Vamping 'til ready (to cut)

[ellenkushner]

Thanks for your many helpful suggestions for Alec's surgery (last post)! I think I may go with an emergency laryngotomy (instructions here - though this comes closer to what I'd first imagined - but how does it work? My deepest thanks to thumbelinablues for the invaluable resource! I still owe her a bottle of wine, and banjo strings). Meanwhile, thought you might enjoy seeing the "placeholder" version of the Surgery Scene; this is what I wrote when I was deep in the story and wanted to get the emotions and the rhythms right, before tackling the actual physical crisis. The revised version will be altogether different, so I figure it's OK to put this up here now. Also, I think it's a very prettie piece of writing, and I'm annoyed that I can't actually use it . . . . At least, this way, someone will see it! This scene occurs halfway through the story. Or maybe towards the end.

It couldn’t last, and she knew it couldn’t last. It was her life, after all, to be woken at all hours, to be summoned urgently to human horrors; even he couldn’t change that. When the knocking and shouting outside the door began, smashing their bubble of dark and cozy sleep, she rolled over, untangled and pushed him away, fumbling for her nightgown and a blanket to go to the door.
Markos, his face dark and blubbery with tears in the lantern light, Oh come quick, please come quick, we’ve found him and he’s dying—
She hadn’t even known a man was missing. No one had told her, or asked her to join the search.
Sofia dressed in a blur, by the light of a lamp her lover must have lit. She found her bag of bandages and salves and instruments by rote, and was out the door with Markos. A second man came behind them, the tall stranger, a small box under his arm. He followed them to Markos’ house, where old Illirian was laid out on the floor, moaning like the wind.
Sofia knelt. They brought her light. They kept trying to tell her what had happened, as though the story mattered. She shut out the sounds and only looked and felt. Pulse erratic, ribs a mess, blood in his mouth. “My leg,” Illy groaned, “my leg.” Pulpy, but the bones were whole. She wanted to clean it first, because it was something she could do, but what was the point? The point was in the ribs. Or was it? He was wheezing, but he always wheezed. Was there foam on his lips? She felt his ribs as gently as she could. Illirian fainted.
She felt a hand on hers. “Please,” Campione said. “Open.” He was touching Illy’s clothes, as though they were a door she could open. He tore the shirt wide with something in his hand. “Light. I open now.”
She had never seen anything like it. No one had. The inside of a man, subtly and deliberately opened with steel small and fine as a pen. She held skin back for him. Unbelievable. Blood poured out onto the packed dirt floor. “Good,” Campione said. “More good.”
He even sewed better than he did. Sewed the man’s flesh back together again. She did the binding, though, firmly and gently winding the cloth in place. Illyrian was still breathing. His face was grey and clammy. The family hovered, awestruck and helpless and afraid.
“I watch,” said the man with the knives. “I stay.”
She stayed with him, watching by Illyrian all night, mopping at his brow and giving him drops of wine as the dawn came. The stranger cleaned his knives, and put them away in their case. She felt sick, sick with love for him and sick with wanting to know all that he knew.

Comments

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

I'm fascinated at how Alec has evolved from our first meeting with him to this point. Wow.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for posting. Great look at both Sofia and Alec.

[twistedsheets10.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. How Alec has changed.

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

Oh, Alec *would* have a case full of knives. >3 And yet, very proud of him. And tickled by 'Campione'. Very cute. And I cannot wait to see it in full. :3

He *told* Richard he might need to make a living with sewing some day...

<3

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

(And also, 'Illi(y)rian' is spelled differently at the top and bottom.)

[just-ann-now.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I had forgotten all about that line.

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

I know! Talk about your MacGuffins. :3 What *I* want to know is where he got his l33t doctorin' skillz...

[comrade-cat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the excerpt!

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

That was wonderful. Thanks!

[belledewinter.livejournal.com]

Oh, Alec. ♥ Love those two, thank you so much.

[lunacyandanchor.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for sharing this. A few words was all it took to whisk me completely back into that world.

Good luck with your rewrite!

[thumbelinablues.livejournal.com]

Squee again - I *love* the comparison of the knife to a pen, and it's funny as hell to hear Alec speaking less than fluently and Alec...ly. Thanks for the outtake!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Once again thou hast nailed it: a lot of what this story is about is who we are when we don't have (our own) language -- in his case, of course, he's trying to escape himself as hard as he can. Some things dont' change.

[thumbelinablues.livejournal.com]

If he's trying to escape himself, well done, Alec (and, dare I say, Ellen!). Not only is he not himself to Riverside readers when he's not talking like himself, but having met Alec in Swordspoint and continued to see the shades of that unhappy young man through TPotS, the cool, calm, and collected emergency surgeon Alec comes out of left field. And not unpleasantly. Actually, it's quite pleasant. More plz. :0)