The Theater

I remember his face well, even if I don’t recall his name. A scrawny boy with black hair and beady eyes, gesturing emphatically as he showed us through his “Operating Theater”. We didn’t call him by his name in there. His name only mattered back at school where he was just another pipsqueak kid; no, there, we called him the Surgeon. That’s the name that remains blotted in my brain. 

He wasn’t a surgeon, of course. He was just a nine year old boy that managed to get his hands on a single cheap medical textbook, but to us he may as well have been. In our eyes, he spent four years in med school and graduated from a residency program with flying colors, that’s how committed we were to the bit. We laced every word in procedural show-level medical terminology. The abandoned shed we were standing in was an operating theater, the old workbench was a gurney, the dead rodents were cadavers donated for teaching purposes. 

Nobody denied him his fantasy. It would be the same as being the obnoxious brat that constantly got into arguments over who was “it” in a game of tag. Nobody wanted to be that person. Instead, We oohed and awed over things that would’ve left us nauseous not moments before. All because no one wanted to be the wuss that ruined the fun for everyone else. Playing in was much more rewarding. 

We all started the game on even playing fields with only the Surgeon having any authority over the rest of us. But soon it became a desperate throttle to distinguish ourselves from the rest. Being the one who dared to stand the closest, asked the best question, was the most eager to fetch a piece of equipment. A girl named Lily had cemented herself as head nurse in less than 15 minutes flat. She held the freshly found cadavers as the surgeon carved into it, pulling each tiny organ out and explaining its purpose in jargon that he didn’t understand. 

My turn to cement myself in the moment was when the surgeon decided he wanted to try his hand at something more bipedal. He puffed his tiny chest out and inflected his voice with a level of confidence that he never possessed in the classroom. Looked out to all of us and asked “Is anyone suffering from an ailment for which I can provide my assistance?”. 

The rest began to look to the floor and retreat from the illusion, but I had something to prove. A nickname that I was eager to transform. Even real surgeons couldn’t change genetics, and I wanted to swap out the same feature my mother had fixed before. The hooked ashkenazi snout that she swapped out in order to snag a man still managed to lodge itself onto my face. Leading me to carry on the same namesake as the most famous wooden liar. Now it would remind them that I possessed a bravery they didn’t. So little Pinocchio's hand stood straight up and asked for a rhinoplasty. 

Some smiled in shock and awe, but you could watch the fear begin to set into the others. For me, it was still a game, so I climbed my way out of my peers to join the performance. Sat straight with a smile in a broken lawn chair as the surgeon began examining my face. Contorted my expression in any way the four foot doctor asked me to. Turning side to side as he exclaimed “yes, yes, this will work” with the confidence of someone who swapped out features on the daily, even as he frantically searched out the page labeled “noses” in the anatomy book. His gaze passed back and forth from the book and me time and time again, scribbling nonsense on a party napkin. 

When he was finished jotting down the “notes” he commanded Lily to “prepare” me. She stood there confused before he explained enough for her to grab the single use hand sanitizer rag. The cold wet paper passed from one cheek to the other. He got in close and began using a black BIC pen to highlight every possible flaw apparent in my cartilage. The lines showing where he would carve off parts of me. 

He smiled at me as he put the cap back on, and assured me “you're going to be gorgeous”.  Then I was led over to the workbench. 

I lied down on the splintered table, ignoring the stabbing wood spears as they placed a clear asthma inhaler mask over my face. I counted to 10 and lied as limp as I could pretend to be. Occasionally squinting my eyes open in order to still watch the Surgeon in action. 

My heart only began to race as I caught a glimpse of him ragging off a garden shovel. I listened closely to the random lingo he exchanged between himself and his “helpers”. Two fingers placed against the soft part of my neck when he asked about my vitals. 

My mind was still stuck in the mirage but my body acknowledged the reality. I tried to quell my shaking as he stood over me explaining that he must break the bone in order to remold it.  The fear of pain and the fear of exclusion began to wage war within my intestines. 

I was about to call it off when I felt him standing over me. That didn’t happen. The metal slammed down on me before I could open my mouth. Knocked back into reality with white hot pain shooting straight down the bridge of my nose. I screamed.

On a normal day, the boy standing over me would’ve been able to hold me down. But with the adrenaline shot into me through blunt force trauma, he ended up straight on the floor. I tried to crawl through the crowd, my eyes fixed on the door. The kids soon turned on me. 

I thrashed around splashing blood on the larger boy’s shirts as they held me down. Failing to keep me still and quiet. Began to shove a rag into my mouth as others listened for any sounds of authority. The rest stashed away rodents and gardening tools as if it were cocaine right before a police raid. Only the roughest cover up could be done before they had to let me go. 

My face made some of them lose their lunch. Split skin peeled back to expose the hard pink bag holding my face up. This wasn’t a cat that could be put back in the bag. The hands were taken off and I zipped right out of there. Forgetting the pain until I was back in the view of adults. 

I rammed into the kitchen painted red, ruining the sunday beers. Ran into Daddy’s arms screaming incoherently with the lower half of my face split down the middle. The next thing I remember is getting taken away in an ambulance. 

I was back to where I started, only this time it was real. A woman in scrubs cleaned me off before stitching me back together. White hard gauze covering the dark purple and red underneath it. It took a while before I stopped breathing through my mouth. 

I stared at the tarnished hospital mirror, poking and prodding at the pain. My mother assured me that it could all be fixed. It wasn’t long until I was given to the same man who gave my mother her features. At the end of the day, I got what I wanted. 

I didn’t learn who the scapegoat was until a few days later when I waltzed into class looking more like Frankenstein than Pinocchio. The surgeon wasn’t seen in the lunchroom after that day and every parent received their gift back. 

I was back in his kitchen within the week. Both of us were staring at each other, making sure to hold our tongues back as our parents battled over facts and figures. We knew the consequences of selling out the others. Mom and Dad walked out indignant and self assured. Pretending not to hear the screams as we pulled out of the driveway. 

The Surgeon repeatedly screamed out the same teary eyed phrase in between lashings, “I just wanted to make her beautiful”.

That was the last time I ever saw him.