Free Anterograde by Kallysten Page A

Once they were changed into scrubs,
they went to take a look at the assignation board. Langton was there, as well
as Petters and Selwin, both of which threw perfunctory nods of greetings toward
Eli and Calden before looking once more at the board and what Langton was
writing.
    “Seriously?” Calden exclaimed as Langton started to
write his name next to cardiac surgery. “You asked me to come for a shunt ?
It doesn’t even have anything to do with the attacks, does it?”
    Langton glanced back, tilting his head down to look at
Calden over the rim of the glasses perched on his nose.
    “Doctor Hayes. We’ve had this conversation before. I
do not assign surgical acts according to whether I think my doctors will enjoy performing
them or not.”
    To the side, Petters buried a snort in his cup of
coffee while Selwin walked away, shaking his head.
    “If you’d rather go home,” Langton continued, “feel
free. I’m sure those of your colleagues who expressed doubts about you
returning to us won’t mind picking up the slack.”
    He was careful not to look at Petters as he said so,
but Calden did, throwing the man a glare before demanding icily from Langton, “The
file?”
    The nurse who was standing next to Langton browsed
through the few files she held before handing one to Langton, who held it out
to Calden. Calden stepped forward to take it, but Langton didn’t let go at first.
    “Welcome back,” he said with a faint smile before
finally letting Calden have the slim file.
    That smile took an entirely different meaning a few
moments later as Calden and Eli read through the patient information and looked
at the X-rays and other images included in the folder. Eli couldn’t help chuckling
quietly.
    “Right,” he said, shaking his head. “So when Langton
said he doesn’t assign surgical acts according to the enjoyment factor, he was
lying through his teeth.”
    “No, he wasn’t,” Calden said absently, still entranced
as he looked at the X-rays. “The shunt itself is still boring. He didn’t say
anything about assigning surgery according to the rarity of arrangement of
internal organs. Have you ever seen something like this?”
    “Have I ever seen a case of s itus inversus? Sure. In my textbook in medical school.
I always thought they’d just mirrored the picture. But I’ve never seen one on
an actual operating table. Have you?”
    Judging from Calden’s lack of reply as he continued to
stare, neither had he.
    The surgery itself went smoothly. Eli had scrubbed
alongside Calden and, for the first time in two years, he stood in an operating
room while surgery was being performed. He didn’t help, however, his role only
that of an observer, his attention divided between Calden and the odd
arrangement of organs in the patient’s open chest, with the heart on the right
and everything else inverted as well.
    Afterward, when they stepped out of the OR, Calden appeared
to be in a rather grim mood.
    “Still thinking this was beneath your considerable
talents?” Eli asked, teasing.
    “No,” Calden muttered. “Thinking it’s a shame I’m
going to forget this.”
    A pang of pure cold rang through Eli. He’d forgotten.
For the time the surgery had lasted, he’d all but forgotten Calden’s condition,
too caught up in the precise way his hands wielded the instruments. The irony
of it wasn’t lost on him.
    “You could write about it in your diary,” he suggested
quietly.
    Calden shrugged. “I suppose. It’s not the same,
though.”
    Eli didn’t reply, but he decided he’d try to get a
copy of the video. The hospital routinely recorded uncommon procedures for
teaching purposes, but Eli suspected this one had been taped for Calden’s
dexterity to be scrutinized, too. Surely Langton wouldn’t object to a copy
being made, especially if, as Eli suspected, he’d assigned this patient to
Calden as some sort of ‘welcome back’ present.
    For
the next few hours, Eli could almost have forgotten what a strange