A Brush with Death

It was time for a change and I knew it. The trouble was that I didn't know what the change should be. I'd gone to the salon at least once a month for the last two years, only to sit in Benny's chair and stare at my long, blonde hair in the mirror before I would sigh and ask for just a trim.

I got compliments about my hair everywhere I went. It was arguably the most noteworthy thing about me, or that was how it seemed. Nobody complimented me on my dissertation, nobody complimented me on having a Ph.D., and they definitely didn't compliment me for being one of the top surgeons in the province. But everyone, my mother, my cousins, friends, and even strangers in the street, would all compliment my hair as if that was all that mattered.

Petrichor emanated from the sidewalk beneath my feet and in the distance, I saw the red, blue and white twirling cylinder that spun, endlessly, outside of Benny's Salon. It circled around and around, just like my thoughts about how I'd like to cut my hair. I entered his shop and immediately took off my coat. The blow dryers always heated the area to the point of discomfort and the smell of the heat mixed with perm lotion and chemicals burned my nose.

"You're late, Elanor! You always come on the first, my love," Benny greeted me with his usual smile but he quickly turned back to the woman sitting in his chair. He was right, I always went to his salon on the first, but I had been called into emergency surgery and had been on my feet for sixteen hours. I was two days late as a result. Benny danced to the music perpetually beating out of his speakers as he cut people's hair. The women who worked with him sang along often and chatted with each other as they styled hair. The patrons, myself included, were constantly invited to join in on their jokes and fun, which gave the establishment the overall impression of belonging. It was the only place in the city I was comfortable getting my hair cut because they were so welcoming.

"Have a seat, my love," Benny gestured to his chair and clipped my hair up before he secured the black apron around my neck. "What are you looking for?"

"Something different," I told him, but I didn't know what that was. He seemed to understand and he nodded.

"What about we take off about eight inches? Will give you more volume and will make your hair easier to style," he said confidently. I never styled my hair, I didn't have time and it was always tucked under my scrub cap anyway, so I didn't see the point. Regardless, I wanted a change, and he seemed assured that this haircut would be a good one.

"Sure." I smiled at him through the mirror and he went back to dancing around me slightly as he clipped portions of the long hair from my head. As long strands of my hair fell into my lap, I felt lighter, but after I looked up into the mirror I was left with a sense of inadequacy and unease. With every sound of his sharp scissors snipping through my hair, my nausea compounded until I wanted to vomit. He blow-dried and styled my hair, and it looked beautiful, all of Benny's cuts and styles were beautiful, but it was not me.

"Do you like?" He prompted me and I smiled at him through the mirror, glad he was too focused on my hair to notice that my smile did not reach my eyes.

"It's lovely," I said. It was true, but I was not satisfied.

"Your hair is so gorgeous, Elanor," one of his workers, Marissa, called to me from across the room and I thanked her. I had saved seven lives that day but was still not satisfied with myself. It seemed ridiculous to me that I had my hands wrist-deep in intestines a mere hour before, had healed the perforated bowel and cut the thread of my sutures, but now, as someone cut my hair, I was more uncomfortable than I had been in my operating room.

"You don't like it," Benny frowned at my face and I winced at him.

"It just doesn't feel like me," I admitted and he pressed his pointer fingers to his pursed lips as he squinted at me.

"What do you do?" He asked and I smiled, genuinely this time. He'd never asked before.

"I'm a trauma surgeon," I proudly stated and he gaped at me. I was used to the reaction. I had to set the OR tables to the lowest setting and still had to request a footstool for my larger patients. Tiny was often used to describe me. Tiny Elanor, with the long, blonde hair, instead of Doctor Jones, the most renowned trauma surgeon in Ontario. I resented it.

"You need something quick. Easy to maintain," Benny said and I nodded at him. He hummed as he continued to assess me. "You think about it and then you come back. I give you better haircuts for free until you like it."

"Benny, you don't need to-"

"I insist on it, El, you come back next week," he said, and he brushed the hair off of the apron before he pulled it off of me. Piles of my hair sat around the chair, and although he had cut eight inches, it did not seem different to me at all. It was slightly more springy and the ends felt more smooth, but I still didn't look like me.

"He's crashing!" My colleague, Dr. Runions hollered into the room.

"Call a code blue! Dr. Pierce, begin compressions," I ordered, and the delicate dance of treatment ensued. My choreography was perfect and almost jarringly beautiful, though I felt odd for thinking so. My orders were completely controlled, the nurses and doctors responded to them with coordination that could only be perfected after years of practice. "Looks like defib. Set it up," my commands were followed instantly and my underlings attached the sticky pads of the defibrillator to my patient. "Set at one fifty, and clear."

"Delivered," Dr. Peirce confirmed after the patient's body seized with the low buzz of the pads.

"Restart compressions and push one milligram of epinephrine, countdown two minutes," I said, and so it was done. My team worked flawlessly under my command, and though it was terrifying to have a life in my hands, I was confident that the well-oiled machine that was my team would get my patient back. "Reset defib at one fifty, and clear," I repeated when it was time. My patient jolted again and the steady, rhythmic beeps of life filtered out of his machine.

"We got a rhythm," Dr. Peirce cried and then smiled at me. I had saved another life. "Close call, Jones."

"They always are," I responded on autopilot as I made sure the records had been taken properly.

"Nice hair, by the way," Dr. Peirce said before she left the room and I failed to stifle my sigh. I had just saved another life, kept someone's son, brother, father or friend alive, and the thing that people noticed about me was my hair. There was nothing easy about maintaining this hairstyle if it was all people could see. I would have to go back to Benny's sooner than I thought.

For the following few weeks, I would walk into Benny's shop and stare at my hair in the mirror for what should have been an embarrassing amount of time, but Benny often stood beside me to assess as well. He made recommendations, but every style, every colour, and every option made my frown deepen until both of us were left unsatisfied and largely annoyed.

I sat at the dinner table in my mother's kitchen and had the youngest members of my family completely captivated as I regaled them with tales of my job. I skipped over the messy bits or things that were not age-appropriate, but they loved to hear about surgery and I loved to talk about it.

"You got to put someone's arm back on?" My little cousin shrieked. "I want to be a doctor!"

"Me too! You're so cool, Aunt El," my niece agreed.

"Oh my goodness, I haven't seen you in ages, you look so good!" My cousin Marjorie, who is two years older and the epitome of propriety, said to me as she entered the kitchen. The children were immediately excited to share what they had learned.

"Mama, did you know Aunt El sewed a man's arm back on today?"

"Yeah, and she saved his life, too!"

"Do you think that's appropriate talk in front of children, Elanor?" Marjorie scowled at me and I had to close my eyes tightly so that they wouldn't roll.

"They didn't seem to mind," I said.

"So have you been dating anybody? You're not getting any younger, you know. Michael and I would be happy to recommend our fertility specialist if you'd like," she plowed right through and I struggled not to groan.

"I don't want kids, Marjorie. I want to be a surgeon," I reminded her for what had to have been the thousandth time.

"But you're so beautiful, El, you'd make such cute babies," she gushed as if that were a good reason to create life. It was fine for her to have a nuclear family, be a homemaker and take care of her kids all day. That was lovely and beautiful, and I adored my niece and nephew with my entire heart, but it was not the life I wanted for myself. My family didn't understand that I was married to my job, that the only people I wanted to take care of were my patients. I didn't understand why they thought I was so wrong for wanting that but their displeasure with me left me feeling inadequate, as though there was a void within me, something wrong with me. "Your hair, Elanor, can you imagine cute, little babies with your blonde hair?"

"I can imagine them getting upset that I work as much as I do," I said.

"So don't work. Do what I do." As if it were that simple.

"I don't want to do what you do. I want to work. I love my job, I love your kids but do not want my own." I sighed at the clear confusion on her face.

"But your hair-"

"My hair is not the only interesting thing about me. In fact, it falls pretty darn low on the list," I rather curtly shouted, but I didn't regret it because at least Marjorie was quiet. My chair scraped against the tile as I stood. She didn't understand what I wanted at all. I was misplaced, I had to have been, into a family that made me feel sick with the pressure of their expectation.

"Where are you going, Aunt El?" My nephew called after me as I walked away.

"For a change," I replied, and I began to walk away from my mother's house, the house I grew up in, eternally suffocated by their disappointment in me choosing to be something as silly as a surgeon. They longed for me to fit inside of their cookie-cutter world, to settle down and marry, to start a family of my own, but I was not a cookie-cutter person. I was a surgeon, and the only cutting I did was the life-saving kind. I cursed the box I'd been placed in all the way to Benny's Salon, and I knew when I saw that his endlessly spinning cylinder had stopped, that it was time for me to make a choice. The bell indicated my arrival, and Benny stood beside his chair as if he'd known I was coming.

"Ah, I know that look," he shook out the silk apron he held and gestured to the chair before him. I scowled at my self in the mirror as he pumped the chair to the appropriate height. "Tell me what you want, my love."

"Shave it," I told Benny and he stared at my long hair that had been down to my hips for as long as anybody in the room could remember before he grinned at me through the mirror. The static apron shocked me as he secured it around my neck. Instead of reaching for the small, silver scissors that Benny had used on my hair for the last two years, he plugged in his shaver and pulled out the clips that would dictate my hair's length. I pointed to a severely short clip and he nodded smartly before he attached it to the shaver.

"Talk about easy to maintain," he winked and I grinned at him through the mirror. "Ready?"

I nodded and he dragged the shaver across my scalp. The tendrils of my long, blonde hair fell from my head, and though I was nervous to the point of nausea, it was like every back-handed compliment I'd ever received was falling away from me. Every instance of someone complimenting what I looked like before they complimented me on my job, my smarts, my passions, my loyalty, my love for my family, or my sense of humor, it all fell away. With every portion of my hair that was shaved off, I got further from the only feature that had identified me for what seemed like my entire life.

No longer would people say "go see Dr. Jones, the one with the hair," or "I don't understand why you're still single, look at your hair," or stop me in the street to compliment it. I was not my hair. I was a sister, I was an Aunt, I was a surgeon, and I was so much more than the limitation of what I looked like. My cheeks hurt from smiling as my hair fell away, but I couldn't control it.

"It suits you," Benny said after he had shaved my entire head and for the very first time after having had my hair cut, I believed him.

"I love it," I smiled widely at him and he clapped excitedly. I felt so much lighter. I felt like I could breathe. I felt free. My scalp was oddly cool, I wasn't used to the circulation a near-bald head gave and I shivered but I loved it. Benny used his tiny brush to sweep the hair off of my face and shoulders before he removed the apron. My hair was still soft in one direction but prickly in the other. I laughed in glee and repeated, "I love it!"

"Page Dr. Jones!" I heard my name shouted from the intake bay and all remnants of nerves concerning my hair fell away as my instincts took over.

"No need, I'm here. What do we have?" I asked as I entered the room and Dr. Peirce and Dr. Runions both gaped at me for a moment. "The patient, doctors!"

"Thirtytwo-year-old female, blunt force trauma to the head, chest, and abdomen after jumping out of a building fire. Possible smoke inhalation along with… well, this," Dr. Peirce pointed to the large, rust rod of rebar that jutted out of my patient's torso.

"Book an OR, I need CT's of everything STAT. We need to get that rebar out soon if we're going to avoid sepsis," I said.

"Yes, doctor," the nurses in the room were immediately calling all of the rooms in the hospital my patient needed to go.

"Runions, you go get me my OR and call neuro. Peirce, you take care of the imaging while I go prep," I requested and they both nodded before they did as asked. By the time I'd scrubbed my hands to the point of rawness, my patient was ready. There was an unexpected person in the room who I'd never met before.

"What are you doing in my OR?" I asked as I approached and nurse Jackie snapped gloves over my wet hands.

"I'm Dr. Scully, I'm the new head of neuro. You called for a consult?" She asked and I nodded. I informed her of the patient's history and didn't need to instruct her further. She assessed the possible brain injury while I pulled the rebar out of my patient's stomach, directed by assistants to clean and pad as we went and eventually sutured everything closed.

"You're one hell of a doctor," she said. I grinned at the comment as I pulled my scrub cap off and my chest swelled with happiness when she didn't care at all about my lack of hair. Of course, she'd never seen me with my long hair, but it was invigorating to be acknowledged for literally anything else. "I'm excited to work with you. It's not often I meet such a celebrated surgeon."

"Thank you, it's nice to meet you," I said and she smiled back.

"It's nice to meet you, too, Dr. Jones."