I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her
mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the
one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus
from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve
of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in
her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the
room. He stand on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem
to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are
they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and
touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks, "Will
my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is
because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man
smiles. "I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute." "All at once I
know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in
an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth
and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to
hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”
Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery
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