"I cannot simplythrow wordsat a page, Jax. It has to be medically sound. If I propose a robotic approach that is anatomically impossible, he will know."
I open my laptop. The blank page blinks at me.Cursor. Blink. Blink.
"I need your help," I admit.
Jax raises an eyebrow. "My help? I thought I was 'clutter.'"
"You are a trauma surgeon," I say, desperate times calling for desperate measures. "You improvise. You hack things together in the field. I need... hacking."
Jax grins. It is a slow, predatory grin that makes my stomach flip.
"Alright, Princess. Let’s hack."
He rolls his chair over.Squeak. Squeak.He stops right at the tape line.
"Type this," Jax orders. "Title:Adaptive Kinetic Algorithms in High-Velocity Cardiac Trauma."
I type it. "That sounds... plausible."
"Of course it does. I readWiredmagazine," Jax says. "Now, the hypothesis. We believe that the robot can compensate for the chaotic movement of a beating heart during trauma surgery, right?"
"Technically, we utilize cross-clamping to stop the heart," I correct.
"Boring," Jax says. "And risky. If the patient is unstable, stopping the heart kills them. What if we didn't stop it?"
I look at him. "Beating heart surgery is extremely difficult. The motion artifact makes suturing impossible."
"Not for a robot," Jax counters. He leans forward, his eyes lighting up. "The robot has sensors, right? It can track motion. If we program it to sync with the EKG rhythm... it moveswiththe heart. Like a sniper breathing with his target."
I stare at him.
It is insane. It is reckless.
It is brilliant.
"Active Motion Compensation," I whisper. "We could reduce the ischemic time to zero."
"Exactly," Jax says. "No bypass machine. No cardioplegia. Just plug and play."
I start typing furiously. The ideas flow. My academic rigidity merges with his chaotic creativity. I supply the anatomical constraints; he supplies the tactical solutions.
"What about the haptic feedback?" I ask. "The surgeon can't feel the tissue tension through the console."
"Visual cues," Jax suggests. "Color mapping. If the tissue turns white, you're pulling too hard. Like a video game health bar."
"Tissue ischemia indicators," I translate, typing rapidly.
We work for three hours straight.
At 4:00 PM, I realize I am starving.
"Food," Jax announces, reading my mind. "I’m ordering pizza."
"I do not eat pizza in the office," I say automatically. "The grease risk to the keyboard is too high."
"I’ll get you a fork," Jax says, pulling out his phone. "Pepperoni? Or are you a plain cheese kind of guy?"
"Pineapple," I say.
