Free The Touch by Randall Wallace Page A

change the view. And sure enough, the inscription on the sculpted walls around the clay Jefferson came into focus. She read, “ I  have sworn upon the altar of God  . . .” She pulled back, startled. “Show-off.”
    â€œIt’s all about touch. Surgeons are taught to see and think, but to work like this you’ve got to feel. Want to try it?” He picked up a tiny probe and extended it to her. Seeing her hesitate, he smiled and urged, “Come on. You can practice on Chief Red Wing.”
    Lara’s heart was thumping—was it the challenge of the carving or the way he was guiding her hand?—as she pushed a blade, the tiny probe, looking huge in magnification, closer to the half-finished sculpture of the noble Indian. The probe was trembling noticeably, and Lara backed from the lenses, shaking her head. “It’s so small . . .”
    â€œJust rest the edge against the base of the statue first,” he said in the same voice he had used to calm the young surgeon earlier. He leaned in to a second set of monitoring lenses, also trained on the clay model—and watched her following his instructions. He could tell instantly that she had great skill in her hands. “Good—that’s very good! I haven’t seen anybody do that on their first try. Okay, now, before you move the edge, listen to your heartbeat.”
    â€œMy what?”
    â€œYour hearing’s good, isn’t it?”
    She looked at him and said loudly, “HUH?!”
    He grinned; she was good at this, good enough to joke while doing it. “We can all hear our hearts beat; we just don’t. But for this you have to listen.”
    She peered through the lenses again, returned the blade to the base of the statue, and used all her willpower to focus on holding the cutting blade perfectly still, against such a tiny object, and listening to her heart. “I can’t hear it!”
    â€œYes, you can. You feel it more than hear it, but you can hear it too, if you focus more on the listening than on the keeping still.”
    She was trying so hard that sweat was forming on her forehead. For a moment he thought she had given up, like so many of his students did when confronted with a challenge they didn’t believe they could master. Then he saw it: she took on a kind of trance, like Jones showed in the operating room; and as she did this, he glanced up from his magnifiers and studied her face.
    He spoke in a soothing voice. “Now lift the blade and hold it with just a slight gap between it and the chief’s headdress.” He looked into the microscope again. “See how the blade moves with each of your heartbeats? Find the rhythm; it’ll help you focus.”
    She cleared her mind of everything except her heartbeat; the blade steadied.
    â€œGood,” he whispered. “Now, in the interval between the beats . . . shave off that rough edge of the headdress.”
    They both watched through the magnifiers as she succeeded. “I did it!” she yelled.
    â€œYou sure did.”
    â€œThis is so great, Andrew! I—” And in an instant, as she forgot the vastness of the microscope’s magnification, the blade decapitated the statue. She winced and pulled back from the lenses. “I jerked,” she said softly.
    â€œNo, you didn’t. Your hand was steady. It was your heart. It beat faster and changed your rhythm. Not much. Just enough to cut off Red Wing’s head.”
    Their eyes were locked on each other.
    Then Jones’s beeper went off.
    * * *
    Lara kept pace with him now, at his shoulder as Jones strode quickly into the Emergency Room; they found it strangely quiet, with the ER nurse at her desk. Her name tag said “Carolyn” and her hair was gray, and still she looked as if she could wrestle a three-hundred-pound drunk onto an examination table. “You page me?” Jones asked her.
    â€œA call came in