The begging touched that tender vein inside Gerlinde again.  She felt it resonate, like a single string on a stripped instrument.  It was insistent and it was raw.  It was also very weak.  A cold remove - a feeling not unlike Gerlinde had experienced during her first time in jail for civil disobedience, or her first time opening a cadaver, or that one night in Berlin, when she had been nearly mugged and raped by a junkie - flooded her.  It had that singular, raw vein in its grasp.  It paid no more attention to the twitching than Lisle's paralyzed muscles paid to the kind stroke of her hand over Lisle's left hand as Gerlinde cradled it.<br/><br/>She could bear to look into Lisle's eyes, knowing what she was going to do.  Even with parts of herself cringing at what she was about to do.  Even with one part taking up her own voice - her voice when she was ten - and asking her politely not to.  She could look into the green desperation, absorb its gentle cling, and stare back like the sky: The cruel and ever attentive sky.<br/><br/>"I won't hurt you, Lisle." Gerlinde said the name smoothly.  It was just a name, after all.  Smoothly, she inserted an IV drip with a sedative in plasma into the left arm's vein, taping it down.<br/><br/>No, her little girl voice insisted.  It was a girl's name.  A woman's.  And she should not be doing what she was going to do.<br/><br/>She gathered up the shears.  She slid a plastic tray and some clean swabs under Lisle's left hand.<br/><br/>"I want the least pain for you."<br/><br/>She didn't turn the vibrator down.  Not a notch.  Not even with that soft part of her asking nicely to do so.  She just tightened the strap on Lisle's left wrist, turning it into a tourniquet.<br/><br/>"So you should look away."<br/><br/>She slid the surgical shears about Lisle's left thumb.  The metal dimpled the skin; almost immediately, a seam of blood opened.  She caught it in her hand before it could spill.  It was warm as cocoa.<br/><br/>Everything became very real, and the voice inside Gerlinde began talking very clear, very fast.<br/><br/><em>Don't do this.  Don't do this, please; you're a doctor.  Don't do this.</em><br/><br/>"Just close your eyes.  You'll be going to sleep soon."<br/><br/>Nonsense, Gerlinde thought.  The shears felt heavy and the hand very, very light.  This is just like field surgery at the front, Gerlinde reasoned.  I had to amputate then.  This is no different.<br/><br/><em>That was different.  Very different.  You had to do it then.  This is...</em><br/><br/>What? Gerlinde thought.  It wasn't technically elective.  It wasn't cosmetic, really.  It wasn't just for enjoyment.<br/><br/><em>This is wrong.</em><br/><br/>No, Gerlinde thought.  She glanced up and looked at the IV.  It wouldn't be putting the girl -<em>Lisle </em>- to sleep.  Not really.  Just calming her.  Just a bit.  And helping to keep her alive.  Just in case.<br/><br/>No, this is right.  This is just like at the front.  I'm saving a life.<br/><br/>"That IV will help you relax.  There won't be a bit of pain.  Not a bit.  Not if you don't look."<br/><br/>Gerlinde smiled to herself.  She wondered if the smile was disingenuous as she closed the shears and clipped Lisle's left thumb off neatly at the joint.  The flesh separated like water; the bone parted like wax.  A turn of her wrist, and the thumb fell into the plastic tray with a sticky sigh of blood.<br/><br/>Gerlinde's heart began to race until her skull felt like it was cracking under the grinning skull cap and her breasts were about to give birth.  But her eyes were just blue stained glass, gazing into Lisle's face as she moved the shears to the next finger.