Page 13 of Prognosis So Done

The old orphanage now used as the surgical block, was a double-storey building with wide, open verandahs that wrapped around the entire building to take advantage of any breeze that might be wafting by. Two downstairs rooms had been converted to operating theatres with basic tables, anaesthetic machines, monitors and overhead lights, and smaller side rooms each housed ancient instrument sterilisers and served as excess storage.

Another of the bigger rooms was set up as the HDU/recovery area and there were various smaller rooms used for their triage meetings and as a communal kitchen and lounge area.

Upstairs were the living quarters. The bedrooms were all small but they had French-style doors that opened onto the verandahs. Not that it was actually that safe to be sitting out there a lot of the time, but the tantalising luxury was there if anyone had the nerve.

It wasn’t much but in a country that had so very little, nobody complained. They were here to make a difference – that was all that mattered.

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By the time Gill gotto the theatre the team was there and everything was under control. Siobhan was scrubbing up when he asked a masked Harriet, ‘Everything good to go?’

‘Just about. Go scrub.’

She was busying herself with opening sterile packs. Harriet was the circulating nurse today which was a rather grand term for gopher. She set up and opened all the outer packaging of the different surgical packs and instruments and anything required during the operation by any of the sterile people, she fetched. The three nurses took it in turns, rotating from scrubbing to circulating, and the system worked well.

Gill took a quick brain picture. Harriet in her hat and mask, her features completely hidden from his gaze, was mystically beautiful. The deep brown depths of her eyes were emphasised tenfold, and he felt like he always did – like he was falling into a warmed vat of deep rich chocolate and drowning.

Siobhan entered then, her arms held slightly aloft and bent at the elbow, water dripping from them and Gill departed to do his scrub returning a few minutes later exactly as Siobhan had. Picking up the sterile towel that sat folded on top of the sterile gown that Harriet had opened, he dried his hands and arms thoroughly then picked up the gown.

Thrusting his arms into it with an efficient technique, he turned so Harriet could tie it at the neck. Her quick movements brushed at his nape and Gill’s eye shut but it was over too soon and next he was shoving first one hand then the other into the size-nine gloves an already gowned up Siobahn held open for him.

Grasping the tab at the front of the gown he pulled on it to release the waist tie and, with a non-touch technique, he passed off the end to Harriet who tied it at the back.

Siobhan was now sorting out the tray of instruments on her sterile draped table and Gill watched as she and Harriet conducted a count of the swabs, towels and instruments most likely to be used during the procedure. Harriet scribbled the numbers on the count sheet so they could all be accounted for at the end of the procedure.

The patient came in then, accompanied by Katya and Joan, and it was all hands on deck. Joan and Helmut anaesthetised him and Katya left to scrub in as well.

Finally everything was ready. The suction was working, the diathermy was in order and an earthing plate had been stuck to the patient’s thigh. The patient was draped and the surgical area prepped with Betadine. Joan signalled she was happy with their patient’s condition and for Gill to commence.

As Gill removed the staples he had placed less than twelve hours ago, Harriet placed an Ella Fitzgerald CD in the portable player and switched it to background. It was his favourite thanks to his grandfather’s influence and he loved to listen

Ella’s dulcet tones as he operated. They were soothing and focused his brain.

Gill quickly reopened the abdo wound. ‘Retractor,’ he said.

Siobhan placed it in his hand and he inserted the heavy metal contraption into the wound and turned the cogs, watching as it slowly cranked open, taking the skin and layers of adipose tissue with it, pushing them back to either side to give a clear view of the abdominal cavity.

‘OK, folks,’ he said, ‘let’s find us a hole.’

Gill knew this could take five minutes or two hours. Finding a little tear was sometimes like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Lucky they had a short cut.

‘Saline.’

Gill tipped the sterile bowl full of warmed sterile saline gently into the abdominal cavity, submerging the bowel, and waited. After a beat or two a small bubble floated to the surface and popped. Yes! Now he just had to find it!

It was probably on a posterior side somewhere. He’d have to start from the top and work his way down. Siobhan used a sucker to remove the fluid and Gill began the painstaking process of checking every centimetre of the intestine. It was warm in his gloved hands and squishy, like a bowl of jelly, but looked and felt like a string of sausages.

He heard Harriet humming to ‘Cry me a River’ and glanced up. She always did that. Even scrubbed, she would hum along to Ella, completely unaware she was doing it. He’d missed that this last year, watching Harriet move around a theatre, humming quietly to herself. Or standing next to him, rubbing shoulders, passing him instruments as she hummed away.

He’d had it back for a blissful two months and she was going to snatch it all away again.

His eyes flicked back to what he was doing. He really needed to concentrate, damn it! He was too aware of her. Too aware of her every move around the theatre. Opening things, writing things, murmuring something to Helmut and humming along to Ella.

‘Could you adjust the light, Harry?’ he asked.

Why, he didn’t know. The light position was just fine. But then she moved closer and reached up for the light and he could smell her perfume, and he was so very glad he had.

She’d moved it a millimetre when he said, ‘That’s fine.’

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