Bonesaw- Backseat Self Surgery

“Please don’t get blood on my car seat.”

Riley looked up from her work, the surgeon’s end of a twenty-four inch set of complex dilators pinched between her lips because her hands were full.  The working end of the dilators were set in the open surgical site of her own thigh, where she had cut past skin, muscle, adipose tissues.  She’d also had to cut and-or use the dilators on prior alterations she’d buried in her leg, including the subdermal ‘skin’ she’d grown around the the maille sheath she’d set around her femoral artery some time ago, and three spherical eggs she’d implanted in her thigh, in case she was ever in an emergency severe enough to literally cut them loose.
...

“Um, sorry, but did you hear me?  Cars are hard to come by, and so are cleaning services.  If you warned me, I would have put down a tarp or plastic.”

“I heard you.  I won’t get blood on your seats,” she promised her driver.
...

Blood welled at the end of the surgical incision by her knee, and she had to move her arm, elbow almost touching the driver’s seat, so she could get the orientation needed to sweep that blood back into the wound with her pinkie.  It obscured what she was working on, but she could work from memory.

The car drove over a bump.  She pulled the scalpel and drill back a fraction.

“Sorry, I know you said to be careful, but there really wasn’t anywhere to go.”

“It’s fine, but give me advance warning next time.  If you can,” she told him.  She felt her way, reminding herself, with the tip of the scalpel whisking against metal, metal-
...

She’d broken her leg when she had been dumped into the alien Earth with the Wardens night staff, Jessica, and the class-S prisoners.  The alterations she had made to muscle and the structures she’d implanted around the bone let her stand and walk with a broken leg, but she had still tended to it in an idle moment.

Some of those structures were the same ones that kept her apparent age at twelve.  She had never gotten around to undoing that, in part because it required her to overhaul so many systems that were hooked into it.  She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t end up over a hundred years old and still postponing the change to her appearance.

Right now, she maintained.  The drill continued to bore through the bone, and she had to remind herself that the tickling sensation that ran through her leg, one side of her stomach, and her neck was supposed to be pain from the operation.

A quick once-over ensured there wasn’t anything slipping or tearing.

The drill penetrated the bone, reaching a small hollow compartment.  She pulled the drill out, caught a cloth in her pocket between her pinky and ring fingers, and wiped down the bit and the end of the drill, before pulling it out and turning it around.
...

She closed up the site of her leg, wiped the skin with the cloth, and then began closing up the wound with a protein knit.  The knit caught on the edges of the sliced skin, and then drew it together.  The skin was a little red from being pushed back by the dilators, but that was covered up easily by a straightening of her skirt.

Riley cleaned her hands, and felt a need to gather things.  She was so used to having her automated workshop assistants with her, creatures to tend to, clones, and catastrophic dead man’s switches that needed pass-phrases, tummy rubs, and pats on the head.

The complex dilators telescoped, other tools folded up, and all fit into a small leather carrying case, that fit into her coat pocket.

She had no idea what to do with her hands, in the minutes that followed.

- Ward, Last 20.e4