Henry Franks A Novel - By Peter Adam Salomon Page 0,55

herself and Henry, stretching out for his hand.

Her fingers were warm, and strength flowed through her grip where they merged with his own. When he looked at her, she smiled, warm honey-brown eyes lit from within, glowing in the midst of the storm.

“It took months, practicing, studying, before I was ready,” his father said. “I was so afraid you’d die before I found a donor match.”

The storm shook the shutters, banging them against the house in a fury of wind and noise.

“Your mom wasn’t well, Henry,” he said. “Worried for you, not eating, not sleeping, but she pulled herself together enough to help me with you, to save you. We did it all for you.”

The scalpel rested on the skin right above Victor’s spinal cord and Frank looked at his wife. She smiled behind the mask, shifting the fabric. “Save our son,” she said.

The blade sliced through the skin and the muscles beneath as he began the painstaking job of harvesting the head. A video camera feeding off the loupe view recorded every moment, software tagging the muscle groups, the individual veins and arteries.

Blood pooled down through the gurney to a series of tubes and into an automatic bucket brigade Frank had devised. The monitors were silent, muted, as the carotid was neatly sliced and Frank clipped a tag on the tie-off. On the screen, a flat green line scrolled by as machinery kicked into gear to keep the body alive.

Deeper, through the trachea, the esophagus, until only the spinal cord connected Victor to his head. The bone saw roared to life in the silence, slicing in one quick move through the vertebrae and their protected bundle of nerves.

Delicately, Frank lifted the separated head and placed it in a nutrient bath while Chrissy worked to stem the bleeding from the gaping wound, tying off the ends with loops of surgical tubing and pumps to prevent hypovolemia rather than cauterizing, in order to simplify the second phase of the surgery. The constant fear of decreased blood volume in the donor body was with him every step of the way.

In all, it had taken less than ten minutes to decapitate Victor.

A flip of a switch and anti-rejection meds joined the anesthesia flowing through the IV tubes.

Frank stripped off his bloody gloves, tossing them in the trash, and quickly regloved. He turned around to Henry.

The scalpel rested on his skin while Chrissy rushed over to place one last kiss on her son’s forehead.

“Breathe,” Frank said as he sliced through his son’s neck. The second decapitation was quicker, routine, as the muscle groups curled back from the cut, the blood spurting in decreasing waves from the carotid as Frank sliced through Henry’s spinal cord.

Blood dripped to the plastic sheeting over the carpeting as he carried his son’s head as gently as he could to Victor’s gurney.

With as much care and precision as he could manage, Frank sewed Henry’s head on, beginning with the external and anterior jugular to get the blood flowing to Henry’s brain, then following the template off the video feed in the corner of his glasses.

With his microscopic forceps and surgical tweezers, the sutures were as fine as medical science could provide. The nerves, impossible to sew, he welded, using surgical lasers to merge stem cells and create a perfect anastomosis between Henry’s brain stem and Victor’s spinal cord. Ventral ramus, vagus, phrenic, brachial plexus; the laser danced in his fingers until he clamped the artificial disc between C6 and C7 and moved on to the trachea a couple of hours later.

Around it all, he sewed the muscles back together until all that was left was the skin. The heavy line of stitches crawled across Henry’s neck, then Frank wrapped bandages around the whole and allowed himself time to stretch.

Chrissy stood next to Henry’s body, holding the lifeless hand, her eyes closed.

Frank pulled off his gloves, tossed them with the others, and checked the time. Two hours until dawn. A flip of a switch turned the volume back on, and Frank and Chrissy listened but there was nothing to hear, the flat green line on the monitor unbroken.

Frank pushed Chrissy out of the way and dragged the defibrillator to the side of the bed. “Clear,” he said before touching the paddles to his son’s chest. Henry’s new body spasmed off the gurney, jumping at the hit of electricity. Still, the machines were silent.

“Clear!” Again, Henry’s back arched up.

Frank closed his eyes and then re-charged the paddles. He was about to shock