Schedule Update
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Ren pulled the Outer God Surgical Set from inventory and laid the instruments out on the tray beside the table. Scalpel, forceps, retractor, bone saw, Spirit Thread. Each one black, each one slightly wrong in a way that the eye kept trying to correct and kept failing.
Chu Xinghe watched this from flat on his back, fully conscious, completely unable to move anything, and processed it with the calm of a man who had already signed the contract and therefore had no remaining decisions to make.
"I'm going to start with the lung," Ren said. "Easier before harder."
Chu Xinghe blinked once to indicate he had heard.
"Good." Ren reached up and pulled a large mirror from inventory, attaching it to the ceiling directly above the table. Full-length, angled perfectly. Chu Xinghe could see himself in it, flat on his back, surrounded by instruments, four red tentacles emerging from behind the small masked figure standing beside him.
He stared at the mirror.
"Why," he said.
"Better visibility," Ren said. "For the procedure."
This was technically true. It was not the complete truth.
If I make him see everything. THe fear point may increase.
Ren did not respond to this because Chu Xinghe could hear him.
Four tentacles positioned themselves around Chu Xinghe's torso, one holding the retractor with the practiced ease of a surgical assistant. The scalpel descended. In the mirror, Chu Xinghe watched the blade touch his skin, watched the incision open, watched the retractor go in.
He felt nothing. The Awakened Anesthesia had taken all sensation completely. His body was simply not communicating with him on the subject of what was happening to it.
This did not help.
"Ah," he said.
"Good," Ren said. "Keep breathing."
"I can see what you are doing," Chu Xinghe said.
"Yes. The mirror helps."
"I am watching you open my chest in a ceiling mirror."
"Try to focus on your breathing."
The needle tongue emerged from Ren's left palm and went into the incision alongside the scalpel. Two tentacles held the retractor. A third adjusted the light angle. In the mirror, Chu Xinghe watched all of this happening to his own body in real time with complete clarity and absolutely no physical sensation attached to any of it, which was somehow worse than if there had been pain because at least pain would have given his brain something to process instead of just the image.
"I can see the mass," Ren said. "Larger than expected. Good thing you came in."
In the mirror, something dark was extracted from inside Chu Xinghe's chest by a forceps held in a tentacle. He watched it happen.
"Hhgh," he said.
"Almost done with the lung."
"I cannot move," Chu Xinghe said, through his teeth. "I am aware of that. I simply want to register that I am watching this happen."
"I know. You're doing very well."
"I am not doing well. I am watching a tentacle reach inside my chest and pull something out and I cannot look away because the mirror is directly above me."
"Try not to look at the mirror."
"I cannot stop looking at the mirror. It is directly above me. My eyes go there automatically."
"That is a very natural response."
The Spirit Thread sealed the site. In the mirror, the incision closed itself with a thin black thread moving faster than any human hand could manage. Chu Xinghe watched this too. He was going to keep watching it. He had accepted this.
"One down," Ren said. "Brain now."
In twenty-eight years of life, Chu Xinghe had cursed five times. He remembered each one.
He was about to add significantly to that total.
The brain work took longer. Ren worked with the needle tongue and the smallest forceps, moving through layers with the patience of someone who genuinely found this interesting. In the ceiling mirror, Chu Xinghe watched instruments disappear into his own skull and reemerge holding small dark masses that were then deposited into a tray beside the table.
He watched the first one come out.
"What the fuck," he said, quietly, to no one.
"First one," Ren said. "Six more."
"What."
"Seven tumors total. We're making good progress."
In the mirror, the second one came out.
"What the fuck," Chu Xinghe said again, at approximately the same volume, because there was no version of watching this that produced a different response.
At the fourth tumor, a tentacle adjusted the angle of the retractor and in doing so shifted the mirror's reflection slightly, giving Chu Xinghe a better angle on what was happening at the back of his skull.
"What the FUCK," he said, at full volume.
"That's fine, that's just the angle changing," Ren said.
"I can see the back of my own skull."
"That was the nerve cluster near the temporal bone. It'll settle in three seconds."
"What the FUCK," Chu Xinghe said again, because three seconds had not elapsed yet.
"Two seconds."
"WHAT"
"One."
Chu Xinghe lay very still and breathed very deliberately. Twenty-eight years. Five curses total, each one remembered. He had considered it a point of personal discipline, the mark of a man who maintained his standards regardless of circumstance.
That record had been broken approximately four minutes ago and had continued being broken since.
"I cannot," he said, carefully, "believe that I am experiencing this."
"You're doing very well."
"Please stop saying that."
"The last three tumors are smaller. This part is faster."
"That is the least comforting sentence anyone has ever said to me."
"Smaller tumors take less time. That is objectively good news."
"I know it is objectively good news. That does not make it better to watch in a ceiling mirror while your tentacles are inside my skull."
In the mirror, the sixth came out. Chu Xinghe watched it with the focused attention of someone who had decided that if he was going to be shown this then he was going to look at it directly.
"Last one," Ren said.
"Shit," Chu Xinghe said, preemptively.
"I haven't done anything yet."
"I am preparing."
"That's not an accurate use of the word."
"I am aware. I am practicing."
The fifth came out.
"Shit," Chu Xinghe said, quietly.
"That one's out."
"Good. Excellent. Wonderful."
"Sixth."
Chu Xinghe said nothing. He watched the final tumor come out in the mirror, watched the Spirit Thread seal everything closed, watched Ren withdraw the instruments with the unhurried efficiency of a man completing paperwork.
"Done," Ren said.
He returned the Outer God Surgical Set to inventory and detached the mirror from the ceiling, also returning it. The room went back to looking like an examination room. Chu Xinghe lay on the table as the Awakened Anesthesia wore off, feeling sensation return to his extremities in the order it always did.
He sat up.
His body felt extraordinary. His lungs pulled fully. His head was clear in a way that had a texture to it, the faint cloudiness he had attributed to stress or tiredness simply gone. He had not known it was there until it wasn't.
The tears came without a decision. His face just went and the tears came down and he sat on the examination table with a dark expression and water streaming down his face.
Ren watched this from across the room. The Vice Guildmaster had held himself together through the entire procedure without running or breaking down, had maintained coherent conversation throughout, and was now crying. Clearly tears of joy. The man was moved, deeply, by the quality of the care he had received. He was a kind and composed person and the relief was simply coming out.
Ren felt moved on his behalf.
Mom, Chu Xinghe thought, staring at the wall. Dad. I just watched a masked person with tentacles reach inside my skull in a ceiling mirror for forty minutes. I did not scream, which I am counting as a personal victory. I also cursed more times today than in the preceding twenty-eight years combined and I am not sure that record is recoverable.
He wiped his face.
"Doctor," he said, with full dignity. "May I use the toilet."
"Down the hall, second left," Ren said. "Past the grafting room."
Chu Xinghe stood, straightened his jacket, and walked out.
.
.
.
The hallway was quiet. He passed the first door. The second door had a faint red glow around the edges and mist coming out at the base.
He looked at it.
He kept walking.
You have hit your limit for today. You are done. Walk past it.
He went into the bathroom, ran the cold tap, and put his face under it until he felt like a person again. He straightened up and looked in the mirror. His eyes were red. His hair had come loose on one side from a tentacle making an adjustment mid-procedure. His tie was off-center.
"You're still alive, Xinghe," he said.
He covered his left eye and checked his right-eye vision. Clear. He switched hands to check the left.
He stopped.
His right hand. All five fingers.
He had lost his right pinky three years ago in a gate break outside Crestfall. Clean amputation at the second joint, the wound healed over, the finger simply gone. He had adjusted. He had stopped counting it as a loss.
He pressed the fingertip against the pad of his thumb. He felt it. He turned his hand over. The nail was already the right length and shape, the skin new but right.
He had not asked for this. It was not in the treatment plan. It had grown back somewhere between the lung cancer and the seventh brain tumor, incidentally, without comment.
He stood at the sink and looked at his own hand for a long time.
"This isn't a healing," he said, quietly. "This is a miracle."
His eyes went wet again. He let them.