Empire of Lies

6

By sunset, once the maghrib prayers were done, enough time had passed since the mystery patient had walked into the hospital for him to be operated on safely.

There were still a lot of unknowns, especially for Ramazan, who would be administering the anesthetic. The man’s medical history was an empty file. This was far from ideal, dangerous even, but he had no choice. The surgery—open heart, not exactly a minor procedure—was unavoidable. He would just have to be overly cautious and monitor his vitals like a hawk during the operation, which would last several hours.

But that was easier said than done, given the questions swirling through Ramazan’s mind concerning the man’s bizarre tattoos. He’d never seen anything like them, and the few words he’d managed to read had awakened an unusually clingy curiosity inside him.

They were in the pre-op chamber, preparing the man for surgery. A nurse was standing by the bed jotting down the readings from the monitors onto a chart while Ramazan prepared the drugs that he would feed into the man’s IV drip.

As he worked, Ramazan couldn’t help but glance at him, and each time he did, the man was staring back at him with that same inscrutable, hard look. Which was unusual—and disturbing. Normally, while waiting to go under the knife, patients were nervous. They were about to put their lives in someone else’s hands and cede control over their bodies and minds to a total stranger. Worse, the anesthetist could be the last person they ever spoke to. This usually made them overly talkative, and they mostly discussed their fears: what if they don’t ever wake up? Or, worse, what if they wake during surgery? They were usually desperate for reassurance, of which Ramazan would offer plenty. Then he’d distract them with small talk.

This patient didn’t need reassurance or seem nervous. If anything, he seemed coiled up, on edge, watching, studying. Confrontational. And all of it in that unsettling silence.

What’s his story? Ramazan kept wondering, although he wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.

Anbara came in and said, “They’re ready for you.”

Ramazan nodded to the nurse and turned to the patient, noticing from the monitor that the man’s heart rate spiked up at her words—which was not uncommon. But it was unusual in that the man had appeared to be totally undaunted until then.

“I’m going to give you a short-acting sedative now,” Ramazan told him. “Then we’ll wheel you in.”

He was about to squeeze the plunger into the intravenous feed when the man’s arm suddenly lashed out and grabbed Ramazan’s wrist. He held it firmly in place, his grip so tight it hurt Ramazan. His eyes narrowed with menace as, with his other hand, he moved his oxygen mask off to one side, exposing his mouth. Then he spoke for the first time.

“Make sure you don’t screw this up, hakeem,” he said in a low hiss. “Make sure. Because you and all the rest of you, all of you—you owe me.” He pointed a threatening finger at Ramazan’s face. “None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. None of this—none of you would even exist if I hadn’t done what I did. So get it right. You understand me?”

Ramazan couldn’t breathe. He just stood there, nailed to the spot, paralyzed. Then his free hand came to life and he squeezed the plunger, sending the sedative on its way—the whole lot, in one go. The drug was fast-acting, and within seconds Ramazan felt the man’s grip loosen. He pulled his hand free and, trying to recover his poise, placed it by the patient’s side. He glanced nervously at Anbara and saw his mystified, rattled look reflected in her face.

She didn’t say anything. He didn’t either. He just held her gaze for a second, then dropped his eyes back to his patient.

The man’s gaze was still fixed on him, but it had softened.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Ramazan told him, trying to sound unfazed by what had just happened. “I’m going to give you a painkiller along with the anesthetic, and inshallah”—if God wills it—“this will all be over before you know it.”

The man’s eyelids had drooped down, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. His mouth was bent in a disturbing half smile. “Make sure, hakeem,” he muttered, the words coming out slurred. “You owe me. All of you. Even the sultan. He knows.”

Even in this half-gone state, his scowl was still unsettling. Then his words faded into a low mumble, and he drifted off into a stupor.

Anbara replaced the breathing mask over his mouth as his eyelids shuttered. She looked up at Ramazan, her expression one of confusion tinged with fear.

“Let’s wheel him in,” he said.

Throughout the surgery, Ramazan was in a cloud.

Fonseca carried out the valve replacement calmly and expertly, as he had countless times before. Ramazan, however, had to struggle to stay focused. He was still unsettled by the stranger’s weird outburst.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Fonseca. He would, of course—but he didn’t want to do it just before the surgery. He needed some time to process it himself.

Ramazan had enough experience to know that people’s true nature generally did come out under heavy sedation and, to an even greater extent, anesthesia. He’d seen it before surgery, as they spiraled into unconsciousness, and even more strongly after, when it took hours for the drugs to get out of their systems. In that twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, natural tendencies and true temperament were unmasked. Kind, relaxed people were often giggly; aggressive people, hostile. Kids woke up crying for their mothers. Truths were also sometimes revealed, but they were often nothing more than truths that had left their mark on their victims’ bodies as well as their psyches: unwanted pregnancies, cancers, physical abuse. Outwardly brave-faced people confessed their terror at the prospect of never waking up; others shared secrets as if they were in a confession booth, perhaps seeking absolution before possible death.

After the drugs wore off completely, patients generally forgot what they had said.

Somehow, and regardless of how absurd or senseless the stranger’s words had sounded, he’d sensed a puzzling honesty in them. He had a nagging sense that the patient thoroughly believed what he’d said. Which could mean nothing more than that the man was mentally unstable. A nut.

But it wasn’t just what he’d said. Far more perplexing was how he’d said it.

The man spoke in a very strange dialect. Ramazan couldn’t place it. It wasn’t the vernacular Turkish he was used to, the language that had supplanted French as the lingua franca of the region but that, over the centuries, had become infused with an abundance of French words. Instead, it was Ottoman Turkish, the complex imperial language whose use was nowadays limited to bureaucratic documents, scholarly works, and the pretentious conversations of the highly educated elite. Ramazan had rarely heard it spoken in casual conversation. And it wasn’t even the normal Ottoman-Turkish Ramazan knew: the man’s syntax and vocabulary were highly unusual; his manner of speech, formal and rigid. Ramazan considered himself a well-traveled man and had ventured as far as Istanbul and Cairo, but he’d never heard it spoken that way before. It was thoroughly bewildering, and reminded Ramazan of some of the old classical texts he’d read as a student.

Then there were the mirror-image tattoos.

Ramazan couldn’t help but be intrigued. He’d often been told that he had obsessive traits—by Nisreen, who ribbed him about it often; by his father; and by his brother, back when they were close—and, given the precision involved in his work, such traits weren’t uncommon. His colleagues at the hospital often teased him about the ten-minute ritual he followed each time he put in an intravenous cannula. Whether or not he was obsessive, his eyes kept getting drawn to the tattoos throughout the procedure, which ended up taking almost five hours. Although the man’s chest had been freshly shaved by the nurses, Ramazan couldn’t really see much at all. The man’s chest area was open, and what skin was visible was folded and obscured by the retractor, antiseptic solution, and surgical drape.

After watching Fonseca stitch the man up, Ramazan started weaning him off the main anesthetic. Ramazan would keep him intubated and heavily drugged, of course. The feeling of having a breathing tube down his throat, the discomfort, and the very nature of being a patient in intensive care would be as unpleasant as the operation itself. It would be hours before he would wake the man up—how long exactly, he couldn’t tell, since each situation was unique. Although there hadn’t been any complications during the surgery, given the mystery patient’s age and condition Ramazan didn’t expect him to be conscious soon, not before at least five or six hours had passed.

Fonseca left the operating room, leaving the stranger and his recovery in Ramazan’s hands. By the time they wheeled him into the male patients’ intensive care unit, it was late, and Ramazan was exhausted. It was time to go home.

But he couldn’t leave. Not just yet.

He couldn’t resist wanting to know more, despite the voice deep inside him that was warning him to stay away.

He needed to have one last look.

Ramazan watched calmly as the cardiothoracic nurses hooked the patient up to various monitors and IV drips and looped restraints around his hands so he wouldn’t pull his breathing tube out. Nisreen needed to know that Ramazan would be home even later than he’d earlier assumed. He didn’t want to risk waking her up, so he pulled out his mobile phone and sent her a text message. She replied promptly and said she was going to bed. He replied with a “good night,” and the response was a solitary he texting shorthand for bawsa, meaning a kiss, common across the Ottoman Empire, as opposed to the x symbol used in the Americas, which had a Christian, religious origin. Not the most passionate exchange, but then again he didn’t expect her to be in the best of moods, not after the day’s events. And their marriage had long lost what little passion it did have. At least they were still together.

He left the ICU and got himself a strong cup of coffee. By the time he came back to the patient’s room, the last of the nurses was leaving. He nodded to her as she passed him, then edged closer to the bed, riding a swell of trepidation.

The stranger was still unconscious.

Ramazan just stood there for a long moment, weary and woolly-headed, uncertain about what he was even doing there, the low beeps of the monitors and the gurgle of the breathing pump adding to his trance. Then he snapped out of it and, with hesitant fingers, reached over and pulled down the blanket and the hospital gown to uncover the man’s chest.

The man had a wide dressing across the middle of his chest where the vertical incision had been made, but some tattoos were visible now on either side and below it.

Ramazan stared at them, mesmerized. Then he looked over his shoulder, made sure no one was coming in, and pulled out his mobile phone. He took a series of quick pictures of the tattoos. He also took one of the man’s face, for no conscious reason. Then he put away his phone and covered the man up.

He hovered there a bit longer, studying him, unsure about the hold this stranger had over him. Then he tore himself away, left the room, and made his way home.