Ayla: Installment 4 (I think...)

I swear, the next thing I post will be a poem. The only people who actually like these things are dillon and jesi.
.................

Call me crazy but it feels good to be working again. To be elbow-deep in somebody’s body, the smooth stretch of latex over my fingers, the operating room, the smudges of blood on my forehead.
If I close my eyes, I could be right back on Ariel, blushing all the way to the roots of my silly country-girl hair. I can feel Sid’s eyes on me, and I can remember the way my skirt brushed the calves of my legs, the way I got goosebumps, and how clumsy my fingers were, sewing up the cut he got the day before he did a runner.
I don’t close my eyes though.
What kind of surgeon would I be?
Berma rolls one of the other patients past on a gurney, covered up by a sheet. One for him, one for me, and another waiting in the hall for whoever finishes first.
I’m in no hurry, mind. Wo de ma, ain’t it enough to slice somebody open and swap all their organs for different ones without worrying about getting it done in a rush?
It’s a girl under my knife. Pretty, although she’ll have one winner of a scar when this’s done. You can’t slice someone open this way and not leave a mark. Leastways not without some better equipment than they gave me.
The one in the hall’s a woman too, drugged to the teeth just like this one. You hardly know their hearts are thumping, least you have your hand right on them.
One man, two women, Captain said, so Berma must be slicing up the man just now. Suits me fine. I’m plumb fed up with male patients.
“Looks much neater when you do it, Ayla.”
I look over my shoulder to see that Captain Gordon’s standing behind me. He come in so quiet, never mind those heavy boots of his, that I didn’t hear a thing.
“Berma’s got blood up to his eyebrows,” he keeps on. “I don’t know what he’ll have left to sew together by the end.”
I smile cause I think he means me to, and then turn back to the girl.
Oh, I spose I’m grateful to Captain for remembering me from that voyage to Osiris, and for bailing me out of this spot of trouble, but I’m leery of him all the same. He’d be rough around the edges if he weren’t so greasy.
“Keep up the good work, bao bei,” he says, and when it’s obvious I’ve got nothing to say, he leaves, the door clicking shut behind him.
I rinse off a kidney, sponge it dry and set it aside. I hope he was joking about Berma. I’m no top-class surgeon myself, but I know my stuff. I’ve got farm-rough hands and I’ll never talk pretty like some of those fancy-pants born-and-bred-to-be-rich types, but I know a thing or two about working hard, and I passed all my exams.
This feels like an autopsy, my patient’s so still.
I wonder how much she’s getting paid, and if it’s more than me. It don’t take much skill, what she’s doing, but it’s sure a damn site riskier than my job. Nobody really knows what these things’ll do to her insides, although most likely it’s safe.
I hope.
The ship rumbles a little and I steady myself against the table.
Start sewing from naval to neck, hurrying just a little now that the hard part’s done.
A half hour later, as I stretch the new woman out on my table, Berma rolls past again, finished, I guess. This time the sheet’s slipped a little, and a hand is hanging out.
And that hand, it fair breaks my heart, because whoever owns it ain’t more than a boy. Hairless and smooth and a bit sun-browned. Just a kid.
I swallow the lump of shame in my throat and turn back to the new patient, press the scalpel to the hollow below her breastbone.
I make the first cut.
Somehow it don’t feel so great anymore.