I jumped and cursed. “Sorry,” she said in the automatic voice used by doctors and dentists after they have inflicted an instant of agony. “You’re done. Now go to work on me.”
This was the moment I dreaded. It is one thing to dress the wounds of a comrade ripped by a mortar shell. It’s another to cut in cold blood. I stood shaking while Judith placed another rabbit beside George and gave him a helping of lettuce. “Here’s Rupert.” She took George toward the cage.
“No!” I said, snapping back from the prospect to the present.
“What do you mean? No?” She looked at me as if I were some junior contradicting the Chief of Surgery.
“That cage is metal. Put him in it and you may screen the transponder. Or weaken the signal enough for the computer to send a guard to find out what’s going on.”
“Lucky you think electronically, Gavin.” She placed George gently on the bed. “Stay there, rabbit. Or I’ll knock your head off!” She rubbed the base of his ears, so that he stopped eating to enjoy the new sensation. When she spoke to me it was in quite a different tone. “Don’t sit there gaping.
Go and start scrubbing. Ask questions while you’re washing your hands.”
I scrubbed away, trying to select the most imperative from the many important questions I wanted to ask. Judith pulled a fresh set of instruments from under the bed and prepared Rupert’s back. Rupert stamped his foot once and was mollified by a slice of carrot.
“Keep scrubbing! Five minutes by the clock!” She unzipped her jumpsuit, turned it down to the waist, and took off her bra. “You’re a surgeon now, Gavin. It’s considered unethical to stare at a patient’s breasts except for clinical reasons. And you’re going to operate on my back—not my front!” She took her seat astride the chair, shifting her position to get a good view of the area I was about to cut into. I continued to scrub.
“Five minutes is enough. Leave some skin on your hands! Dry them on that towel. No! The sterile towel. Spread out the plastic. Stretch it tight. Use the flat of your hands. Gavin, for God’s sake, get a grip on yourself! I’m the one who ought to be shaking.”
I stepped back to calm myself and study the operative field, determined to make my incision along the skin stress-line as she had told me, trying to remember whether that was the same as the direction of the muscle fibers I must part without cutting once I was through the skin. I reached for the scalpel and was stopped by my patient.
“So you’re one of those bastards who don’t bother with anesthesia for minor surgery, are you, Doctor?”
“Sorry! Of course!” I picked up the syringe and approached her back with the needle.
“If you wish to give the maximum amount of pain when making an injection,” she remarked coldly, “Use a blunt needle and push it slowly through the skin, thus exerting the most pressure for the longest possible time on the cutaneous pain receptors. Gavin! For Christ’s sake go in like I showed you! One swift, firm thrust. Similar to rape!”
“Damn you, Judy—I’m doing my best!” I rammed the needle through the skin and into the muscle.
“That’s better—Ouch—the idea is to inject the anesthetic ahead of the needle. Not to push the needle ahead of the anesthetic!”
I did not apologize, and by the time I had made the fifth injection I was getting the hang of it. Judith snapped, “Now scrub again while the stuff you’ve shot into me takes effect. From the amount you’ve used I’m expecting to lose all iwling in my fingers at any moment!”
I scrubbed away in silence. I was no longer nervous. Only ingry. And I stayed angry even after I realized that had been her objective.
I picked up the scalpel. Cut boldly, she had said. One smooth sweep of the blade through the skin. Another with the back of the scalpel to separate the muscle fibers. They parted as they should. Then a bright red fountain sprayed from the incision.
“Snap! Get a snap on the bleeder! That’s right. You’ve got it. Well done. Leave it for the moment. You may have to tie it off later. Mop out the blood. I told you to keep a dry field! You’ve got to be able to see what you’re cutting, and blood’s opaque. Slow and easy. Good! That retractor’s got a ratchet. It’s not there for ornament. Use it! Give yourself a full exposure. You’re not a damned cosmetic surgeon prettying up some fat softig. And keep your fingers out of the incision until you’re sure what you’re grabbing. Okay, that’s enough! Move back and mop your brow. I don’t want you dripping your filthy sweat into my rhomboideus major! And for God’s sake use a sterile towel. That’s the one I spread over George!”
I stepped back, dried my face, and admired my handiwork. The black body of the transponder was clear in the base of the incision. <
“Okay—you’ve had your time out! Get a good grip on it. Now—don’t worry about me. Rip it out and hand it over. That’s the boy!” She grabbed the bloody thing from my hand, jumped over to Rupert, and rammed it into him, ignoring the retractor sticking out of her shoulder and the blood running down her back. I pressed a sterile dressing against her incision while she held Rupert’s closed.
“It’s working, thanks be to the Light!” She let go of Rupert and returned to slump forward astride the chair, leaving me to extract the snap, stanch the bleeding, and close the incision as best I could.
I spent some time tidying up before I was satisfied with the results. “There!” I said. “You’re repaired.”
“At last!” She came back to life and spirit, studying my workmanship in the mirror. “We’ll make a surgeon out of you yet, fumblefingers!”
“They must have forgotten to feed you a child this morning!” I began picking up bloody swabs from the floor.
She said nothing but stood up to inspect first the rabbits and then me. Finally she went to lie face-down on the bed. After a few minutes she reached out a hand to grip my fingers. “We’ve done it!” The triumph in her voice, the squeeze of her hand, soothed the bruises on my psyche.
I cleaned the floor, flushed the handbasin, and put the instruments back under the bed. Then I sat down beside her. “What now?”
“We can’t start moving before two. So we get some rest.”
“Rest and recreation?” I suggested, patting her bottom.
“It’s unethical for a surgeon to fondle a patient’s backside,” she mumbled, her face still cradled in her arms.
“That’s for professionals. I’m only an amateur.”
“You were better than some interns I’ve had inflicted on me!” She pushed my hand away.
I caught her wrist. “Judy, we may never get another chance after tonight. Let’s take what we can get while we can get it!”
She lifted her head and studied my face. At last she said, “Okay—if you really want a last bang as much as all that— I’ll oblige.”
I didn’t want a “bang” and I didn’t want to be “obliged.” I wanted something from Judith which I hadn’t yet earned and she wasn’t prepared to give. “Forget it! I shouldn’t waste my strength screwing around.”
“And I need sleep. We’ll have lots of excitement later.” With that ambiguous remark she dropped her head back onto her arms and was asleep within two minutes. The way I had been able to fall asleep at her age, even when I had thought I would only awaken to die.
I sat watching her and wondering what kind of person she really was. Then I switched off the light, took the opaque cover from the camera lens, and unmasked the microphone before going to stretch out beside her. If Surveillance looked at us now they would see only the outlines of a couple sleeping contentedly together, weary from making love.