The Karma of Idiots

Dr. Carmela Ronson had a thing for eating grapes with Greek yogurt. Her morning routine consisted of doing a Peloton class, showering, driving to work, getting in a fit of road rage at least once, parking in the St. Peter’s University Hospital lot, and then finally indulging in her breakfast. While self-driving cars had become the norm, she liked the thrill of driving herself and accelerating on the highway. Even the road rage was a slight comfort in her morning ritual. Today on Easton Avenue, an old man had decided the cross the street just as the light had turned green. He seemed oblivious to her honking. In fact, he seemed to walk slower with every honk she made, not even bothering to look at her as he meandered across the pavement. She thought about how he couldn’t ignore her if she ran him over (of course, she would never do that – it was just a thought). For her good moral behavior, Carmela put extra grapes in her Greek yogurt at work. Plus, she deserved a treat after what she’s had to deal with back home.  

Her first patient of the day was an eight-year-old boy named Henry who had gotten his thumb stuck in a tire swing. Henry still had a bit of baby fat, exemplified by his swollen lips as he tried to keep a brave face for the doctor. Despite his tyrannosaurus rex shirt being covered in dirt, his brown curly hair sat neatly on his head. Even with all the new anti-gravity playground equipment, children still seemed to prefer the rusty swing sets and steep slides. Carmela understood this; she imagined that the old school playground equipment gave children a similar adrenaline rush she felt when she drove. Carmela sat down warmly next to the boy. “Hi Henry. I’m Doctor Ronson and I’m going to take care of your thumb today. How are you feeling?”. He nodded his head in acknowledgement of her presence, and she gently placed his finger in her palm. She immediately knew the thumb was undoubtedly broken. It was almost impressive how much damage he did with just a tire swing. But Carmela took pride in her job, so even though she knew exactly where he had broken his thumb, she used the pen in her pocket to run a quick x-ray to be sure. Uncapping the pen, she looked up at him. “This device is called PocketVision. It’s a medical tool that will let me see where you’ve broken your thumb. Is that ok?” Henry gave a silent nod. 

“Okay Henry, your thumb is broken in a few places. We are going to get you fixed right up though.” She felt it was time to attempt some relatability here. “You know, you are really lucky to grow up in these times,” she said, “when I was a kid, you just had to suck it up and let it heal. But, I have another cool tool I can use to make you feel better right away. Can I go grab it?” Henry, unsurprisingly, nodded back. She was starting to get irritated. “Not big on words, huh kid?” she grumbled as she went to grab the device.  

Carmela was very excited to use ConsanoLife for the first time on a child patient. Innovations like this were why Carmela had gone into medicine in the first place. A new surgical procedure or medical technique gave her a much bigger rush than driving ever did. She can still remember the thrill of cutting into human skin the first time, and the heart racing delight of her first hip replacement. The first time she had used ConsanoLife last month, Carmela couldn’t wait to come home and tell her husband all about it. She laughed to herself. Funny how things worked out. Her hospital was lucky enough to have multiple ConsanoLifes at their disposal. It was lucky for her in the sense that she was able to bring one home last night and no one noticed. No one noticed when she brought it back this morning either.  

She strolled into the orthopedic surgery unit as if she hadn’t been there an hour ago and walked up to the pristine silver machine. The smell of new metal lingered on its shiny surface. ConsanoLife was currently only the size of a laptop, meaning it could only operate on small parts of the body. The size and weight made it easy for transportation. With the wild success of ConsanoLife revolutionizing the medical world, researchers were already working on something three times the current size.  

She walked back up to Henry with the device. “Hi Henry. What I’m holding in my arms is something called ConsanoLife. Do you believe in magic?” She attempted her biggest smile. Henry stared blankly back at her. She opened her mouth to continue, but her phone in her pocket started buzzing. A call from Dave. Fuck that. She continued, “well, this device is kind of like that. You’re going to put your hurt thumb in here, and then your thumb is going to disappear. No pain at all. All your nerve cells are suspended inside the machine. Basically, all the bonds in your cell walls break apart and the device collects all the living tissue from the identified body part. Then after an hour or so, the device will have regenerated all your tissue and bones to be even stronger than before. In between that time, a skin graft is created by the machine to cover the area where your thumb was. When the device is done repairing the damage you did to your thumb, I put the machine back on your hand, press that yellow button, and your thumb will be better than ever.” Henry’s brows furrowed. She was never that good with kids. Carmela concluded he understood about 10% of that sentence. She tried again. 

“Basically, this machine, ConsanoLife, is going to take your thumb for an hour, fix it, and put it right back, all healed. And it doesn’t hurt one bit. You won’t feel a thing.” Henry didn’t seem nearly as excited as she was, but at least he didn’t seem scared anymore. With a long line of patients ahead for the day, she knew she had to begin the operation. She began to insert Henry’s thumb into the red rubber mouth of the machine. After putting in his metrics, she turned on the device, which groaned as if waking up from a nap and then whirred rhythmically. Henry sat, uninterested, as if his thumb wasn’t becoming detached from his body right before his eyes. Henry’s lackluster attitude began to irritate Carmela further. “Any fun trips coming up?” Silence as per usual, but she didn’t miss a beat this time. She continued, “After today I am going on a long trip. I packed my bags last night. I think I’m gonna go to Chicago. And then Hawaii and then Norway maybe. I wasn’t sure where I was going so I packed a little bit of everything. T-shirts, a sun hat, winter boots, gloves, some dresses, a bikini, the works.” She looked up at him in just enough time to catch a slight eye roll. Henry yawned.  

Carmela placed the ConsanoLife device back in the orthopedic unit and set a timer for one hour. In that one hour, she tended to someone with a foot bunion, put a dislocated elbow back in place, and ignored 14 calls from Dave. If he wasn’t going to consider her feelings back then, he certainly would not be receiving any of her time now. As she strolled through the hallway, the buzz of her timer went off. It was time to put Henry’s thumb back on. She walked back over to Henry with the small machine, who was watching a baseball game on TV. The Nationals were up by 3. From a distance, Henry looked relaxed and happy, enjoying his time in the hospital bed. When he turned over to see Carmela, his smile fell flat. Great. “Hi again Henry,” she said, “it’s time to get your thumb back on. I just need to take a few measurements before we do that.”  

As she measured his blood pressure and checked his heart rate, she broke the unending silence like a hot knife through butter. “Do you have any siblings?” This time she did not wait even a second for a response that would never come. “I have one brother. I’m an older sister, you see. And I’d like to think I helped make him into a good person. But the truth is, I think all men just might be terrible. For one, they smell. But, let’s be honest, if it ended there, then I could tolerate them. No, they do a LOT worse than just smell. Don’t you agree?” Henry, it seemed, did not agree. In his classic demeanor, his mouth pulled downwards, and his eyes narrowed. She had no idea why she was talking so much to this kid. She felt like punishing him for being rude to her.  

Carmela put his hand back in the machine and made a few more adjustments. Maybe she was a bit harsh. Maybe if she explained why she thought these things, he would understand. Henry might be quite the intellectual for all she knew. She spoke again, “I think you’d agree with me if you’ve known what I’ve been through. See, men only think with one thing, and it’s not with their head, if you know what I mean.” She pressed the yellow button and the mechanical whirring started up again with a faint yellow glow. “One day you think you’re with the love of your life, and the next day he’s having sex with a 22-year-old girl that does YouTube for a living. Oh, and she looks nothing like me, of course. It makes you wonder, was I ever his type?” Her voice began to shake and get louder, and her knuckles turned white as they gripped the machine. Henry was looking around nervously. His thumb, after all, was in the hands of a woman who was ranting about her cheating husband.  

Carmela continued: “It just makes me so fucking angry. Does he think I do those virtual Peloton classes for myself? No. I’m 44 for God’s sake. And I take pretty good care of myself just so I can look attractive to him. I even put myself through a freaking juice cleanse! But even with all the medical advancements in the world, I’m not gonna ever have the perfect body of a 22 year old girl. I wouldn’t look like that if I drank juice for the rest of my life.” The machine’s glow started dimming, meaning it was almost done reconstructing the thumb. Henry looked like his was holding his breath, sitting stiff as a board.  

Carmela laughed to herself. It came out as an angry, high pitched, snarling growl. “Here’s the thing Henry. My husband is an idiot. Idiots underestimate women. Don’t be an idiot, ok? Or you’ll end up just like my husband.” The device stopped whirring. Some color returned to his cheeks as he let go of the breath he had been holding. Henry’s stiff posture relaxed now that he was sure his thumb was attached to his body. He started wiggling it around, testing its functionality. He was surprised at how well he could bend it, given the pain he had endured just an hour ago. She was right. The ConsanoLife device had worked perfectly and painlessly. He thought of all the thumb wars he could win with his new and improved thumb. “Maybe I’ll go to Peru,” she thought out loud. “Or Slovenia. What do you think?”  

For the first time, Henry opened his mouth: “Have you thought about Disney World?” 

She paused, surprised that she had gained approval to be spoken to. She replied as if talking to an old friend, “No, I haven’t. But I’m not sure if I want to be around all those newlyweds who go to Disney for their honeymoon.” 

“If you want to leave so bad, why did you go to work?” 

“Oh, well, that’s because I borrowed something from the hospital and needed to put it back before I left.”  

“What did you do?” 

“Oh, nothing he didn’t deserve. But it involved a little help from that magical machine I used on your thumb today.”  

“I don’t get it. You know I’m only eight, right?” 

“Oh, yeah. Well, remember that this device can painlessly remove any body part that will fit into it?” 

“Yeah.” 

“And you don’t have to give the body part back, if you think about it. You could just keep it in the machine forever. I thought it was for time my husband start thinking with his head and not the other thing”  

“I still don’t get it.” 

“You don’t have to understand, really. Just don’t be an idiot.”

“Ok. Thanks for fixing my thumb. Have a good vacation.”