“What is it you’d like to say, Agent Hennessey?” she asked, her own impatience making an appearance.
“Look, Doc—” he rose up enough to brace on his elbows “—I know you didn’t really want to do this.” His eyes searched hers a moment. “But I want you to know how much I appreciate your decision in my favor. I feel a hell of a lot better about this with you here.”
She couldn’t say just then what possessed her but Elizabeth did something she hadn’t done in a very long time. She said exactly what she was thinking rather than the proper thing. “Agent Hennessey, my decision had nothing to do with you. I’m doing this for my country…for those agents who might lose their life otherwise. But I’m definitely not doing this for you.”
Looking away, uninterested in his reaction, she motioned for the others to return.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said crisply.
The team, people whose real names she would likely never know, moved into position, slipped into that instinctive rhythm that would guide them through the process of altering a human face. As the anesthesia did its work Agent Hennessey’s eyelids grew heavy, but his gaze never left Elizabeth. He watched her every move.
In that final moment before the blackness sucked him into unconsciousness, his gaze met hers one last time and she saw the faintest glimmer of vulnerability. Elizabeth’s heart skipped at the intensity of what was surely no more than a fraction of a second. And then she knew one tiny truth about Agent Joe Hennessey.
He was afraid. Perhaps only a little, but the fear had been there all the same.
Elizabeth steeled her self against the instant regret she experienced at having been so indifferent to his feelings. She doubted he would have wasted the emotion on her, but there it was.
Banishing all other thought she took a deep breath and considered his face. Not Joe Hennessey’s face, but the face of her patient. If she allowed her self to think of the patient as an individual just now then she would be more prone to mistakes related to human emotion. This had to be about the work…had to be about planes and angles, sections of flesh and plotting of modifications.
For this procedure she needed no mold, not even a picture. She knew by heart the face she needed to create. The face of the first man she’d ever loved. The only man actually. She’d been far too busy with her education and then her career for a real social life.
“Scalpel,” she said as she held out her hand.
With the first incision Elizabeth lost her self in the procedure. No more thoughts of any thing past, present or future. Only the work. Only the goal of creating a certain look…a face that was as familiar to her as her own.
Elizabeth stripped off her gloves, quickly scrubbed her hands and then shed the rest of the surgical attire. She cleaned her glasses and shoved them back onto her face.
Exhaustion weighed on her but she ignored it. When she’d donned a fresh, sterile outfit she went in search of coffee. Breakfast had been a while ago and she needed a caffeine jolt.
A cleanup team had already arrived to scrub and sterilize the O.R. Not a trace of the patient would be left behind. It was a CIA thing. Elizabeth knew for a certainty that the clinic would have its own personnel for that very procedure that would be repeated before business hours began on Monday, but the CIA took no chances. Nothing, not a single strand of DNA, that could connect Joe Hennessey to this clinic would be left behind.
For now he was in the recovery room with the nurse and one of the assisting physicians.
Elizabeth sat down in the lounge with a steaming cup of coffee. Thankfully Agent Dawson had a knack with coffee. A box of pastries sat next to the coffeepot. She forced her self to eat a glazed donut when she wasn’t particularly hungry, just tired.
Dawson had explained that as soon as Elizabeth considered Hennessey able to move they would relocate via a borrowed ambulance to a safe house. She would over see his recovery for the next three weeks, ensuring that nothing went wrong. Mean while some of the agents whose faces she’d already changed were in hiding, unable to move forward into what ever missions they had been as signed until it was safe for them to return to duty. Some, how ever, were already deep into missions. Their safety could not be assured with out risking the mission entirely.
Her cruise had been canceled and an additional week of leave had been approved. Director Calder had assured her that the Agency would reimburse her loss which was most of the cost of the cruise. No surprise there. Canceling this close to sail date came with certain drawbacks.
When Elizabeth felt the sugar and caffeine kicking in she pushed up from the table and headed to recovery to check on her patient.