(VII)
By the time Hammond arrived, Cutler was already scrubbed and ready. SG's
seemingly lifeless body lay on the operating table. But one of the OR nurses
was objecting.
"We don't even know if she's dead," she said. "You haven't even taken her
pulse and pressure."
"I saw her bludgeoned by a pipe wrench," said Cutler impatiently. "Now, if
you're not going to help get the fuck out of here."
The nurse appealed to Hammond. "Look," she said. "This woman doesn't even
seem to have any visible injuries. Just a little swelling on her forehead
and over one eye. You can't just rip her open."
"Just watch me," Cutler said angrily. She grabbed a scalpel, pressed it
against SG's sternum and sliced downward, toward her navel.
Nothing happened. No incision. No blood. The knife pushed in but didn't cut.
Cutler tried again, slashing from SG's navel all the way down to her pubic
hair.
Again, nothing.
Cutler reversed her grip on the scalpel, raised if above her head and
brought it down with all her strength. SG cried out and her knees jerked up.
But the knife didn't penetrate.
Cutler, Hammond, the nurses and two young surgery residents all looked at SG
with amazement. She was indestructible. She was not of this world.
"That's impossible," Hammond said hoarsely. He took the knife from Cutler.
With one hand he softly stroked SG's blonde hair. Then, with the other, he
jabbed the knife into her side.
She made a little yelp and looked at him with hurt surprise.
*****
SG was now an even more valuable commodity than an organ donor or sex clinic
star. After locking her in her room near the studio, Hammond and Cutler
called the top medical staff gathered to brainstorm.
Hammond opened with the question on everyone's mind: "What do you do with a
woman who can't be hurt? How can we profit as a medical center? How can we
profit as individuals?"
Dr. Bowles, who was new to the Center, said this was much too big a
discovery to be confined to one medical institution. He suggested calling in
other researchers. The others glared at him.
Dr. Distruggio suggested further tests. This extraordinary being had
survived a massive blow to the head and was impervious to the knife. What
about burning, electricity, drowning?
"Does she feel pain?" Dr. Tickler asked. He had done important research on
pain and was looking for examples of people who felt little or no pain, or
who were exquisitely sensitive to it.
"Oh, she feels pain, all right," said Cutler. "I heard her when that janitor
was roughing her up."
"And she cried out as if she was in pain when Helen stabbed her in the OR,"
said Hammond. "By the way," he added, turning to Cutler, "that was an
especially nasty piece of work."
"And you were just showing affection when you tried to open up her side?"
Cutler said frostily.
The discussion went on for another half hour, and the meeting ended with
agreement that the "Foundling" would be subjected to a series of tests to
determine her vulnerabilities, if any, and her pain threshold.
Cutler was delighted to be chose chairman of the experiment. She had so
wanted to get to know the Foundling better.
*****
The days that followed were a living hell for SG. She was burned, first with
disposable cigarette lighters, then with a cutting torch. She shrieked with
pain, but survived, and with no permanent scars.
The hospital's emergency generator was cranked up to provide a separate
source of power, and she was chained to a metal screen and subjected to huge
jolts of electricity. Her hair stood on end, her saliva turned to steam in
her mouth, and her eyes seemed about to burst out of her head.
But she was left with no lasting damage, beyond a few bad hair days.
The drowning experiment at first seemed to expose a fatal weakness. She was
handcuffed, a 75-pound weight was attached to her collar, and she was dumped
headfirst into the hydrotherapy pool. She thrashed around, and soon bubbles
poured from her mouth.
After 20 minutes, they removed her from the pool. She appeared irrevocably
dead. Indeed, 45 minutes later there was still no pulse and her body was
turning cold.
An EEG revealed no brain wave, and Cutler delivered mocking last rites: "We
commend this little slut to the obscure grave she deserves, regretting only
the lost opportunity to inflict a little more pain before she left us."
But she hadn't left. Six hours later, in the Center's morgue, SG awoke with
a violent fit of coughing. Water spurted from her mouth, and she convulsed
with desperation and pain, her every cell crying out for oxygen.
It was 2 o'clock in the morning, but the orderly, following instructions in
case such an unlikely contingency happened, called Dr. Cutler. She was
furious, not at being awakened but at the Foundling's insistence on living.
She'd pay for that, Cutler said to herself as she drove to the Center,
though how SG could pay any more than she already had was almost impossible
to imagine.
*****
On Cutler's instructions, two orderlies carried SG down to the parking
garage and tied her wrists to a drainpipe that ran along the top of one
wall. SG's toes barely touched the concrete floor.
Then Cutler pulled her Land Rover to within a couple of feet of SG and
gunned the engine. In the headlights, SG wriggled as she tried to escape her
bonds. One of the orderlies called out, "Dr. Cutler, you'll hurt yourself."
But it was too late.
The Land Rover lurched forward, the bumper and grill slamming into SG's
pelvis and abdomen with a mighty sound of metal bending and glass breaking.
The impact crumpled the Rover's hood, and Cutler, who hadn't attached her
seat belt, was thrown forward into the steering wheel and windshield.
She was taken to the ER for treatment. An orderly managed to get the Rover
into reverse and back it up. Meanwhile, SG was left dangling from the
drainpipe like a side of beef at a packing house.
"Man, she must have god-awful internal injuries," said one of the orderlies.
"I don't know," said the other, "They say she's damn near indestructible.
She oughta be in fuckin' action movies - you know, a stunt cunt." He
laughed, but he didn't have his heart in it. Working at the Center wasn't
good for your nerves, or your soul.
