Dr. Lee, a Korean-American in his late 40s looking typically dapper in his Thom Browne round framed glasses and 60s Mad Ave-style haircut, slicked back with a neat side-part, walked with a purposeful stride down the corridor of the ER with an unlit retro vintage Spanish rustic wood pipe hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Arriving at the second trauma room, he pulled open the screen and entered, quickly closing it behind him. The other doctors were already there, crowded around the mangled body on the operating table. The body was so badly broken, the tattered clothes so thoroughly stained with blood and gore, it was difficult to be sure what you were even looking at. The only thing that seemed to be completely intact was the motorcycle helmet, which the patient still wore. The crown of the helmet bore a red and black Rising-Sun design. Other than a few scratches, it was in relatively pristine condition.

            “He’s still got a pulse,” said Dr. Anderson, a balding, mustached ex-football player. “Barely.” He lit a cigarette, shook out the match. “Should we operate or something?”

            “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” said Dr. Lee.

            “I suppose we could make a few cuts…” said Dr. Anderson.

            “A cut here, a cut there…” said Nurse Brenda.

            “What’s the point? He’s got 2-3 minutes, tops. Did you call the number on the bracelet?” asked Dr. Lee, prodding at the bloodied bracelet with a ball point pen.

            “They’ll be here any minute,” said Nurse Brenda.

            “At least we could take off the helmet,” said Dr. Lee.

            “It’s on there pretty tight,” said Dr. Anderson. “We nearly screwed off his head trying to remove it.”

            “At least give him some air then,” said Dr. Lee, as he struggled to raise the helmet’s mirrored visor. “Damn thing’s completely frozen.” He leaned down and peered into the visor, seeing only the squinting reflection of his own eyes. He knocked on the top of the helmet with his knuckles. “Hello, anybody in there?”

            “He’s not real talkative at the moment,” said Dr. Anderson. “On account of being nearly dead.”

            “We could saw it off,” said Dr. Lee.

            “They want us to leave the helmet on,” said Dr. Anderson. “Saw could damage the precious cargo.”

            “Who are they?” asked Dr. Lee.

            “The people from the bracelet,” said Dr. Anderson.

            “I suppose there’s time for a cocktail then,” said Dr. Lee.

            “What are you having?” said Dr. Anderson.

            “Scotch and soda,’ said Dr. Lee.

            “One Jack and soda coming right up,” said Dr. Anderson.

            “I suppose that’ll do,” said Dr. Lee.

            Dr. Anderson scooped ice into a cocktail glass, pouring in the club soda first, followed by a liberal amount of Jack Daniel’s. He slid the cocktail down the counter to Dr. Lee.

            “Here’s to motorcycles,” said Dr. Lee, raising his glass. He took a sip and nodded appreciatively at Dr. Anderson. “Thirst quenching.”

            “Here’s to UFOs,” said Dr. Anderson, raising his own glass and joining in the toast.

            “Here’s to those itty bitty little Earth cars,” said Dr. Grayson, entering through the screen. “What does it take to get a drink around here?” He noticed the horribly disfigured patient. “Jesus Christ, what happened to that poor fuck?”

            “Crotch rocket,” said Dr. Anderson, handing him a Jack and soda. “1100 cc.”

            Dr. Grayson took a sip and crunched ice between his teeth.

            “You could jump the Grand Canyon with 1100 cc,” said Dr. Grayson.

            “You could escape the Earth’s gravitational field,” said Dr. Lee.

            “I’m going to escape the Earth’s gravitational field if I finish this drink,” said Dr. Grayson, tilting it back. “Are you licensed to practice mixology in this state?”

            “Fuck that shit,” said Dr. Anderson.

            “He was home schooled,” said Dr. Lee.

            “He was raised by wolves,” said sloe-eyed Nurse Brenda, pressing her hip against the counter and slowly stirring her drink with a tiny cocktail straw.

            Dr. Anderson gave a half-hearted howl.

            All heads turned to observe a knocking sound at the screen. Dr. Lee pulled it open. Standing at the entrance to the room were two men in chartreuse jump suits. They stood next to a platform truck piled high with equipment: a six-foot-tall thermos-shaped stainless steel bottle, a device that looked like a voltmeter with a pointer that moved across an arced scale, and a box-shaped device with a congeries of tubes coming out of it, also a standard carpenter’s tool box. The man on the left had short hair and a lean face. The other man was black, with a small jheri-curl afro. Both men wore serious workman-like expressions.

            “We’re here for the head,” said the man with the lean face.

            “You’re just in time,” said Dr. Lee, waving them in and raising his drink. “He may not make it to the bottom of this cup.”

            “We like to get them alive, if possible,” said the jheri-curl man, presenting Dr. Lee with a clipboard. “Sign here, please.”

            Dr. Lee took the pen and signed his name to the form with a flourish, while the man with the lean face pulled the cart into the room.

            “You might want to close that,” said the jheri-curl man, pointing to the screen.

            “Naturally,” said Dr. Lee, pulling the screen closed.

            “This can get a little messy,” said the lean-faced man.

            “Where’s the neuro?” said the jheri-curl man.

            “You mean the patient?” said Dr. Lee.

            “The head,” said the lean-faced man.

            Dr. Anderson cocked his head toward the operating table. “The one with the shiny motorcycle helmet,” he said. “And the fucked up everything else.”

            The lean-faced man pushed the cart over to the operating table. The jheri-curl man pressed two fingers to the patient’s neck, looking at his watch and counting the beats silently. He nodded at the lean-faced man, removing his hand from the patient’s neck. The lean-faced man grabbed the carpenter’s tool box from the cart and set it on the operating table. He flipped open the top and rifled through the lower compartment, ultimately taking out a cordless Black-and-Decker power drill, preloaded with a half-inch masonry drill-bit. He pointed the drill up in the air and pulled the trigger. The tool let out a high pitch scream as the bit spun. He let go of the trigger and lowered the drill to his side.

            “Plenty of juice,” he said.

            “You’re gonna drill his head off?” said Dr. Grayson.

            “Got to install the handles first,” said the jheri-curl man. “Once the head’s been removed, makes it easier to move around.”

            The lean-faced man bent over the patient, pressing the tip of the drill bit against the bone directly behind the left ear and just under the base of the helmet. He pulled the trigger, causing the spinning bit to pierce the skin and bore into the bone. Once he’d gotten the bit about halfway in, he pulled it out and drilled an identical hole on the other side of the head.

            “Half-inch socket,” said the lean-faced man, holding out his hand.

            The jheri-curl man quickly deposited in the waiting hand a short bolt-head screw and half-inch socket wrench. The lean-faced man inserted the screw into the hole under the left ear and used the socket wrench to screw it in up to the bolt-head. He did the same thing on the other side.

            “Saw,” said the lean-faced man.

            The jheri-curl man searched around the tool box then handed the lean-faced man a carpenter’s saw. The lean-faced man rested the serrated blade of the saw against the patient’s throat, just under the visor of the helmet, and then began to vigorously saw through the trachea. The assembled surgeons and hospital staff watched on with a fair amount of professional curiosity as the saw reached, and by degrees severed, the major arteries, briefly sending up a plume of blood before the heart stopped, which quickly reduced the crimson fountain to a trickle.

            “Takes some elbow grease,” said the lean-faced man, sweat beading up on his brow as he labored ineffectually to saw through the vertebrae. He stopped sawing for a moment to wipe the sweat and blood off his forehead.

            “Last inch is a bitch,” said the jheri-curl man.

            “Anybody have a bone saw?” said the lean-faced man.

            Dr. Anderson opened the supply closet and took a look inside. “Guess not,” he said. “How about a hack-saw?”

            The lean-faced man held out his hand, receiving the hack-saw from Dr. Anderson. The lean-faced man immediately went to work with the hack-saw and after several minutes of intense exertion managed to completely separate the head from the body. The jheri-curl man gave him a stoic high-five.

            “Now for the fun part,” said the lean-faced man.

            “That wasn’t the fun part?” said the devilishly handsome Dr. Grayson.

            “We get to use the perfusion machine,” said the lean-faced man, patting the box-shaped machine with his free hand.

            “The way it works is we hook up the arteries to these tubes,” said the jheri-curl man. “The machine flushes out the blood and pumps a mixture of glycerol and B2C into the brain.”

            “It’s basically anti-freeze,” said the lean-faced man. “For when we drop the head into the Oban.” He patted the six-foot-tall bottle of liquid nitrogen.

            “Prevents ice crystals from forming,” said the jheri-curl man.

            Holding onto the neck bolts, he picked up the severed head, which still wore the motorcycle helmet, and walked over to the perfusion machine where the lean-faced man worked to untangle the tubes. He hooked up one of the tubes to the jugular and flipped on the perfusion machine to try it out. The tube jumped then popped off, sending out a spray of liquid coolant. Just as the jheri-curl man was about to set the head down on the tray of the perfusion machine, the lean-faced man picked up a call on his phone. “Rick here,” he said. There was a long silence during which the lean-faced man listened unblinkingly to the voice on the other end of the line. “Ok,” he said, hanging up. He turned to the jheri-curl man, who was still holding the head. “They pulled the plug. Chapter 11.”

            The jheri-curl man tossed the head to Dr. Anderson (who caught it instinctively, cradling it like a football) then slapped his hands together and headed for the door. The lean-faced man followed him out of the trauma room, leaving behind the cart full of equipment: the voltmeter-looking thing, the liquid nitrogen bottle, the perfusion machine, etc.

            “Looks like you own the head,” said Dr. Grayson.

            “Just what I’ve always wanted,” said Dr. Anderson. “A shiny new motorcycle helmet, with a bloody head in it.”

            “What are you going to do with it?” asked Dr. Lee.

            “Might look nice on a book shelf,” said Dr. Grayson.

            “I wanna fucking wear it,” said Dr. Anderson. “Thing’s worth like two hundred bucks. Help me pull the head out.”

            Dr. Anderson held on to the helmet, while Dr. Lee and Dr. Anderson each tugged on a neck bolt. Eventually the head popped out, sending Dr. Grayson tumbling to the floor, the severed head, finally freed from the helmet, landing on top of him. He screamed and threw it onto the floor.

            “Don’t be a ninny,” said Dr. Anderson, picking up the head by the bolts so he could get a look at it.

            A very handsome young face stared back, chiseled features, tousled blond hair, strong nose. The only problem was the dark eyes that bulged out of the sockets in different directions. Dr. Anderson spun the head around so that the other doctors could get a better look at it.

            “Isn’t that that guy?” said Nurse Brenda.

            “From the TV show,” said Dr. Grayson.

            “Rodney Markle,” said Nurse Brenda, lighting up.

            “Who the fuck is Rodney Markle?” said Dr. Anderson.

            “He played Jeb?” said Nurse Brenda. “On Beverly Hospital? He’s pretty dreamy.”

            “He used to be pretty dreamy,” said Dr. Anderson.

            “Now he’s in dreamland,” said Dr. Lee. “Sayonara, Rodney.”

            “He was a waiter at Luxmanor, before the show,” said Nurse Brenda.

            “They have a great wine list,” said Dr. Lee.

            “I’ve never heard of a wall-eyed soap actor,” said Dr. Anderson.

            “His eyes didn’t used to bulge out like that,” said Nurse Brenda. “They were actually kinda small and beady. They didn’t really fit with the rest of his face.”

            “When they turned on the perfusion machine,” said Dr. Lee. “Too much pressure.”

            “Tough break, kid,” said Dr. Anderson, setting the head down on the operating table. “Watch this.”

            He connected one of the tubes dangling from the perfusion machine to a bottle of Ronrico rum and another tube to a bottle of coconut mixer. A third tube he left to dangle in a large martini glass. He turned on the perfusion machine, which whirred to life, then stuck the whole thing inside a chamber within the Oban. A moment later, he opened the chamber of the Oban, reached in and quickly removed the martini glass, which was now filled with a delicious, white slushy confection. He handed the drink to Nurse Brenda. “Cryogenically frozen piña colada.”

Morgan Hobbs graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a degree in English and History. Since that time he has worked as a commercial fisherman in Kodiak, Alaska, a story editor for several motion picture production companies in Los Angeles, California, and a web designer for a start-up internet music licensing company in Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in PIF, Hollywood Dementia, McSweeney’s, Mudlark, Juked, Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboz, Airgonaut, The Cabal, The Ginger Collect, Shattered Wig, Nocturnal Lyric, Satire Magazine and Punchline. He is currently living in Washington, D.C.