It was a huge, noisy dining hall, the kind meant for high school graduation parties and university luncheons and wedding parties for people with enormous families. Nothing too intimidatingly fancy, but just enough to look professional: the tables were wide and could accommodate a dozen people or so on each side, but a peer under the tablecloths would show legs made of stainless steel instead of mahogany or some other high-end wood. The tablecloths themselves were purely, brightly white, but had a texture of vinyl and smelled like plastic and static electricity.

Janice was seated at the middle of some table, there for some event, in the midst of a sea of vaguely familiar faces. There were a few friends, a couple of family members. Someone she'd met at that other place the other day. The air was filled with the hazy static noise of human voices, it was a fairly lax atmosphere, people were making small talk.

Her own voice hadn't joined the chorus -- she was silent, hands resting over each other on the table, staring at them.

Something didn't feel right.

Everything seems to be in working order, he said, rapping his pen a couple of times on his clipboard before setting it aside. Just lie back and relax, and we can get this started. He had his hands folded over his knees, leaning forward in his chair and making placid, mildly interesting conversation with her as the nurse fiddled and clicked around with the needles. Though they weren't really needles, not made of metal, they were actually tiny teflon tubes, did you know that?

The room was very white. It was blinding, flooded with flourescent light and Janice was lying there on the table, listening to her surgeon talk at her about this and that and the other thing while they waited for the anaesthesia to kick in. Do you know my father, she asked, blearily, he's a surgeon. I'm pretty sure he works here, maybe you've seen him. She wondered where he was, thought he was supposed to work here. It was so bright in here. She could barely see anything. The faces of the surgeon and the anaesthesiologist were lost in a haze of white. Their voices droned on, sometimes intelligibly, sometimes not.

Her knees were bare and cold against the floor, she was kneeling over and her hands blindly searching for the tiny bits of glass that

This is just a routine procedure, he said over the noise of everything else, so just lie back and relax, and we can get this started. You'll be out of here before you know it. The light was hazy yellow and she was sitting at the dining table next to one of her cousins and the man she knew from the open market, staring down at her hands and mouth welded shut while everyone around her talked and ate. Something didn't feel right. The tablecloth felt like vinyl under the tips of her fingers, it was a very white tablecloth but not a very fancy one, but still was hard to look at because of how bright it was. It was difficult to see, her hands were soft around the edges like they were being viewed through an old camera lens.

The person across the table from her was trying to talk to her, but she wasn't able to parse much of whatever they were saying; the words muffled themselves out of coherency the moment she heard them and she was back to staring at her hands, wondering why she couldn't just lie back and relax. Everyone else was doing just fine with their talking and eating, talking, eating, conversation and cuisine, dining and discourse, laughing over a lunch, saying some things with supper, discussion during dessert,

Just lie back and relax,

Something didn't feel right.

and we can get this started.

There was a fork next to her plate.

They were shredding her hands. They were so small and so sharp and she could barely see them in the darkness blanketing the room, a few handfuls of jagged bits of stars scattered over the floor. It hurt to pick them up, she was making a mess all over the floor because they cut into her hands and made them bleed. She was dripping blood onto the floor and it was painful to grasp them in her fingers, but she had to pick them up. She had to put it back together. It was her fault it had gotten broken in the first place.

This is just a routine procedure, he said, over the soft clicking of medical machinery, so just lie back and relax, and we can get this started. The light was awfully harsh, she couldn't make out much of anything in the stark room she'd been led into. Everything was hazy and fuzzy around the edges, something didn't feel right, she realized with an alarming calmness that she wasn't supposed to be here. There hadn't been any surgery scheduled for her today. This was a mixup, some sort of fluke, she wasn't supposed to be here -- she tried to tell them but her voice wasn't working and her face was numb and they couldn't read her mind no matter how loudly she spun her thoughts.

Janice's eyes were still open, stuck wide open when the scalpel first came down onto smooth flesh and slowly split it open, quietly and cleanly as if it were a tailor expertly undoing a seam. The room was dead silent but she was seeing red and her mind was screaming: not for the pain, though; she wasn't scared of pain, never feared pain. What she was afraid of was what they would see when they were done cutting her open.

Discussions at dinner. Laughing at lunch. Talking through teatime. Speeches for supper

It was a fork, there was a fork next to her plate -- and her jaw tightened, hands tensing and fingernails pulling little lines into the tablecloth. A fork. It was a fork. Janice had tried to tell herself that it hadn't been a big deal, it would never be a problem, but now the problem was lying right there in front of her, in the line of sight of dozens of people. They were going to see, she was ruined, they were all going to see and there was nothing she could do about it. She thought it would never be a problem that she didn't know how to use one and now there was no escape in a situation where it was. Everyone around her was caught in the garbled blur of their own speech, didn't they notice that she hadn't picked up her fork yet?

She couldn't move. If she moved, they would notice that she hadn't picked up her fork yet and they would see that no matter how hard she tried she just couldn't make it fit properly into her fingers. They all made it looked so easy and she hated herself and them for it, she couldn't use a fork and thought it would never be a problem, but now she had to try and pick one up and everyone was going to see --

The scalpel kept coming down and her skin was kept pinned open and out of the way by an array of needles and clips. She kept waiting for a break in the heavy silence, for the clipping of scissors and plucking of tweezers to halt in a hushed exclamation of oh dear god! but it never came. The machines beeping and methodical cleaving kept dragging and droning on without an end in sight.

She was being cut open, she was dripping blood all over the floor. They were shredding her hands, the pieces were so small. Her hands were a mangled, shapeless mess by the time she'd found all of them and she was trying to put them all back together but it wasn't working. She couldn't get them to fit, they didn't fit, it wasn't working. It was pointless to keep trying but she couldn't stop. Had to put it back together. Couldn't fail. Had to make it work. Couldn't make it work. Was going to fail. She was going to spend the rest of her life hidden away in this room, kneeling on this floor, ruining her fingers trying to fit together little jagged pieces she could barely see. It was her fault it had gotten broken in the first place.

Her hands were a mess, she tried to pick up the fork and it was clumsy and ungainly between her fingers, she tried and failed to hold it properly and the luncheon continued around her, without her.

The lights had been turned off and she'd been left there on the table, discarded. Gutted like a fish. She had been left to lie there and stare at the vague shadows of what was left of her insides, because no one had even bothered to take a second to close her eyes.