Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur (книги серия книги читать бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

Gauloises cigarettes, rank and stinking in the confined room.  David's

eyes felt raw and gravelly for he slept little during the night, and the

smoke irritated them.  He kept looking at his watch, and imagining what

was happening to Debra during these last minutes, the undignified

purging and cleansing of her body, the robin& and the needles of

sedation and antisepsis.

The slow drag of minutes ended at last when the screen began to glow and

hum, the image shimmered and strobed then settled down into a high view

of the theatre.  The set was in colour, and the green theatre gowns of

the figures moving around the operating-table blended with the subdued

theatre green walls.  Height had foreshortened the robed members of the

operating team and the muttered and disjointed conversation between the

surgeon and his anaesthetist was picked up by the microphones.

Are we ready there yet, Mike?  David felt the sick sensation in the pit

of his stomach, and he wished he had eaten breakfast.  It might have

filled the hollow place below his ribs.

Right, the surgeon's voice sharpened as he turned towards the

microphone.  Are we on telly?  l Yes, doctor, the theatre sister

answered him, and there was a note of resignation in the surgeon's

voice, as he spoke for his unseen audience.

Very well, then.  The patient is a twenty-six-year-old female.  The

symptoms are total loss of sight in both eyes, and the cause is

suspected damage or constriction of the optic nerve in or near the optic

chiasma.  This is a surgical investigation of the site.  The surgeon is

Dr. William Cooper, assisted by Dr. Reuben Friedman.  As he spoke, the

camera moved in on the table and with a start of surprise David realized

that he had been looking at Debra without knowing it.  Her face and the

lower part of her head were obscurred by the sterile drapes that covered

all but the shaven round ball of her skull.  It was inhuman-looking,

egglike, painted with Savlon antiseptic that glistened in the bright,

overhead lights.

Scalpel please, sister.  David leaned forward tensely in his seat, and

his hands tightened on the armrests, so the knuckles turned white, as

Cooper made the first incision drawing the blade across the smooth skin.

The flesh opened and immediately the tiny blood vessels began to dribble

and spurt.  Hands moved in the screen of the television, clad in rubber

so that they were yellow and impersonal, but quick and sure.

An oval flap of skin and flesh was dissected free and was drawn back,

exposing the gleaming bone beneath, and again David's flesh crawled as

though with living things, as the surgeon took up a drill that resembled

exactly a carpenter's brace and bit.  His voice continued its impersonal

commentary, as he began to drill through the skull, cranking away at the

handle as the gleaming steel bit swiftly through the bone.  He pierced

the skull with four round drill holes, each set at the corners of a

square.  Peri-osteal elevator, please, sister.  Again David's stomach

clenched as the surgeon slid the gleaming steel introducer into one of

the drill holes and manoeuvred it gently until its tip reappeared

through the next hole in line.  Using the introducer, a length of sharp

steel wire saw was threaded through the two holes and lay along the

inside of the skull.  Cooper sawed this back and forth and it cut

cleanly through the bone.  Four times he repeated the procedure, cutting

out the sides of the square, and when he at last lifted out the detached

piece of bone he had opened a trapdoor into Debra's skull.

As he worked David's gorge had risen until it pressed in his throat, and

he had felt the cold glistening sheen of nauseous sweat across his

forehead, but now as the camera's eye peered through the opening he felt

his wonder surmount his horror, for he could see the pale amorphous mass

of matter, enclosed in its tough covering membrane of the dura mater

that was Debra's brain.

Deftly Cooper incised a flap in the dura.

We have exposed now the frontal lobe, and it will be necessary to

displace this to explore the base of the skull.  Working swiftly, but

with obvious care and skill, Cooper used a stainless steel retractor,

shaped like a shoe horn, to slide under the mass of brain and to lift it

aside.  Debra's brain, staring at it, David seemed to be looking into

the core of her being, it was vulnerable and exposed, everything that

made her what she was.  What part of that soft pale mass contained her

writer's genius, he wondered, from which of its many soft folds and

coils sprang the fruitful fountain of her imagination, where was her

love for him buried, what soft and secret place triggered her laughter

and where was the vale of her tears?  Its fathomless mystery held him

intent as he watched the retractor probe deeper and deeper through the

opening, and slowly the camera moved in to peer into the gaping depths

of Debra's skull.

Cooper opened the far end of the dura mater and commented on his

progress.

We have here the anterior ridge of the sphenoid sinus, note this as our

point of access to the chiasma David was aware of the changed tone of

the surgeon's voice, the charging of tension as the disembodied hands

moved slowly and expertly towards their goal.

Now this is interesting, can we see this on the screen, please?  Yes!

There is very clearly a bone deformation here, The voice was pleased,

and the two students beside David exclaimed and leaned closer.  David

could see soft wet tissue and hard bright surfaces deep in the bottom of

the wound, and the necks of steel instruments crowding into it, like

metallic bees into the stamen of a pink and yellow bloom.  Cooper

scratched through to the metal of the grenade fragment.

Now here we have the foreign body, can we have a look at those X-ray

plates again, sister The image cut quickly to the X-ray scanner, and

again the students exclaimed.  The girl puffed busily on her stinking

Gauloise.

Thank you.

The image cut back to the operating field, and now David saw the dark

speck of the grenade fragment lodged in the white bone.

We will go for this, I think.  Do you agree, Dr. Friedman?  'Yes, I

think you should take it.

Delicately the long slender steel insects worried the dark fragment, and

at last with a grunt of satisfaction it came free of its niche, and

Cooper drew it out carefully.

David heard the metallic ping as it was dropped into a waiting dish.

Good!  Good!  Cooper gave himself a little encouragement as he plugged

the hole left by the fragment with beeswax to prevent haemorrhage.  Now

we will trace out the optic nerves.

They were two white worms, David saw them clearly, converging on their

separate trails to meet and blend at the opening of the bony canal into

which they disappeared.

We have got extraneous bone-growth here, clearly associated with the

foreign body we have just removed.

It seems to have blocked off the canal and to have squeezed or severed

the nerve.  Suggestions, Dr. Friedman?  I think we should excise that

growth and try and ascertain just what damage we have to the nerve in

that area.  Good.  Yes, I agree.  Sister, I will use a fine bonenibbler

to get in there.

The swift selection and handling of the bright steel instruments again,

and then Cooper was working on the white bone growth which grew in the

shape of coral from a tropical sea.  He nibbled at it with the keen