Page 21 of Prognosis So Done

There were more murmurs of agreement. Gill had been really happy with it, too. The lung had been a mess, having taken a chunk of flying metal. The fact that the man had survived at all was a miracle. Gill had had little choice but to completely remove the lung.

Had he had time and been in a major centre with every machine that went ping and the back-up of thoracic surgeons, he could have attempted to save some of it, but that wasn’t what field medicine was about. The objective of this kind of surgery was to stabilise the patient for transfer to a more major facility.

They operated with basic equipment, the bare minimum. It was fix and fly. Not try something and see if it worked. There was no time for risky or fancy. No time for lengthy repair procedures. Fix and fly.

Fix and fly.

‘My best is definitely having the whole team back together,’ said Siobhan, grinning at Harriet, ‘and I think I’ll have to agree with Helmut about the worst. What I wouldn’t give for a nice pint of Dublin Guinness.’

Helmut made gagging noises. He was not a Guinness fan. ‘I would rather drink bad vodka, too,’ he said, and laughter broke out again.

It was Katya’s turn. ‘Da,’ she said. ‘Having Harriet back has been the best. The very best.’

‘OK, stop now, you guys, you’re embarrassing me!’ said Harriet.

‘My worst?’ She glared across the table at Ben and Gill laughed.

Poor Ben. He feigned a wounded expression but Gill could tell that he revelled in her attention. Any attention.

‘The bloody flies,’ she said, still looking directly at Ben. ‘Buzz, buzz, buzzing around. Always buzzing.’

Ben roared with laughter. ‘You are the only person who has ever compared me to a fly.’

‘Welcome to the real world, Count,’ she said, her face deadly serious.

‘OK, OK,’ Gill interrupted. ‘My turn.’ He felt Harriet tense beside him. ‘Well, let’s see, it’d look pretty bad if I didn’t say Harry as well but, then...’ He grinned. ‘That pneumonectomy was good.’

In fact, having Harry back with the team had been indescribably joyous, but he knew the ending and it was a real let down.

‘Way to go, fool,’ said Katya in her usual blunt fashion. ‘Chose a lung over your woman. When she leaves you again, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Gill knew Katya was only joking but the reality of the situation hit and he felt a wave of regret. She was leaving. And this time she wouldn’t be coming back.

‘Worst...well, there have been a few of them just today. The news of my grandfather was pretty bad, so was Nimuk.’ And then there were the papers that he had signed that morning. He looked at Harriet and noted the tense line of her body. Did she think he was going to air that here?

‘And I get the whole beer thing, too, but I think my very worst is breaking up.’ He heard Harriet’s swift intake of breath and met her eyes as she gave him a searching look. ‘Breaking up is hard to do,’ he said, looking at Harriet intently.

Then, remembering the rest of the group, he returned his gaze to them. ‘It’s good to have a break and go home but

I’ll miss you all.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Joan.

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Harriet looked aroundat the group, all nodding their heads sagely. They seemed to have missed the undercurrent between Gill and her. Except Katya, her eyes narrowed a little as she returned Harriet’s stare.

‘And yours, Harry?’ she asked.

Harriet had the dreadful urge to tell all under Katya’s astute gaze. She was closer to this group of people in lots of ways than she was with any of her girlfriends. She wanted to say there was no best, because the worst was that Gill had just signed the divorce papers and he didn’t want a baby, and that she wasn’t coming back because she needed a job where she could find someone who did want to have a baby with her.

And she should never have come back for these two months because leaving them all had been hard enough the first time.

But she didn’t.

Everyone had made a concerted effort to keep things light and she wasn’t going to buck the trend. ‘Being back has been so wonderful,’ she said, desperately trying to eject the husky note from her voice. ‘Seeing all your faces again...I missed you guys so much. That’s definitely been my best.’

She paused for a while over her worst. Nimuk and the divorce were fairly good candidates but she cast around for something that would keep it light. ‘I know, those two days right at the beginning where I had that V and D bug. That was terrible.’

Everyone laughed. She couldn’t remember ever vomiting so hard and had certainly never slept on the floor outside her toilet because the diarrhoea had been so violent.

‘You did look terrible,’ said Helmut.

Harriet laughed. He was right — she had. She’d looked really bad and had felt so wretched she had just wanted to die. ‘Thanks a lot.’

Harriet breathed a sigh of relief as everyone added their own colorful descriptions of her physical appearance while she’d been ill, teasing her mercilessly. The mood was light. Everyone was up again.

She took a mental snapshot of the scene because in seventeen hours this chapter of her life would be closed for ever.

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