An old gramophone, worn by time and stained with someone else's blood, creaked out a classical melody.
To the tune, the Medic moved his hands gracefully over Heavy’s slit-open abdomen, as if conducting an orchestra rather than rummaging through human entrails. Heavy slept peacefully under anesthesia, his tongue hanging out, periodically letting out a strange snore, like the grunting of a bear.
The Medic, without looking up from his work, smiled:
“Oh, mein lieber Freund, just in time! You are right at ze peak of ze melody!”
Archimedes tilted his head and cooed curiously. The Medic gently stroked his feathers with a bloodied finger.
“I knew you would like it. Unlike my ozzer big friend here… you are ze only living connoisseur of good music! And, of course—”
Before he could finish, Archimedes fell like a stone straight into Heavy’s gaping abdominal cavity.
The pigeon pecked at the intestine with predatory enthusiasm, mistaking it for a fat worm.
The Medic flinched in surprise. The scalpel slipped from his fingers. For a moment—absolute silence.
And then, the Medic made a completely insane, acrobatic movement with his hand, catching the scalpel in midair a millimeter from the floor, and instantly returned to his majestic pose as if it had been planned all along.
He waved the scalpel theatrically. “Now, Archimedes, watch closely. Zhis is ze most important part of ze suture. See zis angle? Perfect technique! Absolutely perfect! If meat could cry viz joy—it would be crying right now!”
The Medic continued the operation, enthusiastically explaining his incision technique to the pigeon. But Archimedes wasn’t listening anymore. He was staring into a dark corner of the laboratory.
There, on an old hook, hung an object of unknown origin. Due to the dim light in the operating room, it was hard to make out exactly what it was—only its silhouette. The fabric was burnt…
The Medic snapped his fingers.
“Archimedes! Hey, mein Freund, look over here! I am creating art!”
The pigeon didn’t react. The Medic sighed and finally glanced in that direction. His smile became strange. Almost… nostalgic.
“O-o-o… so zhis piece of rag has caught your interest?” He set down his instrument and lazily adjusted his gloves. “Zhis rag… ah, what memories. I once had a colleague. She had a disgusting habit of correcting my formulas, which, of course, is bad form as far as I am concerned.”
The Medic set down another bloodied scalpel, lost in thought for a couple of seconds.
“Ze assistant was very talented. Not as talented as I am, of course. Zhat would be statistically impossible. But for…”
An unfamiliar scraping sound echoed through the ventilation shaft.
The Medic continued: “…for someone viz such experience, quite decent.” He chuckled briefly. “She adored chemistry. Biology. Autopsies. And frogs. Besonders frogs.”
The Medic snorted under his breath and rolled his eyes, as if he were recalling not a person, but a very stubborn lab rat.
“And, ach… she asked too many questions.” He thoughtfully pushed his hand deeper into Heavy’s abdomen. “Way, way too many. Always a bad sign. If a person starts taking too active an interest in chemistry—either somezhing will explode, or—”
“…Oops.” He looked down. “Hmm… Was zhat an important organ or just decorative?”
Heavy groaned painfully through his sleep.
“Ah. So, it is important.” He adjusted his glasses with the tip of a bloodied finger. “At first, I zhought she was just anoizzer eccentric student viz a genius complex. You know ze type? Zhey don’t sleep. Zhey don’t eat. Zhey look at a jar of acid as if zhey want to marry it.”
“Ja-ja, exactly! But then I saw her notes… Hm. Very neat. Very extraordinary. She looked at my research not like a normal person, who would scream and run away… but like a hungry dog at a piece of meat.” The Medic snorted with a mixture of irritation and pride. “It was almost brazen.”
With a single motion, he pulled a clamp out of Heavy and tossed it into a metal tray.
“And I zhought: ‘Well, vizzer she will die during ze experiment, or she will become somezhing very interesting.’” A brief pause. “To be honest, I was betting on ze former.”
The Medic shrugged as casually as if he were discussing the weather.
“But one cannot let potential go to waste just because of trifles like ‘ethics,’ ‘the body’s stability,’ or ‘the risk of complete destruction of ze human body.’” He smiled even wider. “And anyway, Archimedes… if a person agrees to work viz me after seeing my lab—zhey no longer have a future as a normal person.”
“And zhen zhere was one… mm… minor planned-unplanned incident viz my improved version of ze ÜberCharge. To put it simply, a minor incident occurred.”
Brushing against the surgical lamp with his shoulder in his usual clumsy manner, the Medic cast light upon the rag.
There, on the old hook, hung a scorched lab coat. At least two sizes too small for the Medic. The fabric had yellowed with age. Brown chemical stains covered the sleeves. Dark mold had grown on the collar. As if the lab coat had long been forgotten. Or they had tried to forget it.
The Medic smiled wider. Too wide.
“And now she still works viz me. Well… more or less. Partially physically. Partially not. Ha-ha! Ach, technical details…”
Archimedes flew over to the lab coat. Peck.
The pigeon snatched up a photograph, but it slipped from the bird’s tiny feet, disappearing among the instruments and fabric. The Medic automatically reached for his forceps, then stopped. His gaze froze.
The man bent down and retrieved the bloodstained piece with the forceps, handling it as if it were a carrier of infection—something that could contaminate him even more than blood.
In the photo, a young girl with a crooked fang shyly looked at the camera, holding a huge frog in her hands. On the back, in uneven handwriting, was written:
“A.Y. Don’t touch the frogs. Especially the one in the jar.”
The Medic didn’t look at it for long—just long enough for his mind to process such trifles—and then carefully… too carefully, he slipped it back into the pocket of the lab coat.
Then he chuckled quietly to himself.
“Stay away from ze spleen, my friend. It is not presentable today.” The Medic returned to his conversation with the pigeon. “If it weren’t for me, she would not have achieved biological greatness, but would have remained in a limited world among ze mediocre.”
A voice from the darkness spoke dryly from the ventilation shaft:
“I can hear everything, you idiot.”
The Medic didn’t even turn around.
“Oh, wunderbar! Zhen bring me a new spleen. Zhis one is kind of sad.”
Heavy mumbled through the anesthesia:
The record needle skated across the vinyl. Instead of music, silence played.
