Last night I saw a woman’s leg
snipped away after being ripped from her body in a terrible accident, her other
limb flayed from hip to toe. As I watch her abdomen is slit wide and packed with handfuls of gauze,
her ribs bisected with a saw to allow access to her floundering heart. Crimson
blood pours into her veins, bag after bag squeezed through tubing to circle her
body before soaking her sheets and dripping inevitably onto the floor. A
roomful of humans hovers around her, each absorbed in his own small part of the
desperate yet intricately choreographed task of preserving her personhood
against the ebb of fate.
In that room the words sound again
and again in my mind: Is nothing sacred? Is there no part of the body that
remains untouched, inviolate?
A calm surgeon leading the trauma
team reaches into the woman’s chest and urges the heart along, slippery and clasped
between her two hands. The surgeon has a boldness within her that shines as
light in her eyes – she is unafraid. And yet, this is the same woman whose
fingers tremble when she gets too hungry, who wears worn sneakers to work and
can’t resist the candy at the nurses’ station. This woman is fallible, and made
of the same flesh she confidently cuts. I am awed by her hubris.
Despite the horror, despite the
unspeakable violations of the body, there is a tacit agreement in that
operating room. If her legs must go, they go. If her body is sliced from top to
toe to expose her injuries, so be it. Tissue is moved, arteries cauterized,
skin and muscle sacrificed. Everything is expendable except for this woman’s
consciousness – she is why we are so
bold, so seemingly cruel. She is what
is untouchable, inviolate.
Hours later she opens her eyes,
gaze as unfocused as a newborn's. I’m standing beside the bed and for a moment
her eyes catch mine – I am struck with a deep sense of unworthiness, of my own
experience being inadequate to understand hers. This woman has touched
darkness, traversed a mysterious hell I hope I’ll never know. Her lips twitch
around the breathing tube and she gives a hesitant thumbs up. Instantly I feel
myself grin. She’s there.
For a moment I cast my eyes around
the room at the spotless floors, the grimy white coats, the competent nurses,
chemical concoctions and disposable tubing and think to myself: This is what humans can do.
