Lucidity

Chapter 9 - Dark of the Moon

Jonas Helman used to have a life. He used to have it all: wife, two kids, dog, house in the ‘burbs, even a minivan.

Then he found his addiction and lost it all.

Best thing that ever happened to him.

Adrenalin and power were his drugs of choice. He craved them constantly. Every waking moment was spent in the pursuit of one or the other or both.

It was ten-thirty at night, the OR manager reminded him as she turned the lights off in the other rooms. Helman ignored her.

Wilson, his assistant, adjusted the screws that held the cadaver’s head in precise location in the center of a ceramic halo. Helman glanced up, did some mental calculations then realigned it a bit so that the holographic image of the MRI fit precisely.

He donned his goggles and lit up the laser and began slicing into the cadaver’s brain.

“Damn it!” Helman yanked his goggles off and hurled them across the room. He’d just disintegrated the dead man’s hippocampus. If resurrected the corpse would have awakened without any memories or the ability to lay down new ones.

“Sir, if you’d let me tie the laser to the computer guidance—”

“Shut up, Wilson!” The operating tech obeyed, clamping his lips together until they formed a single thin line. “What the hell’s the good if I let a machine do the damn surgery for me?”

Wilson knew better than to answer.

Helman paced the room. “Reset to the thalamic lesion, let’s run that one.”

Wilson turned to the computer, his shoulders hunched, presenting the smallest possible target to the irate surgeon. The holographic image changed; still the same cadaver’s brain but with a new lesion programmed into the images. The idea was that with a precise map of both the normal and cancerous tissue of the brain, the laser could be guided to obliterate tumor and spare the rest.

It worked perfectly when the computer programmed the laser’s movements. Wilson judiciously did not remind his boss of this.

Helman held his hand out and Wilson scrambled to retrieve the goggles from the floor, then darkened the overhead lights.

“I’m gonna get you this time,” Helman murmured as his fingers delicately nudged the laser on its path of destruction. “Computer, my ass.”

If medicine was as much an art as a science, then neurosurgery was the fucking Sistine Chapel and he was Michelangelo.

Helman finished his work and gestured for the room lights. “Take that, you bastard.”

“Computer says there’s one point five-six percent residual tumor remaining,” Wilson told his master in a low voice.

“What? Now it’s saying I wimped out? Let’s see it do better without taking out the thalamic tract.”

Wilson punched the keys and they watched as the computer guided the laser’s bursts of energy. It only took a few seconds. Helman rushed forward to inspect the brain while Wilson waited for the computer’s tally.

“One hundred percent tumor free, only two point three millimeter encroachment onto healthy tissue.”

Helman shook his head. It was impressive work—but done by a damned machine! He wanted this technique to be his masterpiece, not the product of some mindless pile of circuit boards and wires.

He even had a name for it: the Helman Process. His legacy.

“Let’s try another,” Helman told his assistant, ignoring the other man’s sigh of fatigue. “We’re not going anywhere until I can take on Grace Moran’s tumor and beat that fucker.”