Whose Body Is It, Anyway? (From “Complications” by Atul Gawande)

The first time I saw the patient it was the day before his surgery, I thought he might be dead. Joseph Lazaroff, as I'll call him, lay in bed, his eyes closed, a sheet pulled up over his thin, birdlike chest. When people are asleep—or even when they are anesthetized and not breathing by themselves—it …

The Knife (Richard Selzer)

One holds the knife as one holds the bow of a cello or a tulip by the stem. Not palmed nor gripped nor grasped, but lightly, with the tips of the fingers. The knife is not for pressing. It is for drawing across the field of skin. Like a slender fish, it waits, at the …