murmured. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” She began to hum, and the babies liked the music, the sound of a lullaby and the touch of the warm cloth as their body was cleansed.
The surgery would need to be performed immediately if there was to be any possibility of saving Rosalie’s life.
The parasitic head had begun to grow faster than Rosalie’s own, and the doctors feared that the pressure from the growth would start to hinder Rosalie’s brain development. Because the two brains shared common arteries that were dependent on Rosalie’s organs, Rosalie was now in constant danger of heart failure. The other head was getting nutrition from Rosalie’s body, blood from Rosalie’s heart, oxygen from Rosalie’s lungs. Keeping both heads alive was becoming a daily struggle for the body.
Zach listened as Amber repeated these things to him. She was reporting the information in a careful, formal voice, the way one might recite a lesson in a foreign-language class. “Sagittal sinus,” she said. “Venous drainage.”
“Well,” he said. He considered for a moment. He was a college graduate, but he had no idea what to say. No one had ever prepared him for such an occasion.
After the head was removed, would they bury it?
he wondered vaguely.
Would it require a headstone?
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. Her expression flinched, and she looked at the hand he had lifted to hold out to her. She patted her palm against his knuckles, pressing his hand back down to the bed. “Just rest,” she said.
When this is over
, he thought. When it was over, there would have to be a way to repair their marriage. They would have to find their way back to the life they once had. Maybe a trip, he thought. They had once liked to travel. They had gone bird-watching in the cloud forests of Ecuador; they had walked through Roman ruins in the Dordogne of France, holding hands as they passed through the archway of an ancient gladiatorial arena; they had driven recklessly on one-lane roads in the Scottish Highlands, singing. They were a happy childless couple once. They could be that again.
“Everything will be all right,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He lay there, waiting, awake. The operation would take many hours. He didn’t know how much time had passed. It was now the middle of the night and he could see the snow was falling again onto the parking lot outside his window.
From time to time he would hear the
clip-clop
of someone’s hard-soled shoes against the floor of the hallway outside his room. The footsteps would gradually grow louder and then they would grow softer.
The doctors would need to separate Rosalie’s brain from the conjoined organ in small stages. Blood vessels and arteries were shared between the two heads. The doctors planned to slowly cut off the blood supply to the extra head. The doctors would clipthe veins and arteries and finally close Rosalie’s skull, using a bone-and-skin graft from the second head.
If Rosalie died, he imagined that someone would come to tell him. Or—if the operation was successful, they would come and tell him that, too. He had called once and a nurse’s aide had come to assure him that he would be the first to know. Whatever happened, she said.
The television had been turned off for a while now, its gray face blank and neutral.
If there was consciousness
, he thought; if there was consciousness, even if there was some rudimentary consciousness, the head would be asleep, under anesthesia. It would not be aware of the moment in which the blood supply stopped, the oxygen cut off, the brain cells began to shut down.
The room was dark but he could see something trembling on the ceiling. A piece of light, a reflection, quivering like a leaf on the surface of a pond. He moved his fingers, then his toes. He could feel the screws that held the halo crown to his skull, and he knew that once his condition had stabilized he would have to begin rehabilitation; that
The surgery would need to be performed immediately if there was to be any possibility of saving Rosalie’s life.
The parasitic head had begun to grow faster than Rosalie’s own, and the doctors feared that the pressure from the growth would start to hinder Rosalie’s brain development. Because the two brains shared common arteries that were dependent on Rosalie’s organs, Rosalie was now in constant danger of heart failure. The other head was getting nutrition from Rosalie’s body, blood from Rosalie’s heart, oxygen from Rosalie’s lungs. Keeping both heads alive was becoming a daily struggle for the body.
Zach listened as Amber repeated these things to him. She was reporting the information in a careful, formal voice, the way one might recite a lesson in a foreign-language class. “Sagittal sinus,” she said. “Venous drainage.”
“Well,” he said. He considered for a moment. He was a college graduate, but he had no idea what to say. No one had ever prepared him for such an occasion.
After the head was removed, would they bury it?
he wondered vaguely.
Would it require a headstone?
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. Her expression flinched, and she looked at the hand he had lifted to hold out to her. She patted her palm against his knuckles, pressing his hand back down to the bed. “Just rest,” she said.
When this is over
, he thought. When it was over, there would have to be a way to repair their marriage. They would have to find their way back to the life they once had. Maybe a trip, he thought. They had once liked to travel. They had gone bird-watching in the cloud forests of Ecuador; they had walked through Roman ruins in the Dordogne of France, holding hands as they passed through the archway of an ancient gladiatorial arena; they had driven recklessly on one-lane roads in the Scottish Highlands, singing. They were a happy childless couple once. They could be that again.
“Everything will be all right,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He lay there, waiting, awake. The operation would take many hours. He didn’t know how much time had passed. It was now the middle of the night and he could see the snow was falling again onto the parking lot outside his window.
From time to time he would hear the
clip-clop
of someone’s hard-soled shoes against the floor of the hallway outside his room. The footsteps would gradually grow louder and then they would grow softer.
The doctors would need to separate Rosalie’s brain from the conjoined organ in small stages. Blood vessels and arteries were shared between the two heads. The doctors planned to slowly cut off the blood supply to the extra head. The doctors would clipthe veins and arteries and finally close Rosalie’s skull, using a bone-and-skin graft from the second head.
If Rosalie died, he imagined that someone would come to tell him. Or—if the operation was successful, they would come and tell him that, too. He had called once and a nurse’s aide had come to assure him that he would be the first to know. Whatever happened, she said.
The television had been turned off for a while now, its gray face blank and neutral.
If there was consciousness
, he thought; if there was consciousness, even if there was some rudimentary consciousness, the head would be asleep, under anesthesia. It would not be aware of the moment in which the blood supply stopped, the oxygen cut off, the brain cells began to shut down.
The room was dark but he could see something trembling on the ceiling. A piece of light, a reflection, quivering like a leaf on the surface of a pond. He moved his fingers, then his toes. He could feel the screws that held the halo crown to his skull, and he knew that once his condition had stabilized he would have to begin rehabilitation; that
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