The scalpel felt wrong. Just… wrong. Like a toy knife, one of those cheap plastic things from a play doctor kit. All those years, all the cadavers, the simulations, the relentless hours until my hands ached, until the scent of disinfectant felt like home. My residency, pulling those ridiculous hours, the chief resident barking orders, the way I snapped into attention, the muscle memory from basic training kicking in every single time. And then today. My first solo. The patient was… just a body, really. Not in a detached, professional way. But I looked down, and it was just skin and bone and tissue, and I was supposed to be the one fixing it. Not assisting. Not under supervision. ME. And I just kept seeing myself, twenty years younger, in my father’s oversized dress shirt, pretending to operate on my teddy bear. The same intense focus, the same slightly furrowed brow. The exact same feeling of being an imposter. I kept waiting for someone to burst in, to laugh, to point and say, “What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here, kid. You’re not a real surgeon.” The anger started there, I think. Burning hot, a flush through my cheeks, because I *am* a surgeon. I earned this. Every single bloody stitch, every late night, every impossible diagnosis. I earned this. But my hands still felt like they belonged to someone else. Like I was just borrowing them, playing dress-up in scrubs that were too big, in a role I hadn’t quite grown into. And the patient… they trusted me. They didn’t know it was my first time. They didn’t know I felt like I was back in basic, still trying to prove I wasn’t soft, still waiting for someone to tell me I wasn't good enough. The operation was textbook, perfect even. No complications. But the rage that simmered under my skin, it's still there. For what? For them? For me? For this absurd charade I’m apparently supposed to keep up. I just want to… scream. Or punch something. Or maybe just sleep for a hundred years and hope I wake up feeling like less of a fraud.