'Surgery' by Birgit K. Gaiser

 
“But Auntie, I don’t want to!” Velika squealed. “I want to be a doctor, not a seamstress.”

“And how do you think the doctors took out your appendix last year and put you back together? Or give someone a new heart?”

“They can do it because they’re smart.”

“And because they know how to make a little hole inside a person and then sew it back up again.”

“But I don’t want to hurt Bruno.” Velika’s voice had gotten small, revealing the real source of her resistance.

“It won’t hurt him,” Auntie Milena said, patting Bruno’s head. “We’ll give him a sleeping pill first. He won’t feel a thing.”

“Do you promise?” Velika asked.

“I promise.” Auntie Milena picked up Velika’s ragged-looking bear and took him to the medicine cupboard, making a show of opening a bottle of sleeping pills and feeding a pill to the toy.

“Bruno says they taste awful,” Velika said helpfully.

“That may be so,” her auntie laughed. “But bears eat all kinds of things. He’ll get over it. Look, he’s already asleep!”

Following her auntie’s instructions, Velika picked up a pair of short, sharp scissors, carefully opening the seam at Bruno’s back. When the gap was wide enough, she added new stuffing until Bruno was as plump as he had been when she first got him. Closing the seam stitches as tiny as she could make them, she didn’t cry when she stabbed her finger once, than twice. A doctor had to keep her focus, after all.

“Well done,” Auntie Milena praised her when she was finished. “How about we wake Bruno up and then we can all have peppermint tea with honey, Doctor Velika?”

“Oh yes! Bruno loves honey!” Velika beamed, stabbed fingers already forgotten.