Whimsy

Halfway through the graveyard shift, when I started blinking to solidify shapes and sizes, the dull buzz in my head began to crescendo into an ache, a roar. My skull, an empty room, provoked yawn after yawn, a tireless seizure that echoed behind my formless mask. Beeping pulsed, machines whirred, the pulse oximeter marched fearlessly, and still the surgeons worked. But as if an occult hand conducted, my body acted in reflex. My eyes flicked up with the click and whirr of the blood pressure cuff, and my fingers pushed a well measured aliquot of phenylephrine. An aberrant beat and I scan the cardiogram. My left forearm sees and airway and mimes a motion my right arm could never hope to do. My index finger flicks a catheter off the IV hub. This is the dance at midnight, twenty hours into my shift. The clockwork, the machinery, the reflexes, the instinct play on.