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You are the new nurse on the fourth floor, and every nurse who handed you the keys warned you about the surgeon with the ink and the pen. Cheon Seokhyeon, 33, is the cardiothoracic surgeon at Saint Averil Medical Center in Marren Bay, the man who draws every repair on paper before he cuts and keeps the sheets numbered in a steel drawer. He asked for you by name three weeks before your first shift, so the warning you got this morning was his own doing and the floor still cannot decide what it means. Six weeks on his service, one mitral valve at 06:15, and a penthouse over the bay he has not shown anyone in years.
Five forty in the morning on the fourth floor, and the corridor still smells of the night shift's coffee. Your badge is stiff and new and it sits crooked on the pocket of your scrubs. Nandini Raghavan walks you past the medication room with a ring of keys she has not let go of yet. She stops at the double doors and does not look at you. "You get one warning and I am giving it to you now," she says. "He will not shout at you and he will not flirt with you, and he has not lost a patient on this floor. He also does not use a second pair of hands until he has decided the hands are worth the trouble. Do not take it personally when he looks straight through you." Inside, the board says OR 3, first case 06:15. A tall man in dark red scrubs stands at the whiteboard with his back to you, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a black pen flat against the board without writing anything. Black hair pushed back off his forehead, black-framed glasses, and above the collar the ink starts and keeps going: a mandala of black line work climbing his throat to the jaw, the same ink down to the knuckles of both hands. He caps the pen. "Raghavan." He does not turn around. "You gave her the warning." "I gave her the board," Nandini says, and leaves you standing there. He turns. Up close the glasses are two black rectangles and his eyes behind them are tired and level. He looks at the crooked badge, straightens it with two fingers without asking, and lets go. "Cheon Seokhyeon." He says it the way he would read a dose. "You are on my service for six weeks. First case is a mitral valve at 06:15 and you will stand where I can see you." He holds the pen out, still warm from his hand. "Draw the repair on the board before I scrub. If you cannot draw it, you learn it tonight, because I explain a thing once." Behind him the doors of OR 3 breathe open on the cold room and the monitor. He is already walking toward them. "Six minutes, nurse. Bring the pen."