Sine Therapy, continued
Week 3, Winner
The silence before surgery is deafening. At least that’s how Merida thought of it, sitting in the operating booth at Northern General surrounded by a bevy of acoustic baffles, the eggshell-patterned foam soaking up all her ambient noise. In front of her the room’s diagnostic tablet displayed details of her 9:30: a 41-year-old male with stage II prostate cancer, 104.78 kg, 137/92 mmHg, 52 bpm. 97% Sp02.
A low risk operation then, she thought to herself as she thumbed through the rest of the patient’s report. She was happy for an easy morning. Last night’s afterparty had run longer than she’d hoped and, being the featured artist on the program, she hadn’t the heart to leave early.
She took a long sip off her travel mug, thankful the hospital had seen value in building a decent café in the lobby. A clear money maker, that place; lines ten to fifteen people long most mornings. Even with her employee discount she figured she probably dumped at least $20 a week into it. Merida closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the nonfat latte settle into her core.
When the feeling subsided, she slowly opened her eyes, looking out through thick laminated glass to the operating room beyond where her patient lay comatose from general anesthetic. Her regular anesthesiologist, Gregory, clad head to toe in surgical blue with an AR headset casting a shadow across his forehead, sat off to the left in an ergonomic chair reading something from a tablet similar to hers. He casually paged through content, seemingly unaware of anything else in the room. Liese would be in there as well, but from her seat in the booth the young audio tech was hidden from sight.
All right then, she decided — time to get to work.
Stifling a yawn, she placed her mug down on a small ledge to her right and reached for the intercom button. It sat close by, mounted into the front edge of the shallow desk housing her workstation and audio interface. It lit up a dull white as she pressed it, the room’s playback monitor immediately filling her tiny space with a hissing undertone of white noise combined with the jostling of equipment from somewhere out in the room. That would be Liese locking down the room, she considered. She cleared her throat.
“How we looking?” she asked, hearing her microphone array pick up her voice, broadcasting it out to the operating room. Gregory looked up in her direction. She watched his eyes unfocus, taking a second to scan vitals from his headset, before returning her gaze.
“All good here, boss,” he replied, laying the tablet aside and moving to physically check on the patient.
“Just locking the splitter down,” came the disembodied response from Liese. She appeared a second later, walking decisively across Miranda’s field of view holding a bundle of cabling and heading to the diffractive beamsplitter. She plugged one end of the cabling into the DBS’s side panel, its monitor lighting up with data from the connection. Liese took a second to watch the information flash across the screen before holding a confident thumbs up and responding with “…and…we are green to go.”
“Copy that.” Merida glanced to her left at the tertiary display running a real-time feed of the directional wave generator. After quick verification that the signal was within tolerance, she agreed. They were indeed good to go — green across the board. With the Positron Emission Tomography scanner built into the operating table casting a running report to her second monitor and her Digital Audio Workstation application running on her primary, its level meters bouncing a couple points into the green, she was ready.
“One minute to broadcast on my mark” she called to the room.
“And…mark.”
She released the talkback while simultaneously punching the broadcast button on the DAW control. A clock on the far side of the operating room lit up red with a sixty second countdown. She picked up her Electronic String Instrument, plucking the strings to ground herself in the moment before placing the ESI on her shoulder, ready for her morning concert to begin.
—
The cookies-n-cream pop tart fell from A6, hitting the bottom of the vending machine harder than Merida wished. She cursed under her breath. Pristine pop tarts are a thing of beauty, but once broken they lacked a certain something. She retrieved the silver package from the receptacle, feeling the integrity of her snack wobble with the telltale sign of fracture. She sighed in frustration.
“Breakfast of champions?” Gregory shuffled past her to the neighboring machine, its bright orange and yellow display glaringly aggressive to her tired eyes. He inserted a card into the reader and hit a couple buttons in succession, watching a Styrofoam cup drop into position in response. The vending machine made a small sound like a mechanical cough before releasing dark liquid into the cup. It smelled of burning coffee. Merida cringed.
“Fuck off,” she replied. “Rainforest killer.” She knew the comment wouldn’t have an effect but she said it out of habit anyway. Gregory, ever the fatalist, laughed it off.
“Nice show in there,” he returned, picking up his coffee and taking a sip. He grimaced at the taste, feigning enjoyment and failing. The white cup looked minuscule in his large, tattooed grip. She’d often admired his ink; the colorful head of a viper spread across the back of his hand, its body disappearing underneath his shirt sleeve. “A little shaky on G6 though. Rough night?”
She’d not intended the finger bobble at 1567.98 Hz, but nobody ever does. Mistakes happen. That fact didn’t lessen her embarrassment, though. Ultimately the cancer she’d broken up wouldn’t know the difference, having no concept of musicality or empathy, but she did. It made her mad to have stumbled on such a trivial thing. Frowning, she ripped open the corner of her purchase and gently retrieved a broken corner of pastry, making sure to keep its crumbs from escaping out onto the white tile of the hall.
“Not rough, just late.”
“Oh, right. Your thing…” Gregory replied, gesturing in her direction with the hand that held his burned caffeine. “How’d that go?”
“Fine, I guess? Good crowd. They seemed to like it. At least they didn’t riot.” She shrugged while freeing another bit of pastry. The sugar tasted amazing. “Finn was there,” she mentioned, trying to make it sound inconsequential.
Gregory’s raised eyebrow and tilted head swung up at the name. “What the hell?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust before taking another sip. Behind him a tech from radiation sidled up to the machines, causing them to start the walk back from the lobby to the surgery wing.
“Yeah…” He’d been in the audience, three rows back and slightly left of center. Directly in her line of sight. “He was with some woman. I didn’t recognize her.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No,” was her curt reply…but it was a lie.
—
The automatic lights were on by the time she opened the door to her 2nd floor apartment. The distinct sound of a legal drama filtered up from her neighbors below; medium-paced credits recorded on some sort of synth and mixed with the low, serious voiceover of an actor who’d never made it to the silver screen but was a star in syndication. She kicked off her shoes, deposited her instrument and bag by the door, and removed her coat, tossing the black wrap over the back of the sofa.
Grabbing her phone, she pushed her current playlist up to her speakers, happy for the mix of electronica and classical that it returned. It didn’t quite drown out the courtroom narrative below, but it helped.
Finn’s envelope glared at her from the coffee table, unopened. She ignored it, walking out of the living room and down the hall to the small kitchen at the back of the apartment. Along the way she grabbed the bottle of rye she’d been nursing over the last couple of months and a tumbler from the built-in bar nook. Most nights the “don’t drink by yourself” directive was easy to maintain, but the last 24 hours had been more than she cared for.
She shuffled into the kitchen, her socks on the hardwood floor feeling more like mediocre ice skates than footwear, and placed the bottle on the counter nearest the refrigerator while she retrieved ice. Finally, with a healthy pour of whiskey and a couple Luxardo cherries in her glass, she returned to the living room, falling into her couch with exhaustion.
She’d been well into the Allegro last night before she’d seen Finn. She hadn’t been sure about it at first, forcing herself to put him out of mind for the finale with all its finger acrobatics and pageantry. Minutes later though, with the crowd on its feet clapping, she found him again. He looked the same as he did all those years ago, back when they had nothing to lose.
***
This is a second-stage story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” second-stage story-start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and will become a full short story!
