty for knowledge as he watched Doctor Farkis perform surgeries. He made meticulous notes along the way too, when he wasn’t filming.
For now, the menial work was a necessary step towards greatness, with the promise of opening up his own practice someday. And he was confident Doctor Farkis would help him along the way.
Only a few others here had attended the surgeries with Farkis from back in the early days. Some had up and quit. Due to the good ol’ boys network, Farkis knew word wouldn’t get out about the failures. No, the twenty-eight failures didn’t count as they worked towards greatness. Everyone was anticipating the success.
Well, the second success.
Nikko had been in Japan with the doc when he operated on the young Japanese girl. She’d made it out of the operation still alive, but was in a coma, listening to motivational tapes in a sterile room for now. When she woke up, she’d believe she was in a cozy room full of warm, fluffy quilts and rose-covered wallpaper.
He thought of a head transplant surgery akin to tearing apart a car’s motor and putting it back together. One had to line up the pistons, hook up the hoses, and always keep fingers crossed there wouldn’t be any important parts left over. Finding screws that held up the mounting bracket in a puddle of oil after the car was gone was too late.
Nikko put the video camcorder away. He walked to the oversized timer, clicking down fifty-six minutes. The clock looked like one of those timers chess players used, and it sat on its own cart. He walked to the shelf next to the wall and opened the glass doors, reached into a black case and pulled out a small saw. Some would consider the saw as an ordinary gardening tool, but Nikko knew better. It was super sharp, and he was the only one who had the responsibility of handling it. Dr. Farkis had told him the saw had cost thousands of dollars, and to handle it with care.
Doc must have money hidden away, because somehow, he’d managed to get everything they needed for the operations. They never talked about it, but Nikko thought he was a millionaire’s son and inherited some money or something. Nikko didn’t gossip about his boss like the others did. He thought highly of Farkis, and recognized he was a true genius.
He carefully and almost reverently carried the saw to the doc and waited next to him, ogling at what he was doing. The doctor concentrated on his work. They’d already been operating for fourteen hours. A nurse dabbed at the sweat on Farkis’s forehead, but that didn’t break his concentration. She’d been offering him water, too, and he sipped from the bendy straw. They’d had five ten-minute breaks, the team rotating shifts. Some had stretched and yawned, but the doctor had held fast, concentrating.
The doctor liked to chuckle so instead of listening to music, they listened to comedies with muted volume from the sixty-inch flat screen hanging from one of the arms of the joist bolted to the ceiling. Nikko was responsible for keeping the movies playing, which he did in an attentive way.
Since he was only seventeen, he had no idea who most of the old-school comedians were, but Farkis loved them. They had finished watching a Jerry Lewis movie and now an original Three Stooges movie was playing.
Back at the operating table, an artery squirted blood almost a foot in the air. “Geyser,” Farkis noted in monotone, trying to concentrate and stay in the zone. He tittered at something he heard from the flat screen. Nikko glanced up at the screen and saw Larry poking Moe in the eyes and nyuck-nyuck-nyucking.
Several doctors glanced at each other, their eyes narrowing in concern. They wouldn’t say anything out loud. They’d all heard about the man’s idiosyncrasies, but they put up with them in the operating room. Outside of it, he was on his own, they told each other. They had a feeling he was as crazy as his reputation suggested.
Once Nikko handed Dr. Farkis the saw, its handle wrapped in plastic, he walked back to his stool. The doc pressed the switch on the side of the handle and the saw rumbled to life.
“Clear!”
The physicians and assistants in the vicinity stepped back and raised their hands. Whatever happened, they didn’t want a bump or a vibration to upset the minuscule work of fusing the spinal cord with the patient’s head. One millimeter too high or low would sever it in the wrong place, and everything they’d worked for would be for nil.
A nurse nodded her chin in the direction of the anesthesiologist. “Status?”
“Holding steady,” he said as he read the monitors. The anesthesiologist didn’t seem to mind he was sitting on a wooden stool someone had brought in from a yard sale. They each had to pitch in on the items Dr. Farkis didn’t think about, such as stools or anything to do with comfort. Nurse Stacy had placed a commercial-sized coffee urn outside the operating room in the staff area for everyone to enjoy.
They each had to bring their own personal tools of the trade with them, and some had more than others, much like a mechanic’s crew walking into a shop together, each carrying his or her own tool bag.
Nurse Stacy walked to the wall and adjusted the light above them by pushing against one of the arm joists. There was a rumor Doctor Farkis had stolen a street lamp and had welded it onto the arm joist himself. Adding this bright light to the flood lights behind the opaque sheet hung from the ceiling will provide more than enough light to the underground operating room.
Some of them wore headlamps as well. If anyone were to come upon the room without realizing what was going on, it’d appear as if they were a bunch of aliens, each with one bright eye.
There was a soft purring sound, like a muted leaf blower, as the doctor cut into the neck of the young woman. Her body twitched as if she were being electrocuted, a normal reaction of the nerve endings. Blood splattered on those standing the closest, creating a contemporary watercolor creation on their white scrubs.
The newbies in the room not familiar with what would happen once the sawing started flinched as blood splattered onto their face masks and scrubs. One young doctor flung off his mask as he ran from the vicinity holding a hand over his mouth, vomiting once he passed through the dividing curtain.
Dr. Farkis remained calm and precise as he cut through veins and skin. Soon, he would be putting two puzzle pieces together: connecting the spinal cord of the body to the spinal cord of the head. Everything worked together, he was fond of saying.
Cutting through the neck and spinal cord was done before the timer went off. Dr. Farkis was a stickler for always improving his time and this pleased him. He believed the more he challenged himself, and his team, the more they’d learn and the better they’d become.
One of the nurses grabbed the severed head from the table with oversized tongs. Her hands strained to keep the pr
essure even on the tongs so the head wouldn’t drop through. She carried the severed head as someone else walked beside her, holding a flat pan underneath to catch the dripping blood and to keep the stringy, hanging veins from tangling.
Another nurse grabbed a slotted flat spatula from the sterile cart, like she was planning to turn humongous hamburgers on a barbeque. Instead, she fished out the head floating languidly in a large bell jar full of saline solution and wheeled it over to the operating table.
“Okay, people. Four-minute break.” Dr. Farkis stretched.
Several of the team had to urinate, but the doctor got testy when it wasn’t a break meant for that. He said it took too much time getting out of gloves and scrubs and then getting back into clean ones. Those who had been through several surgeries knew better than to drink liquids before the long stretch. Several of the female staff had had bladder infections in the past for not peeing when they needed to.
When the timer went off, Nikko shouted as he punched the clock’s top button. “Four minutes!” He was louder than was necessary only because he found it fun to do so, not because his announcement was needed. Dr. Farkis didn’t seem to mind his emerging assertiveness.
The professionals stopped their stretching and pacing and returned to their places. They all knew they were only half done with the procedure. It’d be another sixteen hours, with a few more breaks and rotations in between. Baby’s head was now on the table above the frozen body, her skull now bald, the springy blonde curls sheared off. The team went back to work connecting the nerves, arteries, and spinal cord, knowing they had a long night ahead of them.
Chapter 28
Barry Seeks Revenge - Oakland
When the trio ran from the approaching vehicles, they didn’t go far, only behind the corner of the next warehouse. Barry convinced Joey and Jenny they should hide so they’d hear what was happening.
Heads Will Roll Page 13