My hand does not shake when I take up a scalpel in surgery.

My breath does not shallow when I palpate a patient and confirm grim reality.

Here I am reduced in awareness— the cold metal in my manic grasp and the bile in my throat. I have forgotten what to recommend for anemia. I cannot recall the principles of complete asepsis introduced by Lister.

My Beaumont-Adams weighs 1.1kg unloaded, and fires twelve rounds a minute.

“Still more majestic shalt thou rise,/ More dreadful from each foreign stroke,” is my fruitless prayer to an island goddess half a world away.