The burst was angled upward, connecting just under and behind the chin and spraying its brains across the ceiling above us. I’d been the only one in the tunnel when it happened. I was the only witness…
[He pauses.]
“Exposure to unknown chemical agents.” That’s what they told me back in Edmonton, that or an adverse reaction to our own prophylactic medication. They threw in a healthy dose of PTSD 2 for good measure. I just needed rest, rest and long-term “evaluation”…
“Evaluation”…that’s what happens when it’s your own side. It’s only “interrogation” when it’s the enemy. They teach you how to resist the enemy, how to protect your mind and spirit. They don’t teach you how to resist your own people, especially people who think they’re trying to “help” you see “the truth.” They didn’t break me, I broke myself. I wanted to believe them and I wanted them to help me. I was a good soldier, well trained, experienced; I knew what I could do to my fellow human beings and what they could do to me. I thought I was ready for anything. [He looks out at the valley, his eyes unfocused.] Who in his right mind could have been ready for this?
THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST, BRAZIL
[I arrive blindfolded, so as not to reveal my “hosts’” location. Outsiders call them the Yanomami, “The Fierce People,” and it is unknown whether this supposedly warlike nature or the fact that their new village hangs suspended from the tallest trees was what allowed them to weather the crisis as well, if not better, than even the most industrialized nation. It is not clear whether Fernando Oliveira, the emaciated, drug-addicted white man “from the edge of the world,” is their guest, mascot, or prisoner.]
I was still a doctor, that’s what I told myself. Yes, I was rich, and getting richer all the time, but at least my success came from performing necessary medical procedures. I wasn’t just slicing and dicing little teenage noses or sewing Sudanese “pintos” onto sheboy pop divas. 1 I was still a doctor, I was still helping people, and if it was so “immoral” to the self-righteous, hypocritical North, why did their citizens keep coming?
The package arrived from the airport an hour before the patient, packed in ice in a plastic picnic cooler. Hearts are extremely rare. Not like livers or skin tissue, and certainly not like kidneys, which, after the “presumed consent” law was passed, you could get from almost any hospital or morgue in the country.
Was it tested?
For what? In order to test for something, you have to know what you’re looking for. We didn’t know about Walking Plague then. We were concerned with conventional ailments—hepatitis or HIV/AIDS—and we didn’t even have time to test for those.
Why is that?
Because the flight had already taken so long. Organs can’t be kept on ice forever. We were already pushing our luck with this one.
Where had it come from?
China, most likely. My broker operated out of Macau. We trusted him. His record was solid. When he assured us that the package was “clean,” I took him at his word; I had to. He knew the risks involved, so did I, so did the patient. Herr Muller, in addition to his conventional heart ailments, was cursed with the extremely rare genetic defect of dextrocardia with situs in-versus. His organs lay in their exact opposite position; the liver was on the left side, the heart entryways on the right, and so on. You see the unique situation we were facing. We couldn’t have just transplanted a conventional heart and turned it backward. It just doesn’t work that way. We needed another fresh, healthy heart from a “donor” with exactly the same condition. Where else but China could we find that kind of luck?
It was luck?
[Smiles.] And “political expediency.” I told my broker what I needed, gave him the specifics, and sure enough, three weeks later I received an e-mail simply titled “We have a match.”
So you performed the operation.
I assisted, Doctor Silva performed the actual procedure. He was a prestigious heart surgeon who worked the top cases at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in São Paulo. Arrogant bastard, even for a cardiologist. It killed my ego to have to work with…under…that prick, treating me like I was a first-year resident. But what was I going to do…Herr Muller needed a new heart and my beach house needed a new herbal Jacuzzi.
Herr Muller never came out of the anesthesia. As he lay in the recovery room, barely minutes after closing, his symptoms began to appear. His temperature, pulse rate, oxygen saturation…I was worried, and it must have tickled my more “experienced colleague.” He told me that it was either a common reaction to the immunosuppressant medication, or the simple, expected complications of an overweight, unhealthy, sixty-seven-year-old man who’d just gone through one of the most traumatic procedures in modern medicine. I’m surprised he didn’t pat me on the head, the prick. He told me to go home, take a shower, get some sleep, maybe call a girl or two, relax. He’d stay and watch him and call me if there was any change.