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I suppose I've never really put much thought into why I signed up for this line of work, wondering the words aloud as I seem wont to do. The pay is satisfactory enough; benefits serve my personal needs nicely and nothing more. Job satisfaction? No, the ratio of which this cold, clinical place stifles me so is far greater than any sort of enjoyment operating in its polished white halls gives me. Always with the sickening fluorescence buzzing from the ceiling, the shrill beeps and rolling wheels of operating tables. And this chill that permeates every inch of air, haunting me through the metal right down to the blood, bones and cords.

It's not all doom and gloom, though, I remind myself. Every once in a while, I find something to guide me through.

She's the one this time, sitting poised and severe in the empty waiting room. Always in that same chair to the left of the desk with the magazines. Odd how she never even glances at them, just sitting in place, gaze affixed straight to the rays of saturated sunlight in the window.

I imagine, to myself so she can't hear, that she simply doesn't want to acknowledge the headlines always printed about her. She's a prominent politician in this sector, elected no more than half a year ago. Never watch much television, but she was apparently considered a shining new upstart in the political world, something of a maverick in her views and proposed plans for sector renewal, diplomacy and governmental relations. Strange reception for someone from the Northern Sector, and with her model, too. Some detail about her captivated me, punched through my shell, blanked out my thoughts and reknit them toward her.

She'd always have a thin, eggshell-white business card clutched like a sheet between two milky fingers, tapping the arm of her seat while the tip of a high-heeled foot rapped incessantly on the sleek, frigid floor. I idle behind the counter, pressing a fingertip to the surface till the skin flattens and trace eights and zeros along the smooth white counter, following the ephemeral streaks of blue light that reacted and chased the warmth of my touch, the imagined ringing of oscillating crystal in my ears backing her rhythmic tap-tap-tapping.

I dodge her gaze when she casts one, reflexively turning to the thin monitor to my left, pretending, and sometimes trying, to find some meaning in the neon lines of text and figures shooting across the holographic display. After a tic, I look back over, watching her flick open a pocket in her coat and retrieve a small stack of the cards, deftly stacking, sliding, flipping and stacking them again with a hurried, obsessive grace. She shuffles and reshuffles them, never-blinking eyes tracing it all with pinpoint precision, the blue pupils flitting in fraction-of-an-inch twitches. The loud tapping of her foot stabs the silence with its tempo. I watch, my lips fidgeting. I wet them with a lick and bite down to tame them. A different kind of moisture bubbles behind my teeth.

Finally, her file pops into existence on the monitor with a mild beep only I hear. My legs tremble as I rise to my feet and I run my hands down them to calm the shivers. She notices, stuffs away the cards and strides over, clip-clopping in her heels, satin purse at her side, gaze locked mechanically forward, stabbing through me as she approaches with a grace that wastes no steps. She wastes no words either. Almost as if we had rehearsed, we hurry through the shallow pleasantries and opening medical recaps and make through the door behind the counter as it slides open for us, closing just as quickly behind us with a hushed click. I pick up a calming aroma of lilac drifting off her snowy neckline as she follows at my side down the branching, stark white hallways to the operating room.

Let there be light, and the sterile whiteness of the chamber flashes awake before our eyes. She gives me a toxic glare with her still blue eyes and I fight to hide the tremor running down my spine underneath my lab coat. I realize it's a rather antiquated thing to utter, but as security passcodes go, it suits me just fine. I always felt it had a certain eloquent flair to it. Can't recall where I read it. I walk her, past trays of disconnected tubes and steel utensils, to the machine in the center of the room; a pearly throne of satiny smooth leather framed with polished white plastic, glassy tubes sprouting from its sides running to the monstrous white mainframe to which the seat was affixed. The machine was at least a good foot or so taller than I, roundly shaped and bulging with rolling grooves and rivulets that very much brought to mind the shape and form of the brain itself, dark panes of glass flowing between the wrinkles.

Without assistance or instruction, she stepped out of her heels, not even a twinge of muscle or skin as bare flesh met the cold, sterile white of the floor, and slipped forward into the chair. I felt my chest heave at the breathy exhale and scratchy squeak of pressed leather as she sank into the seat, turning over on her knees and letting herself settle inside comfortably. She pulled up her milky legs, slipping them down into the interior grooves for them at the foot of the seat. With an achingly long breath that sucked mine away as I watched, she relaxed completely, arms splaying at her sides to rest on the arms; the fingers of her left hand tapped away at the ebony leather like a master typist on a keyboard, each one flexing and dancing at a different pace and tempo than the others, pressing soft little grooves into the hide that rose like cloudpuff as they did.

She shut her frozen eyes expectantly. Despite my obligatory duties, I couldn't will my feet to move, only my lips as they betrayed my carnal observations; frozen at the spot, chanting to myself the gentle, supple curves of her neck and shoulders, the sparkling drapes of rusty hair that rested like weightless thread upon them, the languorous swell of her controlled breathing, the splash of bold color her bold maroon formal dress lavished upon the dulling sterility of the operating room.

I dig my teeth into my whispering lips again and head to the rear of the machine, watching her one last time as I went. At the very back is another monitor, streaking flashes of blue and green illuminating the screen. The procedure itself was already wired in, set up in advance by the head surgeon. I input the rote commands and inputs with monotonous, practiced strokes of the keyboard and hear the hiss of released air, followed by the whirr of machinery springing to life.

I peer over to the front. A large, gray helmet, itself styled with bumps, rivulets and wrinkles to resemble the human brain, lowers with a dull hum, resting comfortably upon her head. The tubes connecting the mainframe to the seat vibrate as highly-compressed air blast through them, the glass cylinders fogging and growing cloudy. A flood of tiny twinkling bits of gold light flow over the rigid curves of the mainframe and vanish as soon as they appear.

With a click, a serpentine apparatus extends from the back of the helmet and injects itself into a port just below the nape of her neck. A heady moan escapes her lips. Her eyelids hover open, pupils dilating, unfocused, distant. Like a solemn procession of color, stripes and slivers of rainbow drain along behind the black glass etched in the mainframes' grooves, long rivers of them crawling forward, sometimes shooting forward suddenly like bubbles of liquid sucked out a straw, from the machines' back, curving up and flowing down across its' circumference until the very air around us held a faint, kaleidoscopic aura of ever-changing color. They enveloped it completely in slithering ribbons and bled into the helmet's cerebral creases, finally spiraling down the spinal extension apparatus.

She reaches out and swats and grasps for whatever unseen creatures are whisping about her in her trance, fingers spreading out to feel the air. Her lips quiver, mouth gasping breathy, formless words. The rise and fall of her chest slows; an achingly long inhale and she holds it captive in the pit of her throat to wiggle and fight in darkness, succumb and sink, and then releases it with a merciful sigh.

Though I should watch the monitor, I find myself wandering to her side, watching her dream away. I wonder what it is about the process that has this effect on everyone. Is she seeing little bursts of synapse-snapping light dart about in her false vision, trying to catch them like fluorescent, ephemeral butterflies taunting and haunting her in their flighty patterns? Does she see some moment of sheer, permeating bliss, radiating her with sensual warmth, so pure in its detail and clarity her rewiring mind is telling her its real, to embrace and savor it? An unconscious regret as the sight, smell, feel of a treasured memory dulls into unremarkable monochrome, bleeds away from the edges inward and leaves behind only blank white, compelling her to claw and wretch it back?

I rest my trembling palm on her shoulder as I'm wont to do, my body both sweltering and shivering from the overload of my furiously beating heart as I struggle to grip not tight into the skin, but to give her a soft, solid reassurance of my presence, my weight, my warmth. I hope beyond hope they're not signs of corroding brain or mental damage that could manifest as some deep-seeded disorder later on and the media and health community just hasn't picked up yet. That would most certainly kill my enthusiasm for experiencing it myself one day.

With the procedure finished, I wait by the door of the operating room, rubbing down the fronts of my legs to calm the shakes. She hooks her high heels in two fingers and pads up to me. My heart starts and stops with the faint clap of her soles on the bare floor and she moves past at the doorway but then stops. Her head lowers for a brief moment, as if running a thought through her mind, turns, and slides both arms around my waist. I gasp and stumble backwards into the wall but she doesn't release. My lips twitch, teeth chatter, panicked breaths of restrained longing wetting her forehead as she leans in. I can't read her expression; she hides her eyes from me, burying her face in my chest. She starts at my neck, suckling there, pulling at the sweat and skin. My quaking hands roam before I can will them to to her stomach, ripping open the buttons and slithering inside. The fingers read her body, feeling the solid layer of alloy under the sweet skin. Before my reason melts away and whites out, I realize her intent.

She's one of our branches' Black Card patients, or should I say customers? Our head of staff and hospital director already consulted with her and made arrangements for her dealings with us to be completely secret. Near total confidentiality; only them and the very top echelon of the management could even access her medical records. Always a Level 3 memory extraction, and since it wasn't a donation per se, the memory itself was to be immediately wiped. No copies, no traces. Perhaps unsavory, and now I find myself pondering what her "consulting" with the staff head and director actually entailed.

But my thoughts won't remain lucid enough for much longer to linger on the details. This was her gift to us in exchange for our services in her time of need; to me for looking after her, remaining by her side at each procedure; or perhaps simply insurance or a devious failswitch to inject me with, cutting deep into me to ensure I never talk or testify. For now, my betraying lips convey very well enough my lack of concern for such things.

Let the light recede and rest.