when he returned to visit her that evening she was sitting up in the bed
in the soft cashmere bedjacket that David had given her and surrounded
by banks of flowers which he had ordered.
They smell wonderful, she thanked him. It's like being in a garden. She
wore a turban around her head and, with the serene golden eyes seeming
focused on a distant vision, it gave her an exotic and mysterious air.
They have shaved your head. David felt a slide of dismay, he had not
expected that she must also sacrifice that lustrous mane of black silk.
It was the ultimate indignity, and she seemed to feel it also, for she
did not answer him and instead told him brightly how well they were
treating her, and what pains they were taking for her comfort. You'd
think I was some sort of queen, she laughed.
The Brig was with David, gruff and reserved and patently out of place in
these surroundings. His presence cast restraint upon them and it was a
relief when Ruby Friedman arrived. Bustling and charmin& he
complimented Debra on the preparations she had undergone.
Sister says that you are just fine, all nicely shaved and ready. Sorry,
but you aren't allowed anything to eat or drink except the sleeping pill
I've prescribed. 'When do I go to theatre? We've got you down bright
and early. Eight o'clock tomorrow. I am tremendously pleased that
Billy Cooper is the surgeon, we were very lucky to get him, but he owes
me a favour or two. I will be assisting him, of course, and he'll have
one of the best surgical teams in the world backing him up. Ruby, you
know how some women have their husbands with them when they are
confined- lyes. 'Ruby looked uncertain, taken aback by the question.
, well, couldn't David be there with me tomorrow?
Couldn't we be together, for both our sakes, while it happens? With all
due respects, my dear, but you are not having a baby. Couldn't you
arrange for him to be there? Debra pleaded, with eloquent eyes and an
expression to break the hardest heart. I'm sorry, Ruby shook his head.
It's completely impossible, then he brightened. But I tell you what.
I could get him into the students room. It will be the next best thing
in fact he would have a better view of the proceedings than if he were
in theatre. We have closed-circuit television relayed to the students
room and David could watch from there. Oh, please! Debra accepted
immediately. I'd like to know be was close, and that we were in
contact. We don't like being parted from each other, do we, my darling?
She smiled at where she thought he was, but he had moved aside and the
smile missed him. It was a gesture that wrenched something within him.
You will be there, David, won't you? she asked, and though the idea of
watching the knife at work was repellent to him, he forced himself to
reply lightly.
I'll be there, and he almost added, always, but he cut off the word.
This early in the morning there were only two others in the small
lecture-room with its double semi-circular rows of padded chairs about
the small television screen, a plump woman student with a pretty face
and shaggydog hairstyle and a tall young man with a pale complexion and
bad teeth. They both wore their stethoscopes dangling with calculated
nonchalance from the pockets of their white linen jackets. After the
first startled glance they ignored David, and they spoke together in
knowing medical jargon. The Coops doing an exploratory through the
parietal. 'That's the one I want to watch - The girl affected blue
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