Eden's Eyes Read Free Page A

inviting conversation, and set straight about his business.
    The first thing Ed noticed was the color of the donor's eyes, a most striking shade of blue. Like Paul Newman's eyes, he thought. So clear and so blue they were almost silver.
    He watched with sickened fascination as the surgeon set about his task, slender gloved fingers moving with deftness and speed.
    The lids of the left eye were propped open using a tiny metal retractor. Then the conjunctiva, the membrane encapsulating the eye, was split and stripped away, making Ed think of peeled grapes. Next, the tiny red muscles responsible for the movement of the eye were transected and folded back. Finally, the major vessels and the trunklike optic nerve were neatly severed.
    The left eye, freed of its mortal tethers, was plopped into a fluid-filled jar. The jar was tightly capped, then lowered into a bowl-shaped thermos. The pirated socket, welling blood, was packed with cotton batting.
    Suddenly, the oscilloscope atop the anesthetic machine registered a jump in the donor's heart rate, from ninety to a hundred and twenty-three. Noting this, Ed adjusted the anesthetic up a notch.
    On the opposite side of the surgical drape, a nurse prepared the donor's abdomen with a brownish iodine solution. At the sinks outside of the door, Ken Tucker and his assistant scrubbed their hands.
    Without ceremony, Hanussen started in on the opposite side, glancing up only once to note the time. With similar ease he dissected and freed the right eye. He said something in German, and a second jar was opened. The eye went in with a plop.
    Ed felt his stomach do a deliberate rollover.
    Now Ken Tucker strode into the operating room, soapy water dripping from his elbows. A nurse helped him gown and glove. He nodded to Hanussen as the man skinned off his own gloves and left the OR.
    Just like that, Ed thought unpleasantly. Just like that.
    He looked down at the donor's unknowing face. A scarlet streamer of blood issued from the corner of the left eye-socket. Cotton batting protruded from the wet slits.
    Ed looked away.
    Live fast.
    “How's he doing?" Ken said, accepting a scalpel from the scrub nurse.
    Is he trying to be funny? Ed wondered briefly. But there was no trace of jest in the surgeon's eyes. He glanced again at the oscilloscope. The heart rate had settled back to eight-eight.
    "Stable," Ed replied.
    Party hard.
    Ed caught the scrub nurse averting her eyes as Ken's knife traced with brutal precision a line from breastbone to pubis. White at first, the line quickly flashed red. The incision was deepened using surgical cautery, a concentrated arc of electrical fire that spewed sterile white smoke smelling of cooked fat and incinerated muscle.
    Die young.
    Ken extended the incision laterally, creating the illusion that a giant letter "I" had been painted in red along the man's belly. Using metal clips, he turned back and anchored a full-thickness flap at each corner, causing the abdomen to gape like a hideous, viscera-filled mouth.
    Again the nurse looked away.
    Disturbed himself, Ed glanced uneasily around the brightly lit OR, his eyes pausing briefly on the clock over the doorway.
    Twenty to four. . . Jesus.
    The room was too quiet, Ed realized as, he settled into his chair and began his flow sheet. There was none of the late-hour banter they normally engaged in, none of the tasteless jokes or the endless gossip they habitually exchanged in an effort to buoy morale in the face of exhaustion. It was this damned case, Ed knew. This obscene, mutilating case. It was creepy, plain and simple, even for those inured to death, as health professionals inevitably became. All of Ed's carefully cultivated instincts were meaningless in this situation. . . because the patient was not intended to survive the intervention. It was for a worthy cause, true but Ed disliked it just the same.
    Against his will, Ed's gaze drifted back to the donor's face. The guy was sweating now, great fat beads of the stuff