Young Writers Society

The malicious brothers slammed the breaks to their SUVs, enthralled with brutal energy underneath their cloak and dagger. With waited breaths the two teenagers glanced at each other for what would be the final time for a long time. And there was no remorse for the mortifying atrocity they were about to commit.

This was not the kind of shooting that would make the headline news, as there simply weren’t enough victims to guarantee ratings. The malicious brothers were useless marksmen, never having fired guns before in their lives. After firing several rounds into an open crowd, the malicious idiots struggled to reload more ammo into their pistols. Several bystanders took advantage of their stupor and tackled the shooters to the ground.

Out of all the rounds the malicious brothers fired, only two struck flesh and bone. A young woman and her mother, both with bullets in their stomachs. They were wielded into ambulances, bleeding profusely, death almost certain.

Two surgeons were tasked with extracting the bullets and saving the lives of the two victims. A young surgeon tended to the young woman, while an older surgeon attended to the mother. They were both sent to separate rooms, on the opposite side of a fifth-story room from one another.

The younger surgeon was baby-faced and short in height, with a handsome, clean complexion. It was not at all difficult to mistake him for a high schooler, and he so often was. But he was experienced when it came to gastrointestinal surgery, and he knew exactly what he needed to do. Control the bleeding, remove the bullet, suture the wound, he told himself. Control the bleeding, remove the bullet, suture the wound.

But when the packed room was crowded with nurses and doctors shouting instructions and yelling different things to different people, the young surgeon felt terror in his heart. Anger seeped through his veins – why was he in this situation? Why did this have to happen? His anger pointed towards the shooters – why would they do this? Where did they come from?

More questions poured into his head – what kind of bullet was in the body? What kind of gun was used in the shooting? Different bullets and different guns meant different wounds. Soon enough his mind was filled to the brink with questions about the shooter’s families, if either of the shooters were even still alive, how close they were when they shot the victim, how much pain the victim was in, if they knew what had happened before they were shot, so on, so on.

And the question that was no longer anywhere in his mind was how to remove the bullet.

Flatline, we have a flatline.

Come on, come on, come back! Come back!

Stop. Time of Death, March twenty-seventh, two-thousand-and-seventeen.

The young surgeon buried his hands in his face as the victim’s family began the long and convoluted process of grief.

Across the hall, the elder surgeon was used to all the noise and pandemonium in the room after a shooting. The question of who the shooters were or what their motives were never crossed his mind. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter to him what kind of bullet was in the woman’s body or even if she’d live a normal life after the surgery. The entire two hours, he asked himself one question, over and over, again – how to remove the bullet.

The older woman’s surgery was a success, and the elder surgeon breathed a sigh of relief. That evening, he and the younger surgeon met at the bar for well-needed drinks.

“How’d you do it,” the younger surgeon asked. “How’d you save her? There was just so much blood, and so many people, I couldn’t concentrate in there. It’s like I knew exactly what to do, but I just couldn’t do it.”

The elder surgeon closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m a Buddhist,” he said.

The younger surgeon scoffed. “Damn it, why does religion matter?”

“It doesn’t,” the elder surgeon responded. “Just let me finish my sentence. Anyway. I learned from a young age that if you spend your life focusing on the things that don’t matter, nirvana becomes a myth.”

The elder surgeon rose from the barstool and left several twenty-dollar bills on the counter. “I’ve got your drinks covered,” he said. “Now then, I suggest forgetting about what happened today and asking yourself a new question – what time are you going to leave for work tomorrow?”