by G. Wulfing
Not anymore.
Never again.
I closed my eyes and tried to rest in the dark … but even in the dark there was no relief. I could feel the bandages on my ribs and abdomen, and though I could not feel in my side the hose where it entered me, I was painfully aware that part of me stretched out of my body and away to my right and led to – fed into – another creature. An alien. A thing that looked like a possum.
I had an alien attached to me.
Like a conjoined twin, but worse: my twin was not even my own species.
I was like a sideshow freak from the long-gone centuries when such things had existed.
I was like a monster. A two-headed monster.
I started to weep.
I wept uncontrollably, like a child.
I do not know if I sobbed aloud or if I wept in silence; I do not remember if the night nurses came to me or not; they may even have sedated me: I do not remember. I was lost in darkness and grief. The pain was overwhelming, and the difference between the physical pain of my sobbing and the pain of my emotions themselves had blurred: both seemed the same.
A long time later, Toro-a-Ba confessed to me that he had sensed me weeping on that night. For a moment, he said, he had wondered if I needed help or was trying to vomit, but then he had understood. Somehow, he said, he had understood what I was feeling and why I was weeping; and he had known that if he moved or spoke or gave any sign of his presence, he would only have pushed my crazed, grieving mind further into hysteria or anguish. So he had said nothing, remaining in utter silence and stillness as though he were in deep sleep, and had listened, with his eyes closed, to my grief and pain.
Toro-a-Ba does not remember if the nurses sedated me or not. All he remembers is that his heart ached for me, and that it was all he could do to feign obliviousness and refrain from trying to offer me comfort, knowing that to do so would be the worst action he could take.
On that night I was crying alone in the dark, like a child who fears monsters under the bed; but the monster in my room was not under my bed, but in it. The monster in my bedroom … was me.
–––––––
Surgeons Fong and Suva-a informed me and Toro-a-Ba that, upon their and others’ recommendations, the government had granted us a special subsidy: we would not have to work for the rest of our lives.
It took me a while to process this, and as I contemplated it in the following hours the thought occurred to me that it was as though the thurga and I were being paid for existing, or for being the surgeons’ test subjects – or perhaps I was being repaid for what had been done to me.
The subsidy took care of the question of how I was supposed to work with a thurga attached to me; but while the thought of never working again may appeal to some, it did not to me. What was I supposed to do with my life if I had lost both my independence and my ability to work?
Because this procedure was new and experimental, it was being kept secret from everyone outside the clinic, with the exception of Toro-a-Ba’s immediate family, so that the human media could not discover the story and make it public before it was certain that the surgery had been a success. Thurga-a generally do not pay great attention to the news unless it is relevant to them, but for the sake of the human population the surgeons wanted to handle the matter delicately, and not reveal it until the time was ripe. The laboratories where I worked had been told only that I was recovering but would never be able to return to work; and, of course, Toro-a-Ba had worked here at the clinic.
Everyone seemed so pleased that the surgery had been successful. Everyone seemed to be happy that they had saved my life, and that the thurga who volunteered had not lost his. Was I supposed to feel grateful?
The surgeons and nurses would ask me how I felt, and I would reply in physical terms: describing what my body was feeling. Trying to describe what was going on inside my head, even if they had asked, would have been impossible.
Once, awake in the late afternoon, I stared at the scotia where the wall in front of me joined the ceiling, and all I could think was, Why?
Why had this happened to me?
Why was I lying here in the soft daylight of late afternoon, in a hospital bed, attached to a thurga, when I should have been upright and doing something?
How could this have come to pass?
I still could not remember the accident that had caused me to be here in the first place: were it not for the photographs that the nurses had shown me – photographs of the collapsed machinery in the laboratory, out from underneath which they had pulled my half-crushed body – I might have wondered whether it had actually happened. I might have been deceived; just an unwitting victim for Surgeons Suva-a and Fong to experiment on …
Why me?
I did not realise that I had whispered those words until I heard a slight movement to my right and Toro-a-Ba murmured, “Daniel?”
“Huh?” I blurted quietly, a little startled and confused. I started to glance to my right, then it was as though my head checked itself. No part of me wanted to look at the thurga beside me.
“Are you all right?”
“Mm,” I confirmed unconvincingly, with a slight nod.
There was a pause. I could feel the thurga looking at me.
After a long moment, I cleared my throat slightly, and croaked, “Why you? Why did they choose you?”
“I volunteered.”
Why …? I wondered yet again, dizzily. Why on earth would anyone volunteer for this?
A moment passed before I could ask tersely, “Why?”
“I felt moved to do so,” the creature answered mildly, after a brief moment. “I felt pity for you.”
Toro-a-Ba paused again, for longer. Then he ventured, “Since we are already obliged to be intimate physically, it seems to me natural that you and I should become intimate psychologically, or emotionally, if you will. The gut is an emotional organ, Daniel, in thurga-a as well as in humans, so it follows that you and I will most likely end up sharing our emotions anyway, to some extent, on a physical level.”
I closed my eyes and set my teeth, clenching my farther fist, while a wave of nausea passed over me.
The creature seemed to notice, and waited.
All I could muster in response was, “And?”
“So I hope you will allow me to be honest and open with you about my reasons for volunteering for this surgery.”
Why, I wondered, curious despite myself. Were his reasons very selfish or impure?
“I have wanted, for as long as I can remember, to do something good with my life. Something … great. I have always wanted to do something that would be worth remembering, something that would be honourable and virtuous and worthy of blessing. I became an intern at this clinic in the hope that I could someday become a nurse and help people; but it always seemed to me that there might be something more; that this was not the end of my quest to do something great. When Surgeon Suva-a proposed the surgery that she said might save your life, I felt a great shout go up within me. And I knew that this was what I had been waiting for. This was my chance to do something good and great. I could save your life, and perhaps the lives of others in future if this surgery was successful, and spend the rest of my days allowing someone else to live.”
Toro-a-Ba paused. “I knew very little about you, so I called the laboratories where you worked and asked if you were a good person. The people there were confused at first; I had to tell them that it was because you would be receiving organ transplants and since I was the guardian of a human ward whose organs you would be receiving, I wanted to know if my ward’s organs would be going to a good person.” He made a face that I interpreted as rue; thurga expressions can be so subtle. “It was partially true. I could think of no other way to get such information about you without revealing the truth.
“Your colleagues told me that you were. Everyone agreed that you were worth saving.”
The creature closed his eyes for a moment, as though tired or grieved. It was not
until this point that I realised I was looking at him.
After a moment, he opened them again, looked into my eyes and asked, “Is it good, Daniel? Is it enough?”
Puzzled, and weary from concentrating, I asked, “Is what enough?”
“My reasons.” Toro-a-Ba held my gaze. “Are they … enough? Are they … to your liking?”
“I suppose.”
I suspected that the creature was asking for validation, for confirmation from me that he had done the right thing and that I was accepting or approving of it; but weariness was clouding my brain and the best, the suitable, response eluded me.
“Yes,” I said, for lack of any inspiration. “It’s good. Your reasons are … good.”
Exhaustion seemed to consume me, and I fell asleep for hours.
When I woke, eventually, in the small hours of the morning, I pondered what Toro-a-Ba had said.
… I asked if you were a good person. Your colleagues told me that you were. Everyone agreed that you were worth saving.
I wondered exactly who had said that, and why they had said it. Was it only my co-workers? I could think of no one else whom he might have had the opportunity to ask, and no one else who really knew me well enough to make a statement regarding my character.
‘A good person’, and ‘worth saving’.
Had they meant it, or had it been simply that they wanted me saved, and that the surgeons wanted to perform their work on me?
I was mildly, dismally, listlessly curious, but I did not have the energy to care much. It didn’t matter whether they were wrong or right: I was alive, ‘good’ or not, ‘worth saving’ or not.
–––––––
The creature beside me had, in effect, given up his life so that I might keep mine. This creature had surrendered his right to an independent life, to autonomy and freedom, and had dedicated his life to my service.
The very thought made me feel ill.
He had done this for a stranger. For someone who was not his friend, not his relative, not a neighbour nor even an acquaintance; not of his own culture nor even his own species; someone about whom he knew next to nothing, someone with whom he might be utterly incompatible, someone who would slow him down and make him ill – at least in the beginning of the recovery. And what if I hated him? What if I resented being used as an experiment – an unvolunteering prototype for this new surgery – and vented my anger on him? What if I murdered him, committing suicide in the process?
The thurga had placed his life in my hands even as he had saved mine.
Was I supposed to be grateful?
Or was I allowed to feel angry that someone had sewn me into another creature, giving me a conjoined twin, saddling me with the burden of another’s life, without my consent?
Sleep, when it came, was a relief; not just from physical pain and discomfort, but from my own thoughts.
It often came in broken phases, however; often at night I would find myself lying awake, just as I often drifted off to sleep during daylight.
Some of those nights were so long. My body, confused by the drugs and by the shock of the whole ordeal, seemed to be unsure of itself and what was expected of it.
On one such night, I lay thinking, trying to ignore the vague nausea and various aches and twinges that plagued my every waking moment now that I was not heavily sedated.
It had occurred to me that if I desired it, I could strangle or suffocate the thurga beside me with relative ease: by the time the nurses arrived, he could be dead. Of course, I too would die shortly thereafter: a murder-suicide.
I would die a murderer, having killed the one who had devoted his life to saving mine.
Had Toro-a-Ba known that such a thing might occur, when he volunteered to save my life?
I began to think about what thoughts may have passed through Toro-a-Ba’s head when he made that decision. Had he fully understood what it would be like?
Had he honestly been content to spend his life in the service of one who was a stranger to him?
Who would volunteer for that? Who would devote every moment for the rest of his life to supporting someone else about whom he knew virtually nothing? Why on earth had this thurga thought that such a thing was a good idea? If he wanted to help people, surely there were ways he could have helped more people than just one. He might not even have survived the surgery: both of us could have died, and then Toro-a-Ba’s plans to do good would come to nothing.
Even now, as he lay asleep in the bed beside mine, his life was at risk. I was hardly psychologically stable; that must be obvious to him.
I watched him, more than arm’s reach away from me in the gloom, watched his tiny ribs moving with his deep little sleeping breaths. The fuzz that had been growing on the big shaven patch on his side had now lengthened to almost half of its natural length, so the nurses had shaved part of it again, creating a smaller patch of pink skin around the place where the hose entered his side, so that the regrowing hairs could not interfere with the still-healing skin around the hose, and so that it was easier for the surgeons to inspect the hose where it entered him. The effect was bizarre; but it was merely one bizarre detail in a tapestry of bizarre disaster.
He was so small.
He had known that I was human, when he volunteered for the surgery. But had he realised that he would be placing himself, forever after, at the mercy of one who was probably a dozen times his size and weight? Had he realised how vulnerable he would be? Not just vulnerable in that he might not recover well, might be sickly for the rest of his days, might not even survive the procedure to begin with, and in that whatever happened to me forever after would directly affect him also; but in the fact that if I so chose, I could kill us both with ease.
Had he not understood that?
I gulped, watching him.
What was wrong with this creature? Why would he shackle himself to me?
What madness possessed this little furry body to think that the best possible use of his life would be to physically join himself to an alien for the rest of his days?
We were both monsters, now.
–––––––
At last I was able to drink and retain not just water but fruit and vegetable juices. Tasting fruit juice again after two weeks unconscious followed by a further two weeks of tasting only water or vomit was both shocking and delightful to my mouth. Before long I was able to digest yoghurt. The surgeons and other specialists were elated: clearly, their work was a success. They had done something that had never been done in the whole of medical history. The techniques they had pioneered, and their successful execution of something many had considered impossible, would see their names etched into medical history, both human and thurga.
Not once had any of them asked, retroactively, for my permission; nor for my forgiveness. My body was their success, bearing the marks of their genius; my personhood was, apparently, not of concern.
I almost wondered that I did not hate them more.
Perhaps, I grudgingly thought to myself, despite all my anguish, part of me was actually thankful to be alive.
Now free of the heaviest drugs, my mind was recovering more quickly than my body. I was offered books and magazines, and I accepted. I could even ask for specific ones, and they would be found for me and brought to me. I was supplied with a reading stand like the thurga’s. Due to the fact that the surgery was still being kept secret from the outside world, I could not be given any electronic device that could access the Internet; so my reading material was all hard-copy. I did not mind; whom would I contact anyway?
Upon request, the surgeons allowed me to have a small music player with headphones. Hearing music again after five weeks was unexpectedly blissful. My brain seemed to give a jolt at the shock of hearing music – music, not just sounds! – again; and then I felt my whole body relax. Hitherto I had never realised how much music means to me.
As with the reading material, I could request whatever music I wanted, and it would be procured for me
and loaded into the player. Sleeping was easier when I could be lulled into it by music. With books, music, a clearer head, a gradually healing body, and some food passing over my tongue once more, I began to feel a little bit alive again.
It seemed like so long since I had felt alive. Five weeks can feel like half a lifetime.
Perhaps it was a lifetime. Perhaps I had died; the single human, the autonomous Daniel Avari had died, and now there was a different creature in his place – a two-headed, conjoined freak of a creature. From now on, my life would not be anything like what it had been before. For all practical purposes, I had died. The life I was living now was not mine.
And I continued to wonder what Toro-a-Ba had been thinking when he volunteered for the surgery.
Did he not understand?
No matter what they said, the surgeons had not operated on me to save my life. They had experimented on me. If their experiment was successful, I might live. But my living was a side-effect: they had been operating on a dead man. When Surgeon Fong had seen me lying injured in that hospital, her thought had not been that she might be able to save me: she had seen only a perfect chance to experiment with her and Suva-a’s theories. Since I was already as good as dead, I was the perfect specimen on which to test surgery with a high risk of fatality.
Toro-a-Ba was merely part of that experiment. He had volunteered to be their test subject. He was not my saviour; he was an accomplice to the experimentation they had done on me.
How naïve was this thurga? Did he actually think that he had done some good?
Idiot.
Unfortunately for me, the surgery had succeeded.
Why? Why, when there were so very many things that could have gone wrong, had the surgery succeeded?
I should have been dead. The odds were that I should have been dead. But I wasn’t. A die with a hundred black faces and one white had, inexplicably, landed with the white face up.