The base nature of all men is to seek validation. They crave it. It's what fuels them, what they live for. For man is inherently selfish, and can do little without reward. So often, however, he is unwilling to take the risk.
We are made of matter and nothing more. You're just another tiny, momentary speck in an indifferent universe. Those words haunted Stephen Strange. He could hear them, ringing in his head, his own voice mocking him, challenging him. Once upon a time, he had craved validation like all men do. He had launched himself into his work, flung himself headfirst into his studies, and still, it was never enough. It became a thrill, a rush, a high. He was an addict. He was addicted to the feeling of a blade in his fist and a soul laid out on a table before him. He was addicted to the first cut, that heady rush of adrenaline, the smell of blood and chemicals and life. He was addicted to surgery.
For years, he lived it, breathed it. It consumed his waking thoughts, stirred in his dreams at night. It became his God.
Surgery was all he ever knew. Surgery was all he ever wanted - success was all he wanted. But he didn't want the risks.
How many people had he turned away? How many times had he denied the opportunity to save someone because it was statistically hopeless? How many times had he turned away the needy, the innocent, the hurting, to save his reputation. He just couldn't afford any notches in the bedpost. There was no room for mistakes. Every decision he had ever made was carefully calculated, picked apart and examined until his life mimicked his job. It was about the stats. Every day, he was surrounded by numbers - brain waves, heart rates, blood chemistry... it would only make sense for the rest of his life to be controlled by them.
But, oh, what the careful don't know.
Life is short, and there's something horridly boring about being careful. There's a time and a place for it, sure - Stephen had learned that the hard way when he had put his fists through the dash of his car - but you have to find the balance between extravagant and ordinary, between wild recklessness and methodical planning. How much of the world you missed if you were looking at it with a closed mind.
The surgeon looked down at his hands in confirmation of that fact. Where once his skin had been unblemished, perfect and clean, his hands always neatly manicured and taken care of, now they were disastrous. Scars laced across the backs of them like spiderwebs, extending down to his fingertips. Intermittently, the white lines were interrupted with small pearls of scar tissue where metal rods had been used to hold his tissue together. He stretched the stiff joints carefully, and his hands shook ever so slightly before he took control of them again and his motion became more fluid. When he looked in the mirror, he barely recognized the man staring back at him.
"I don't know how to explain it, Stephen. All I can say is that it's a miracle. The range of motion you've recovered... I- it's almost unheard of. You're very lucky." He couldn't even picture the face of the doctor anymore, he was just a voice behind a white washed complexion to match everything else in that damned hospital - white washed walls, white washed ceilings, bedspreads, pillows, sheets. Hell, even the gowns were stark and pale. It was nauseating.
"It's not a miracle." The words left his mouth unbidden, and he turned his hands over in his lap, staring down at his palms. It wasn't a miracle at all, but it certainly wasn't science. What had happened to him was... extravagant. It was amazing. It was impossible.
You've heard the story of the Avengers, I'm sure. S.H.I.E.L.D. is probably a name you chat about over dinner. But the story of Stephen Strange and his miracle hands, well... that one is not so easy to explain, and not so easy to accept. People always want the obvious answers. But, sometimes the truth is far from what is expected.
Magic.
That's what it was, coursing through his blood and into his hands. Pure, unadulterated magic. He could channel it now, just like that other patient had, the one with the severed spinal cord. Every day, he funneled magic into his body, and in turn he was able to keep performing surgery, keep saving lives. He could feel it now, humming beneath his skin like a struck metal fork. It made his skin feel hot, though his temperature wavered on numbers that were almost hypothermic.
He wiggled every one of his scarred fingers, and gave a dry laugh. "It's not a miracle, but it sure as hell isn't science."
He would never tire of surgery, that much was given. It was a dance he was all too familiar with, and a language that was second nature to him now. The way the scalpel felt grasped in his fingers, perfectly balanced, the tug of a suturing needle through live flesh, the thrum of a patient's heartbeat beneath his fingertips. It was a high Stephen Strange would have ridden to the grave.
But since his time in Kathmandu, things had changed. Surgery was still rewarding, it always would be, but where he had once shied away from the post-op checks, the quiet conversations with worried family members in dark hallways, not Stephen relished them. He lived for the look on a mother's face when he brought her good news, or the way a tough man's eyes always turned dewy when a surgery was successful. Where once he had shied away joyous embraces, had turned his back on crying mothers, now he had become accustomed to those interactions, those real life moments where his work became tangible. If it was all the reward he would ever get, it would have been enough.
Today was a day of mixed emotions. He had been riding the wave of success all morning, had spent nearly an hour sitting with a mother and explaining in depth to her the ins and outs of her son's brain surgery, and had walked her through exactly what he had done. Her son had woken up shortly later, and the light feeling in his chest hadn't dissipated until that evening.
He knew the surgery was nearly impossible. It was a crap shoot, a racehorse with pigeoned toes. In his old life, it was a case he would have turned his nose up at.
Still, he gave it a try. He had warned the patient, a little old woman in her late seventies, and her husband of the complications of such a procedure, but they had insisted. He could hear the little old man's voice now as he smiled at his wife, his old, gnarled hand shaking where it held hers. I could fix that, that would be so much easier, Stephen had thought at the time, sat in one of those vinyl hospital chairs that shouldn't even exist. He had told them that the chances of failure far outweighed the chances of success, but that little old man had just smiled, and his wife, who had gone mute and lost nearly all of her motor skills, had managed a crooked smile. "We're old, my Ellie and me. We lived a good life. If there's any chance she could get better, we want to try it."
All the magic in the world couldn't have saved that old woman. He had felt it as soon as he saw the scans, but he had known it when he made the first cut. Even with a top team of surgeons working on her, there was little they could do to save Ellie.
Stephen didn't cry over patients very often. He never had before his accident. Now, however, now that he had this deeper appreciation for life, the ones that got him really got him.
He had stood over the sinks for what felt like hours, scrubbing his knuckles until they bled. Washing his hands had always been a ritual, both before and after surgery. His warm up, and then his cool down. Now, he washed until the tears on his cheeks dried, and then he washed some more. His staff knew well enough to let him be after a particularly rough surgery, and he was grateful for it. Looking out over the darkened OR, with only the sounds of the running water to keep him company, it was easier to mourn, and then easier to move on.
He had delivered the news to Ellie's husband, a kind old veteran named Tuck, with a heavy heart, and the two had sat side by side in silence. Tuck had cried, though save the tears on his cheeks, you wouldn't have known. He sat for a while, absently fingering his wife's wedding band, before settling it on his little pinky finger. And afterward, Stephen had shared a cigarette with him on the front steps, watching the rain run in little rivulets off the roof.
His coat still smelt distantly of smoke that afternoon, a lingering reminder of his earlier failure. It sent a shudder down his spine every time he caught a whiff of it, and he had unashamedly been putting mints in his mouth all afternoon in hopes of drowning the taste, as well as the smell. He was actually just shaking an ungracious amount of tic tacs into his mouth when he heard someone call his name, and promptly turned, hastily swallowing down the candies.
Unconsciously, he wiped his hands on the back of his lab coat, and turned to stick his hand out. A petite, attractive young woman with shockingly red hair (and not the fake kind you see on all those 'do it yourself' hair die kits in the grocery store, this was the real deal, like seriously red, and deep too, not Irish, just unique) met him, and he quirked one eyebrow up at the strength of her grip. "That's me," he greeted with a smile, eyes flicking from her head to her feet.
His eyebrows drew together ever so slightly as she mentioned his hands, and he narrowed his eyes slightly, trying to pinpoint what could possibly be bothering her, and then he caught it - a leg injury. She held her weight pitched just ever so slightly to one foot. Flashing another smile, Stephen nodded. "Of course. Why don't we go into my office to talk? We'll see if there's something I can't do for you." He turned to the nurse behind the station he had been leaning on, and dropped a wink in her direction. "Having a little meeting, Mary. Do me a favor and send any non critical pages to my resident, they can handle any consults for the time being. Let me know if it's anything higher than a level six though - those are always the interesting ones." He knocked his knuckles on the desk twice in farewell and then turned to the woman, asking her to follow him.
When they reached his office, a neat, modern looking little room with tall glass windows looking out over the city, he pulled the door open and gestured for her to go first. "I never caught your name," he observed, shrugging off his coat and draping it over the back of his chair. "Please, have a seat." He extended one hand towards the chairs in front of the desk. "Or the couch if you'd prefer." Absently, he undid the two buttons on his wrists and then rolled his sleeves up before turning to face her, leaning his arms on the back of his desk chair. "What can I do for you today? I take it you're not a curious journalist wondering how it is that I can do this?" He wiggled his hands and fingers with a smile and then dropped into his chair, absently toying with a pen. "Do you want a consult?"
