DOCTOR NOBODY

When he had first woken up to the sliver of sunlight creeping its way through the basement window, Doc didn't know where he was. This bedroom was disorientingly large and seemed to bulge as he opened his eyes, adorned with the kind of wallpaper reserved for the elderly and uninteresting. The closet door was cracked open, teasing a dark room full of a young man's clothes who wasn't so young anymore. This had been his dad's old room, once. This was the basement at Grandma's house. Knowing where he was, didn't do much to ease his sense of discomfort. Grandma's basement was creepy. It was full of Exposed concrete and wooden beams, Dark rusted pipes running alongside shiny aluminum air ducts, and endless shadow-filled corners to keep you up at night.He was eager to get back upstairs, and the faint sounds of dog feet on linoleum overhead let him know he wouldn't be alone. That sound meant the dogs had been let out of their crates already, and more importantly, so had Grandma. She was up there right now, swinging her club around and guarding her beanstalk, striking fear into the helpless villagers down below. Villager anyway

Throwing the heavy duvet off of himself as much as he could, he swung himself around, put on his slippers, and made a quick beeline to the stairs. his way down the short hallway had never felt longer, and he had to keep reminding himself not to look into any of the rooms as they passed by. The dark mildewy pantry, the cold concrete of the toy-filled playroom, and the ajar door to his grandpa's bedroom, All seemed to leer at him like he was the punchline of some lunatic joke. Suddenly he stopped, letting the cold linoleum of the first step calm him down. He was already one step away from the basement and less than 5 feet from being upstairs. As quietly as he could, he made his way up to the heavy wooden door and paused before opening it. He didn't want Grandma to know he was awake yet. From what he was told, Grandma Lacey had always wanted to have a baby girl. When his father had been born, she had been able to make her peace with it. But when his Uncle David was born shortly after, she was a lot less guarded with her disappointment.  In desperation, they tried one last time for a girl. And when Uncle Ivan was born, Grandma Lacey seemed quiet but accepting. 

As if she had simply said oh well, fuck it, and moved on with her life. Years passed uneventfully, and soon enough grandma's brood of boys were having kids of their own. First was David's boy Jack in the first week of the year 2000. 3 months later on April 27th, he was born into a world full of April rain. 

For 15 months, he had remained an only child, and in the early days of September 2001, His sister Clara had become Grandma Lacey's life mission. To say Grandma was obsessed with her would be an exaggeration, but all of his life she had been given a very obvious favouritism that he couldn't understand. Clara was delicate, pure, beautiful, an angel from on high, a unicorn that only came once in a generation. He was just another grandkid in the litter of brutish boys. His own delicacy, his own softness, was as embarrassing for him as it was shameful for them. It was just one of the countless parts of himself he had learned to keep hidden. 

Knowing what he knew, feeling how he felt, He made his way past the doggy gate and into the kitchen. The scent of toast, eggs, coffee, and milk poured over marshmallows with frosted wheat. The sound of the morning news playing faintly in the living room, the sound of small dogs' feet, the slow labored sound of grandma breathing. For a brief moment, their eyes met. “Good morning Eric” she called, enunciating every word with perfect diction. “Slept in a little, Huh?” No. Not even a little bit. When he had first woken up (Or perhaps when she had first woken him up) it was just before 6 am, and nowhere on the planet earth was that considered sleeping in. On planet Grandma, however, the rules were different.  Anyone who woke up even a single second after grandma had slept in. Anyone who rested was lazy, anyone who asked questions or voiced their own opinion was wrong. All the men here were slow mutants, beastly balls of animal urges that Grandma, out of the kindness of her heart, had spent her life taming. 

“I Guess so” he murmured in response. “Sorry” A beat of silence, ended by the sound of the sound of a toilet flushing. As if she was deciding exactly how to show her disappointment. With a sigh that suggested she was already tired of him, she said simply, finally “Wash up and grab a plate” As if on cue, Clara emerged from the washroom. Their eyes met for just a moment and moved back to their separate tasks. He had washed his hands, grabbed himself a plate, and sat at the table across from them both.  Pretty quickly, it became obvious that Clara was eager to finish eating and return to the barn as soon as she could. To return to the cats, to be more accurate. They had seen a few crawl out of the woodwork for supper last night, but she wouldn't be satisfied until she had seen the kittens. He knew how she felt. They ate their toast and scrapped up their eggs as quickly as etiquette would allow, and soon enough eating breakfast became a competition he was desperate to win. “You kids sure are in an awful hurry” Grandpa noted as he took his seat beside Grandma. “Watch your elbows, and wash up before you go anywhere” 

Grandma nagged in her seemingly disgusted way. They had both been excused, both washed up, and now they were both putting on their snow pants and winter gear with the same eagerness as before, with the same level of competition. She won, again, but he was already over it. Already following behind her, jogging instead of walking the short distance to the barn, hoping to see any signs of life at all. Unless they were kittens, the idea of actually petting any of these barn cats was almost absurd. At most, you would see a flash of a furry orange ass, or a pair of yellow-green eyes watching you from somewhere safe. They were so skittish you would often see a mama cat, running from her little nest of kittens in the hay as soon as the door opened. He didn't have a clear view inside the Barn when he opened the sliding wooden door, but he hadn't heard any cats go running either. His eyes adjusted to the light, and suddenly he could see a gray and white ghost cat peering at him from one of the empty calf pens. Their own private snow leopard, just as regal to them as the real deal. “Look!” Clara pointed, and silently it had made its way somewhere further into the old barn's countless hiding spots. She looked at him, excited. He looked at her, excited.

“Let's check upstairs” She tittered, and before he could respond she was running to the hayloft 2 steps at a time.  hearing Clara's heavy footsteps reach the top of the stairs, he decided to stay here for now. In her rush to see Schrodinger's kittens, she completely ignored the few spots they could hide in down here.  As a matter of fact, the first time he had even seen kittens in the barn was about 9 feet to his left, in the corner of the large hay-filled feeding trough. He would start there.

opening the latch,  sliding the heavy wooden door open, he checked for signs of life. In the left-hand corner, there was nothing. Not even the indent of a previous something, just cold gray nothing. On the right, more of the same, with the faintest indent to hint at a previous occupant. A cat had unquestionably been here not too long ago, but for now, nothing. Riveting. Closing the door behind himself as he went, he made his way to the back corner of the barn. To the hay-covered pen, with a square hole cut so you could see through to the loft. “Any kittens up there?” he shouted. “Well Duh,” she shouted back. Charming, as ever. “You coming?” “In a minute” he murmured, still a little stung by her you must be stupid tone of voice. “I wanna finish checking down here, first” She never answered him back, how very her, and he started his search. 

She would have just been looking for cats if she was doing the searching, but he was looking for anything at all that could hold his interest, even for a second. Looking at the same old wooden walls and dust-covered machinery, hoping to find a diamond in the rough. 

colorful fiberglass cow canes, dangling metal gate chains, broom shovels and rakes, Big empty buckets, randomly scattered nails and nuts, and of course a few slowly melting snowy footprints, but no diamonds. Just rough. Rats.Had he stalled long enough by now? He wanted to go up and check out the kittens, wanted it the whole time he was wandering around down here, but he didn't want her to know it. For as long as he could remember, his big sister Clara had no fucks to give. According to the ancient ones, her first word was NO, and that one word did a good job of setting their expectations. To her mother and father, to her closest friends, and of course to him, she seemed more like a cousin visiting from out of town than anyone's daughter or sister.

When you came at her with any sort of emotional vulnerability, She did her best to dodge the compliments and ignore the feelings. Any form of criticism or critique was proof to herself that she was a failure. Always defensive, always guarded, always short and usually hurtful. Right now, he probably wasn't on her mind in the slightest. But What she lacked in fucks to give, she made up for with the kind of independence he had always been jealous of. She had probably never spent a night staring at the ceiling, hoping she wouldn't get yelled at the next morning. She probably didn't care what their parents thought of her one way or the other. She probably felt less clumsy, less small, and less scared than he ever had.

soft footprints upstairs told him that she had moved on already, and before he could head up the stairs to meet her, something caught his eye. Something that had moved, darting through the slit in the still partly open barn doors. Something that could only be a cat, and he could feel the warm flush of excitement start to work its way through him. The closer he got the more excited he felt, and it took all of his willpower to slide open the creaky wooden door slowly and carefully instead of simply slamming it as hard as he normally would have. What he was expecting to see, was the same gray and white ghost cat that had been there to greet them, or maybe another member of his family. 

right beside him, less than three feet away, sat what he had first thought was just a rock someone had left just outside the barn doors. They had both walked right past it without even noticing on the way in, but all at once it was impossible not to see it. Perfectly gray, just as snow-covered as everything else, but with the unmistakable texture of fur hidden beneath. He watched it, silently, looking for the slow rise and fall of breathing. God knows how long he had stood there watching, waiting, but it was long enough to know. He had found exactly what he was looking for, and best of all, he knew she wouldn't run away when he took his next step. He knew she was dead.

For all of her many strengths, something like this would have been a real punch in the gut to Clara. She'd always been tougher than he was, but she would melt like butter over any animal whatsoever. For someone like her, this little tableau of tragedy would probably sit like a rock in her stomach for the rest of the day, maybe even the week. She would think the whole thing was disgusting, unnecessary, and depressing. 

But for Doc, It didn't feel like any of those things. There was an undeniable poetry about the whole thing, about having your final moment spent alive frozen for all eternity. He wouldn't touch her, not right now, but soon enough he would. Soon enough, he would peel her off of the frozen Earth with a sound like slowly ripping, velcro and stash her away somewhere deep in the barn. after a few more visits to Grandma's, after a few more days at Grandma's, and after some exploratory experiments with a small red Swiss army knife, he wouldn't have much left to hide anymore.

At breakfast the next morning, Clara was just as eager as always to get back to the barn. But this time, he was even more excited than he had ever been. For the first time in what felt like his whole life, he had beaten Clara hands down. 

2

With a pallet of wet browns and grays, he enters rain-soaked and throws his hat blindly behind him through the closing doors. Overhead, fluorescent lights buzz, and cast a faint shade of green onto his sterile mostly white surroundings. The air is thick with the smell of alcohol, clear plastic sheets, and the familiar hum of background machinery. Young women with clipboards and short skirts, Men in long white coats with horned-rimmed glasses, and the sick and the crippled, all gracefully slither past him as he walks down the endless hallway. Making his way to the staff room, He pushes against the mass of garbage on the other side of the door to open it as much as possible. Inside the staff room, lies a square chunk of landfill. medical equipment, fast food wrappers, used condoms, Thick brown rats, all carpet the ground in a layer of stinking flesh carved with small connecting open wounds of exposed linoleum. Walking along these fault lines, he adds his wet clothing to the pile and Fishes out the cleanest lab coat he can find. Both of the sleeves have various brown splotchy stains up to the elbow, but it bothers him even less than the rats. Nobody seems to care about things like that anymore.

in a supernaturally good mood, he Pirouettes out of the staff room, reentering the hospital's constantly mingling school of human fish. passing an empty wheelchair, passing the sound of quiet sobbing in examination room A6, passing a lost child looking for his mother, and finally he arrives at the empty nurse's station.

 On any other day, he would have spent a few minutes looking through the carelessly scattered pile of clipboards for something juicy, but today he was on a roll, today he could do no wrong.Knowing this, he grabbed one randomly from near the bottom of the pile and started reading. Mrs. Vasquez, 38, Duodenum peptic ulcer. In layman's terms, the lining of her stomach or perhaps her small intestine had a break somewhere. Definite surgery, and an excellent pick just as he knew it would be. Heading Towards the elevators, grinning, he grabs the first nurse he sees by the arm. A bottle blonde, hair frantically curly, and turns her around sharply to meet his gaze. “Please have Mrs. Vasquez moved to an OR, and prepped for surgery” 

“Right away doctor” she nods, sending her blonde curls bouncing back and forth as she power walks her way to the elevators. With no sense of urgency at all, he follows behind and breathes the hospital through his gills, absorbing everything and spitting it back out. Even now, after being a hospital staff member for over a decade, he didn't like to think of himself as a surgeon. The word was too impersonal, too simple and blunt to capture the magic of it all. 

He wasn't just some blue-collar organ mechanic dressed in priestly white, he was an artist. That day on the farm was the first time he had gotten his hands dirty. The first time Doc had fallen in love with the medium of flesh. It hadn't been an easy start by any means, a frozen cat makes a poor canvas as you might expect, but soon enough he wasn't just poking and prodding. He was Charles Darwin, eagerly recording every aspect of this new undiscovered ecosystem. the dark purple-black velvet of the liver, the heavy yellow sacks of fat, the dark crimson rose of the heart, all of it was breathtaking. And once you knew where everything was, knew what your medium was capable of in other words, then you could start sculpting. Carving out pieces, reattaching old ones, trimming and tucking, smoothing out the hard edges, and finally revealing the masterpiece he had envisioned from the start. For him, surgery was as much an act of destruction as it was creation. As delicate and precise as it was brutal. His own meditative vacation away from the rest of the world, a full body thrum of calm and satisfaction.

The sound of elevator doors opening snaps him back to reality, and he steps inside. A faint stomach-lifting sense of falling, a few awkward moments scored to tinny jazz music, and the doors open unto the hospital basement. the same sickly buzzing fluorescents sway softly overhead on their thin wire supports. The sparkling white floors and stinging alcohol smell, are a distant memory. The floors are uneven, cracked and stained, just like the rest of the world. Alcohol mingles with embalming fluid mixes with death mixes with rust and decay, a full assault of uncomfortable smells and lingering bad tastes. Most of his coworkers hated it down here. Stayed as far away as they could in fact. The basement came with a dark smoky nostalgia for him, like a child surrounded by their parents' second-hand smoke. It was unnatural, a chemical mix of nightmares and bad luck, eagerly stamping out anything remotely organic. And he loved it. 

For all of her many strengths, something like this would have been a real punch in the gut to Clara. For someone like her, this little tableau of tragedy would probably sit like a rock in her stomach for the rest of the day, maybe even the week. She would think the whole thing was disgusting, unnecessary, and depressing. 

But for him, It didn't feel like any of those things.