I stood beneath my attending’s towering frame. My knees were buckling from standing and the crease in my new sneakers deepened every time I rose on my toes for a clearer window. I was unaware of the plan for this patient, as I’d walked in with his body face down on the operating table. I’d never met this man; but even if I did, all he’d know of me would be concealed by a mask and gown. All I’d known of him was his tragic tale, carried in the hushed murmurs of the hospital walls.

I watched my attending squarely adjust his scalpel in the crease of his palm. Each fiber of fascia yielded softly to the blade. His wrist rotated with each pierce of suture to the natural curve of the skull. I grasped the metal scissors in my hands, as I shuffled in my shoes for my cue. I kept my arm tucked to open a sliver, trembling as I inched closer to cut the sutures. As I pushed the blades together, the strings fell apart under the pull of tension. I did this again and again, leaving a row of uneven tails dangling from the scalp, until my attending’s voice cut through the stillness thick with focus.

“The art of surgery lies in the focus of precision and uniformity. That’s what you are striving for when you’re in this OR.”

I nodded. After the surgery ended, I knelt to unlatch the safety belt, and my gaze fell on a cross tattoo fading on the patient’s wrist. I lingered there, tracing the lines with my eyes as if I could read the story it held. Slowly, my vision drifted upward to the face I had failed to see, on a human I had forgotten to recognize.

I felt a pang of guilt at how easily I had been carried away by the procedure and my unawareness. Around me, the OR continued to hum with activity, yet for a moment, I wondered if I was the only one misled by this detachment. Maybe this unawareness sprung from my naivety as a student, where the tattoo exposed the breadth of this unfamiliar world. Like how the art of surgery actually lies in an imbalanced dichotomy, a constant negotiation between defined precision and raw humanity. That the skill of healing through surgery may never be fully detached from the disarray of empathy.

“You got some blood on your shoe.”

I looked down to the darkened splotch. I sighed, carrying it with me as I treaded out the OR.

Reema Gowda, MS3
Saint Louis University School of Medicine