Page 11 of Prognosis So Done

Did they have a sense of humour? Were they willing to fit in with the routines and procedures of the group? What had been their motivation to join the organisation in the first place? Was it for a genuine humanitarian reason or were they running away from something or dropping out of society?

Gill had been around long enough to see the effect one ill-suited person could have on the harmony of a team, so all these things had been careening through his mind the night he and the rest of the team had met Harriet at a London restaurant. And all his worries had been banished in an instant.

She had fitted in instantly, and they had both known without a single word being spoken that there was something between them, that their destinies were entwined. When they’d left together a couple of hours later there had been no question of saying goodbye at the door. The only question had been which hotel room — his or hers.

They’d settled on hers because it had been the closest. And despite knowing that they were heading into the world’s latest war zone the next day, they had been up all night.

He remembered how Harriet had been worried the next morning about the consequences. How would the rest of the team feel? Would they judge her? Would they resent her? Should they keep it quiet? So they’d agreed to do that but they’d been so besotted with each other it had been hopeless and they’d given the game away within the first week.

And now here they were, seven years later, weeks away from divorce.

‘So,’ said Ben. ‘Shall we begin?’

Gill reluctantly broke eye contact with his wife - ex-wife, must get used to that – as the daily triage meeting got underway. It was held every morning with as many staff present as possible. Obviously if they were operating it was postponed, but otherwise 10:30 every morning — like clockwork.

Triage was a bit of a misnomer, really. Yes, decisions were made on a case-by-case basis as to who might get the next available helicopter to a major centre, but it was also a forum to debrief, air problems and talk about more mundane things such as supplies, equipment and procedures.

‘Three of my patients stayed in the HDU overnight.’ Ben’s rich, deep baritone held innate authority. ‘The liver lac has priority. His drain losses haven’t slowed and I’d like to get him out of here first.’

Gill nodded. He had two patients they hadn’t been able to evacuate last night and neither would take priority over the liver. One had been lucky and had taken minor shrapnel damage to his gut and the other had a penetrating eye injury that, while serious, was not life-threatening.

These were the decisions they made every day. Who couldn’t wait, who had to. Patients triaged in the field as requiring surgical intervention were choppered to their current location and it was the objective of the surgical teams to operate so the immediate threat to the patient’s life was alleviated and then evacuate as soon as possible to the most appropriate major centre.

Usually there were a couple of cases that, due to stretched resources, had to stay behind post-op. In this situation the least critical stayed and were nursed in their limited high-dependency unit. This had five beds and two nurses, with back-up from the surgeons and anaesthetists.

‘Comms from HQ this morning has authorized all cases for evac,’ Ben confirmed.

‘Good.’ Gill nodded. ‘We’ll do your liver first then the three abdo traumas then the eye.’

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Harriet watched aseveryone nodded in agreement. No one batted an eyelid that the patients were recognised by their body parts rather than their names. This had been the hardest thing for her to come to terms with in the field of surgery. Maybe it was the nurse in her but it just didn’t seem right to not know a patient’s name.

To be fair, a lot of this had to do with the language barrier and the fact that the majority of their patients were in no condition to divulge their names. Seventy-five per cent of their patients were unconscious, and with no IDs their names were impossible to know.

But surgeons did have a nasty habit of referring to their patients as a bunch of body parts and it was so dehumanising Harriet knew it was one part of this job she wouldn’t miss. But, then, nothing was more dehumanising than war.

‘I have an update on yesterday’s casualties,’ said Theire, the translator, in her soft, heavily accented voice.

Now, that was something Harriet would miss. The accents. Every working day she was surrounded by the music of other languages. From the people she worked with to the locals who were unfortunate enough to end up on their operating tables, it was like living in an opera composed by the UN.

She hadn’t realised just how deeply it had become a part of her subconscious. Her ears didn’t hear it any more but the thought of no longer hearing a mish-mash of foreign tongues was depressing.

Just in this room they had Italian Ben, Russian Katya,

German Helmut, Irish Siobhan, Theire, who spoke several of the local dialects, and various English, Indian, Filipino and Australian contributions as well. And then there was Gill.

He spoke with the careless drawl of a fair dinkum Aussie, but when he spoke French it was like he’d been born there. She would really miss that. Miss how he would speak French with his parents and grandfather in her presence from time to time, or jokingly ask for an instrument in the language to crack everyone up, or casually slip into it at home because he knew how much it turned her on.

He made love in French, too.

‘I have been in contact with the various facilities that our patients were transferred to.’ MedSurg always employed local interpreters for each mission. Their services were invaluable.

‘The man with the bullet in his brain did not make it. Nor did the little boy with the traumatic amputation of his leg.

The three chest traumas are still in critical conditions but holding their own. The woman with the gut full of shrapnel had to go back for more surgery. They removed an extensive amount of ischaemic large bowel and she now has a colostomy.’

There was silence in the room as they all thought about the people from the day before. Harriet had been assisting in the operating theatre with Gill as he’d tried to save the little boy. The child had lost so much blood, and even as he had been tying off the bleeders and stabilizing his condition, Harriet had known deep inside that the child wouldn’t make it.

The wound had been incredibly dirty, dragged through filth and mud as the boy had crawled to safety. It was always going to be a matter of whether his profoundly hypovolaemic state or a massive bacterial infection would kill him first.

Harriet glanced at Gill now, their gazes locking. He looked gutted and she couldn’t blame him. The unfairness of it all was breath taking.

What had a child of eight done to deserve that?

Suddenly, relief overlaid her guilt at turning her back on all of this. To never have to look into the eyes of another man, woman or child injured through the stupidity of war would be a huge weight off her shoulders because it was just too, too much to bear sometimes.

Gill would do this forever, she knew that. Because he was good and honourable, driven by a truly deep compassion for the suffering of others.

But Harriet was done.

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