Pool_1

both words, you and surgeon, competed for the highest level of vocal disdain. This bully of a man regularly daunted medical students from taking surgical rotations. This opening question would be the first of a series of highly quoted escalating discouragements that some of the surgical old timers said could last an hour. Standing before the hallowed Professor Ramus, in perfect anticipation of his often repeated question, "How do you know you are cut out to be a surgeon and not a..." ZZ's blade was at his throat and followed him in ten pace backpedal to a back bend over an EKG machine. The smiling Macaluso kept a pregnant moment of suspense with the practiced face of his prior mentor, then deftly pulled the weapon's point from the jugular, held it aloft, whipped his wrist in a willfully confident gesture as the long blade snapped closed and was belted out of sight it in a blink. "Thought you would never ask," Mac grinned with that eye. Ramus did a thin and unconvincing smile more concerned with his own bladder than his facial expression. "Where'd you learn that? Those are illegal! You could have hurt me." "Nope. I'm a born surgeon. All I need is your signature for the surgical sub- internship." He got it. Besides Ramus didn't want to get too close after that. "And those eyes," Ramus thought with a chill, perhaps overreacting. But that was the future. Waiting there, in the past, on the corner of Main and Crooks Streets, sitting on a curb, buoyed by his prize, staring at its sharp edge and sparkling point, Marcus couldn't resist asking the unaskable, "Hey Bence, what is that Omega Frank has carved on his chest? He says it's just a kid thing. But I've seen those others guys - like him, if that's possible - with the same scar." "Yo white boy," Washington got into a mock shtick, "we niggas got our thing, dig?" "Cut the shit, Bence. What's the deal with the scar?"