The Procedure
by Lauren Kardos
In Greek mythology, the Hydra didn’t always regenerate two heads for every one lobbed off. Earlier accounts cite a single, fearsome snake, others a beast with two whipping tails. The Hydra was a lake-dweller, the Hydra sprung from caves. The script flips depending on who is telling the story.
The doctor says Mom’s procedure went well. In the cramped hallway, in earshot of other visitors, he rattles off vitals, facts and figures, monitoring schedules. Ten hours, three surgeons, a slew of bemasked nurses and anesthesiologists, the donor fresh and clinically dead. A car wreck. A perfect match. Over the doctor’s shoulder, I notice the wallpaper in the family waiting room is yellowed, peeling. I can go back to see Mom now. She’ll have two heads.
I, too, am a doctor. A Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Studies. Three weeks before graduation, I rang my childhood landline, worrying Mom’s afternoon soaps might drown out my call. P. H. Dipshit, she nicknamed me when my program started. People in town couldn’t afford college, and to trade staggering debt for three degrees more than Mom felt I needed? I still hoped she’d visit. I pictured her waving from the stadium bleachers as I clasped my degree onstage. “Marnie, who?” she yelled over the phone instead. “I don’t have no daughter.”
Mom’s room stinks of rubbing alcohol, but I gag at what crowns the pillow mountain on the bed. Mom’s head is propped center and the second head, now conjoined, sprouts from her right like an errant mushroom. Surgical pads cover the sutures at Mom’s neckline, tubes drain away blood and seepage. The donor must have been beautiful. Late fifties perhaps, her hair more peppery than auburn. I see four eyes closed, sunken. Two pairs of lips, crusty and downturned. Mom’s brain dying and the donor’s brain dead.
The pamphlet for the clinical trial Mom found via Facebook ad explains cutting-edge research, absent of jargon and frills. With another brain in the system, plaques may migrate their roadblocks and protein tangles twist the neurons elsewhere. Mom would be Mom again. The donor, I’m assured, would not have regained consciousness otherwise. Printed on heavy cardstock, lettering in cartoon brain pink, I run the pamphlet corner under my fingernails tempting a papercut.
In some Hydra tales, the serpent is poisonous. Flame only enraged the beast, but cauterizing each severed neck gave Hercules a chance.
Mom set the kitchen on fire after leaving the stovetop tea kettle burning all night. Mom’s water was turned off thrice, something I’d only learned when visiting over Christmas, her one-armed hug at the door punching my nostrils back to my car. Neighbors called and texted in the middle of my lectures: Mom was wandering around the neighborhood, wearing only a bra and towel slung around her waist. It took me years longer than I’d like to admit to finish my thesis. It was always, “Marnie, come home” or “Marnie, something’s wrong.” It was Mom’s selfishness, her eccentricity, her laziness, I ranted to my advisor before the diagnosis.
The legend goes that the only way to kill the Hydra’s final head is by its own poison. A sword, an arrow, a club dipped into a severed Hydra head would do.
I sit next to Mom’s bed, each blink wishing I could unsee, like I’m an unwilling volunteer on a magician’s set. For me, magic was the orange trees lining the Athenian streets and hills toward the Parthenon. Sampling spanakopita at every cafe and rubbing ankles sore from cobblestones at the end of each night. The undergraduate semester abroad scholarship covered most of my costs, but I couldn’t afford an international phone plan. Magic was Mom not caring to learn transatlantic postage. Magic was six months of freedom I might return to one day. For longer. Forever.
Every few hours a nurse stops by, jots chicken scratch in Mom’s chart, divines the meaning of beeps and zagging lines on the machine-laden wall. A cot was set up along the opposite wall hours ago, but I can’t sleep. Before her shift ends, the head surgeon visits and says the donor’s eyes may open first. To not be alarmed. What color are the donor’s eyes? What color are my mother’s eyes? One time, when I was five and stuttered, Mom slapped my face each time I tried to say I liked the new neighbors, Dick and Virginia, who had just returned our pie pan. “Why you crying when good girls don’t swear?”
For years after the Hydra died, its blood still poisoned nearby rivers. Fish and critters inhabiting those currents turned inedible. Rotten. Putrid at the first bite.
I stand from the crinkle-sheet cot. The room is dark, a small fluorescent bulb illuminates the donor as I touch her cheek. I peel back the surgical tape, see purple-edged skin grafted with a steady hand. Mom would be Mom again. So, I dig through storage drawers for misplaced scalpels, assess each pillows’ heft. Any sword or club would do.
Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. The Molotov Cocktail, Spry Literary Journal, hex, Bending Genres, Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poems. You can find more of her work at www.laurenkardos.co and say hello on on Bluesky @lkardos.bksy.social.
COLD SIGNAL 