Henry Franks A Novel

twenty nine





“Dr. Saville?” Henry asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Chrissy’s doctor. Your mom told her, after the operation. She wanted to help but there was nothing she could do.” His father looked around the room and his shoulders slumped.

“Victor.” Henry said, the name strangely familiar when spoken out loud.

“Was dying. A suicide,” his father said. “How do you know all this?”

“It wasn’t easy.” Justine closed the distance between 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 his son once more when the machines beeped. He listened to the beeping of Victor’s heart, Henry’s head resting between restraints to prevent movement, and began to cry.

“Well?” Chrissy asked, her fingers resting on her son’s cheek.

Frank shrugged, unable to face her. “He’s alive.”

Henry’s dad took another step closer, balancing with the lamp. His breath came in ragged gasps, and blood was still flowing from his scalp despite the towel he’d wrapped around it.

“And the rest of me?” Henry asked, the words forced out through clenched teeth as he waved his numb hand in front of his father’s face.

“I couldn’t figure out the dosages, the anti-rejection meds,” his father said. “Parts of you started to die.”

“Die?” Justine asked.

“I saved what I could, replaced what I couldn’t.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Henry shook his head, his hair falling in front of his eyes. “No,” he finally said. “We need to evacuate. We can talk later.”

“It’s too late,” his father said.

“Why?”

“She couldn’t live without you, Henry.” His father sank to his knees, sliding down the lamp until he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood. Lightning flashed right outside the window and the thunder was right on top of them. Hissing filled the room as the front door banged open in the wind. “I couldn’t live without her.”

“He’s not going to wake up, is he?” she asked. Limp hair covered her face as her head rose and fell, pillowed on Henry’s chest. Brittle fingers rested on her son’s cheek, the cracked fingernails softly drumming on his skin.

“I don’t know.”

“You killed him,” she said. “I watched you cut his head off.”

“I’m still trying, Chrissy, please.”

“I think,” she said, brushing the hair out of her face so she could look up at him, “I don’t...”

“Don’t what?”

“Care.” She closed her eyes, a smile spreading from ear to ear, exposing bloody gums.

“Chrissy?”

She opened her eyes but they were cloudy and distant, the smile still plastered on her face. Then she laughed, a harsh sound like a hiss as her fingers clenched around Henry’s arm, the broken nails digging into his skin.

“Chrissy isn’t here, please leave a message at the beep,” she said, hissing again with every beep from the machinery attached to her son.

He closed the door behind him, leaving his wife snoring softly, a diseased smile across her prematurely aged face. Frank leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and cried. Great heaving sobs wracked his body and he pushed himself up, afraid he’d wake them with his cries. He stumbled to his office, falling into his chair and trying to will himself to sleep.

“Frank,” Chrissy said, the words a million miles away in a dream of happier times; almost, he thought, a moan. “Frank.” His name, so sweet on her supple lips; the honeymoon, the wedding itself. The dream wrapped him in a warm embrace.

“Frank.”

He blinked, and saw a strange room, lit with computer diodes. He blinked again. His office snapped into focus.

She stood in the doorway, whispering his name.

“Frank.”

Her skin was dark in the dim light, a glint of a reflection in her hand. The distant memory of a warm embrace … he looked down, caught the shadow lines of bloody handprints wrapped around his arms.

The chair fell over as he lunged to the light switch.

“Frank,” she said again, as the glare reflected off the scalpel in her hand.

Blood pooled at her feet, dripping in a steady flow from her wrists. Beneath her chin, a hideous gash smiled at him, drooling blood.

“Frank.”

She collapsed to the ground and he fell with her, trying to staunch the bleeding from her neck, her wrists, her beautiful face. Taking off his shirt, he wrapped it around her, tying it like a noose.

“Breathe,” he said, but she was beyond breathing. “Don’t leave me, Chrissy, please.” He kissed her cheek, tasting her blood, unable to focus, rocking her in his arms, screaming her name.

Blood dripped between his fingers, staining the hard wood floor.

“Why, Chrissy?” he asked, his voice raw and strained.

“Save me,” she said before drawing one last breath. And then she was still.