The Central Registry

The hum of the surgical lights was a low, constant thrum, a lullaby of life and death that I’d grown accustomed to. My sterile blue scrubs felt like a second skin, the cool, crisp fabric a familiar comfort against my own. Around me, my team moved with a practiced synchronicity, a ballet of sterile green gloves, gleaming grey instruments, and the quiet murmur of professional focus. Juni, her brow furrowed in concentration, held the retractor steady. Cat, her movements fluid and precise, suctioned away the pooling amniotic fluid. Charlie, her eyes bright behind her sterile blue mask, anticipated my every need, handing me instruments before I even had to ask. We were midway through a delicate procedure, a complex placental abruption that demanded every ounce of our collective skill.

“Scalpel, please, Juni,” I said, my voice low and steady, cutting through the hushed atmosphere. The instrument, cool and grey, was placed into my gloved hand. I made a swift, precise incision, the tissue parting cleanly. This was my world, the operating theatre, where the abstract became tangible, where life and death teetered on the edge of a scalpel’s blade. At fifteen, I was Dr. Zoey Lestrossa, lead surgeon. It was a title that still felt both weightless and impossibly heavy, a testament to a world that had irrevocably shifted.

For years now, the responsibility for the world’s health had rested on shoulders like mine, shoulders barely out of childhood. The adults, for reasons no one fully understood or openly discussed, had lost their capacity for medical expertise. A strange neurological blight, they called it, a slow fading of the intricate knowledge and dexterity required for healing. And so, a generation of fifteen-year-olds, myself included, had stepped into the void. We were the surgeons, the physicians, the nurses, the technicians. We were the miracle workers.