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Show 22 head, but it had not healed well; it had remained spread apart, like half-open lips, for about four inches. She could see the sloping base of the pedestal, see where it was cemented to the exposed skull, she could see edges of light-red flesh beneath the retracted skin. Pablo had had several infections, and even now a thin yellow pus oozed out from beneath the open skin, collecting in dirty black clots at the edges of the wound. She had always kept the opening as clean as she could, and from habit she reminded herself to put on more of the antibiotic ointment, but she realized there was no point in it: within an hour, or at the most two, she would see Pablo's head sitting not in her lap, but in a stainless steel basin. Almosti reluctant to touch them, she lifts the slices of ham from her sandwich. She gives one to Pablo, the second to Theresa; Mustard jumps up and snatches his from the desk. She steadies herself against its edge, unwilling now to scold. She considers the bread of her sandwich, not the ham, just the bread; she wonder if she ought to eat the bread, if she ought to eat something, so that she won't feel weak later on, later on at the surgery lab. She must eat something, she tells herself, so that she won't feel weak later on, later on when they are cutting into the chests of the dogs, when they are inserting the thin tube into the heart, still beating, into the heart still beating, so that it can pump the fluids into the brain, beating, beating slowly ... she must eat the bread, she decides to eat, so that she won't feel weak, so she won't weaken and faint, be a coward and faint, in the surgery lab, later on in the surgery lab... |