Summary
In a gas-lit metropolis where scalpels flash like lightning, Dr. Valentin Asch—lionized, tireless, messianic—carves hope into trembling flesh, oblivious to his own fragility. One winter dawn, a hemorrhage detonates behind his eyes; the theater lamps dim forever, plunging him into velvet blackness. Fame’s applause mutates into the hush of corridors he once commanded. Colleagues retreat, patrons forget, creditors circle like crows. Only Livia, a war-scarred bacteriologist whose face he has never seen, offers her arm as compass. Together they descend into the city’s underbelly—abandoned wards, candle-lit catacombs, quarantine ships—where the poor still whisper his name. There, Asch re-learns anatomy by touch, mapping misery with fingertips that once sutureted duchesses. When a typhus outbreak erupts, he bargains with plague itself: operate without sight to earn back a sliver of light. The operation—gloved hands guided by Livia’s murmured coordinates—becomes a secular Stations of the Cross: every incision a confession, every ligature a prayer. Blood seeps, infection blooms, yet the patient breathes. At daybreak, a single ray pierces the morgue window, grazing Asch’s pupil; not full vision, but enough to glimpse Livia’s silhouette. The city above, still indifferent, roars back to work; below, two silhouettes vanish into the smoke, carrying scalpels and a new, uncertain covenant.
A famous surgeon who places the claims of suffering humanity above considerations of self, and goes blind.
