As predicted, Eva took one look at Mark and I, standing at the airplane hotel holding hands, and let out an “I knew it!” before rushing over and pulling me away to ask me about our trip. I put her off until we got on the plane, explaining that we had five hours to go over it. She took the delay gracefully and proceeded to usher us all on the plane like we were a wayward museum tour group blocking access to the Mona Lisa. With all the pushing and shoving, she almost left her own bag behind.
Under duress, I gave Eva and highly abridged version of our Venice Beach conversation, merely saying that Mark took my hand, and proceeded to tell her about the diner we found in an old firehouse and our ride through the Venice canals just off of the beach. I told her how the next night we rented bikes and rode along the twenty-two miles of pathways of the Strand and of our trip to the La Brea Tar Pits.
For her part, Eva gave me a play-by-play of their camping trip and James interjected with a story of Eva tripping and falling ten feet into the river. Since she was busy organizing everyone into a scenic group picture at the time, the whole thing was on video and we all watched the fall in forward and reverse several times before Eva snatched the phone from James’s hands and tried to delete it. My hands were faster though and I snatched it from her and returned it to James. If my videos had to be out there for posterity, so did hers!
Back on the east coast, Mark dropped me off at home in the middle of the night and four hours later I was at the hospital for morning rounds. The break had given me time to sit back and think about how I wanted to continue my medical education. Overall, I felt that I was learning a lot and was on the right track. However, my musings led me to a glaring omission. I was learning and developing the skills to do things like a regular doctor. Only I wasn’t ever going to be one of those. I had special abilities to draw from and besides using my field as an aid to enhanced learning and patient scanning, I really wasn’t doing much with it.
I was already very proficient at removing things from the body without having to cut into it. Why couldn’t I do surgeries the same way? Could I use my fields to close wounds or to seal ruptured arteries? Was there a way to insert an IV or catheter without piercing the skin? Could I freeze nerve clusters inside an L2 stasis field and eliminate the pain signals it was sending? I figured that for every surgical technique that I was learning, there had to be an Abby way of doing it with fields. That became my new goal.
At home that evening, after Kung Fu and a shower, I made a list of the different goals of a surgical procedure. For instance, some surgeries were to remove or excise things. You could remove cancers, plaque from arteries, organs, gall stones, and bullets. Other surgeries were to stop internal bleeding due to trauma of some sort like those from a knife or a bullet. Other goals included repairing (bones, birth defects), reattaching (fingers, tendons), attaching or adding (pace makers, implants), transplanting (organs), reconstructing (cosmetic or due to injury), ablating (lasering the cornea), restarting (heart), and giving birth.
Beside each goal, I listed out the surgical techniques that were required such as cutting open the skin, cutting something out, clamping off veins to reduce the blood flow, inserting an IV and catheter, intubating the patient, and suturing the skin at the end of the procedure. Next, I planned to list if my field could bypass the step entirely and if not, how I could use my fields and the layers of reality to accomplish the same goal.
Removal or excision was the first goal I listed. That one was easy, as I’d already done it. Wrap a field around all parts of an object in the body and send it to L2. No cutting or suturing needed. No anesthesia, no intubation, no catheters or IV. No need for suction or replacement blood standing by.
Things got more complicated after that. I could add things into the body, but how do I place them in just the right place? How do I use the fields to close off a bleeding vein? Nothing came to mind and I put my list away, hoping that I get some inspiration in my sleep.
My big break came a week later as I was eating breakfast with dad. Mom, a late riser, was still asleep and dad and I were finishing up our food. He would be heading off to the university to teach and I was heading to the university to learn. I flashed back to the last two summers where dad and I shared this exact routine before heading off together to his class.
“Abby, I’ve been thinking about that rescue that you made in Venezuela. When you saved Samuel.”
“Why are you thinking about it?”
“How can I help you figure out new ways to use your abilities, if I don’t think about them?” This is why I should have opened up to him about my abilities earlier.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Did you come up with anything new?”
“No, nothing new. However, I might have come across a flaw in your reasoning. You mentioned that you only came back to reality twice in Venezuela. Once was on the bus with the locals that you’d freed and the other time was to use Waze to find the prison. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” Where was this going?
“Why did you need to phase back to reality for Waze to work?”
“Because there’s no cellular signal in the layers. R1 and L1 have copies of the satellites in space, but they don’t function. You need to be in reality for that.”
“Yes. I can see that. However, couldn’t you have shifted the phone to reality and updated it’s information.”
“I wouldn’t be able to hold...” oh my God. I face-palmed. Of course! “How did I miss that? And how did you think of it?”
“From your description of training with your weapons in R1. You shifted the staff to reality for the hit, while you stayed in R1. You said that you connected the field around the staff to the field around you and that allowed you keep holding it without it falling down. Being able to combine the layers through your ability to connect fields can be very useful, so long as you remember that you can do it.”
It was like a bomb going off in my brain. All of a sudden, I started seeing how to use my fields in conjunction with surgical instruments. Dad’s words had broken through the blockage that I’d been having. I jumped up and gave him a big hug.
“Thanks, dad. You just gave me the key to solving a lot of my problems.”
“If you told me more, or even what you’re working on, I might be able to be of more help.”
“Soon dad. I need a few more months. It’s like when you’re working on one of your sculptures and you want to have it done or nearly so before you let anyone see it.”
“I can understand that. Only tell me, please, is what you’re working on dangerous?”
“No. If it works out, it should be wonderful. You told me that my gift could make me the best assassin the world has ever known. This project will show you that my gift can be used for positive changes as well.”
With that, I put my dishes away and ran off to my room to work out some new techniques.
It took me two weeks of trial and error, and plenty of practice, to get the handle on doing surgery my way. It turned out that it wasn’t as simple as I’d first imagined and it required not just my ability to connect myself to objects in other layers, but also my ability to shift only part of an object, while having it still connected to the rest of it. Multiple fields connecting multiple layers connecting to multiple parts of an object.
Not only that, but I often needed to find several different ways to get do the surgeries, depending on what the circumstances were. For instance, if I was able to bring the patient into L2, I wouldn’t need to clamp off a bleeding vein. The patient would be in stasis and all blood flow would cease. However, if I was surrounded by people, then clamping off a bleeding vein involved putting a field around the vein and sending the last centimeter into L2, while leaving this bit connected to the vein in reality. By sending the end of the cut vein into L2, the blood inside would be frozen in stasis, creating a plug for the blood that was still in reality. I’d done the same thing when I’d shifted the Basilisk building into L2. I’d left the power and water lines connected, only in another reality, and neither of them overflowed into the empty space.
Alternatively, I could also use a clamp to shut off the vein by sending the clamp into R1, passing the clamp through the body that was still in reality, and then sending just the tip of the clamp back to reality to close off the vein. This technique would allow me to do surgery inside the body, without piercing the skin or needing to get around any intervening organs or bodily structures. Scalpels, electrocautery handpieces, syringes and sutures could all be used in a similar fashion. This technique would be very helpful in doing surgery in L2, but would create confusion if witnessed in reality.
For private surgeries, those not witnessed by others, I could replicate suction by sending any blood or bodily fluids into L2. Returning that blood was a bit tricker, in that once I was finished surgery I had to bring it back and place it in the veins. This would require an autotransfusion devise and an IV, both of which could be hidden, yet still connected to the patient, in R1 when the patient was returned to reality.
In an emergency, I could close wounds, such as a gunshot or stabbing wound, by sending the upper layer of blood seeping out of the wound into L2 and connecting that plug of stasis blood to the surrounding skin.
I had so many options and as I did more rotations, I found more and more uses for my abilities. While most were variations on the techniques I’d discovered, a few were new. I kept at it though and was continually amazed at the things that my field allowed me to do. While the end result of my surgeries would probably be similar to regular surgery, my way used far less resources, had no risk of infection, and had much faster recovery times due to not having to cut into the body. This last one was especially important as I could operate on a patient that was too weak or compromised to survive regular surgery.
One more advantage my techniques provided was the lack of pain involved. Either the patient was in L2 and completely unable to feel any pain or the instruments would pass through his or her body without any nerves sending pain signals to the brain. Even injections or fluid extractions could be done directly into the vein, without piercing the veins at all. My scanning would let me position the tip of the syringe directly inside the appropriate vein and I’d shift only the tip into reality to inject or extract, as required. I bet that kids would love getting shots from me. I could do painless spinal taps and bone marrow extractions, as well as painless biopsies.
As usual, the hardest part would be hiding my technique from the patients themselves and from anyone else.