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"My arms and legs. They get in the way."
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MAN IS MADE of blood and veins. An agglomeration of red blood cells flows through the body like the waves of the Red Sea. Man is made of organs that pump, churn, and expand. Webs of muscles, connected to tendons, connected to milky-white bones structure our bodies. Man is made of discombobulated limbs that only work once the body knows its own kinetics. Man is made of tissues and chemicals in the brain — something so small, yet so important in the body.
What does this tell us?
Man is man. Man is alive. From a clean, aseptic canvas, man is taken from the journals of its presumed, inscribed life and thrust into civilization.
Perhaps, Luv Thaman thinks, this is all some plan of god. A random god — Luv doesn't really care which it is — is the mastermind behind all of this. Is a god taking mankind from their individual canvases and pushing them into a dirt-filled world? Is a god behind this all? Is a god even here?
There is this stigma in the medical community. This old-fashioned idea that all surgeons think they're gods. He overheard a charge nurse on the ICU floor say it as her eyes fluttered over him and the group of residents that held charts on one hand and a cup of coffee on the other, dark eye bags underneath their eyes.
Luv didn't think he was god. Far from it, actually. He was an amateur, a newbie. Yes, he'd learned all these skills from class, but to say he's on the same level as other senior surgeons was simply not true. A god would be appalled by that comparison.
...But- god, the first time he performed a surgery alone... He won't ever forget it. The adrenaline coursing through him, his brain on overdrive, his hands holding the scalpel — he was in an entirely different frame of mind then. He cut a man's chest, the silver scalpel digging through his tender flesh. Blood pooled over the cut and the scrub nurse wiped it away with a towel. There was a sheet covering the patient's face. A barrier between a sheep and a lion. It took away the realization of what Luv was doing. He pulled this man's skin apart and everything was there. His ribs, his lungs, his heart — what kept him alive was just inches from Luv's grasp. He had to take a step back and marvel at it. It was just so real. So human. Then, when the surgeon who took him under his wing (Dr. Hargreeves — what a great man) told him to hold the patient's heart, Luv could've burst with excitement. He remembers how exhilarating the whole thing was. His hand pumped the muscle coated in blood, the chambers inside pumping the metallic liquid to the arteries. Each time his hand squeezed it, the heart monitor ticked a little green hill on the screen. Luv held someone's life in his hands. He was the one keeping him alive.
