"And if it's the same guy I saw…"
"Where's Weather right now?" Lucas asked.
"Either operating or up in the observation room." They both stood up and Virgil said, "This way," and as they hurried back toward the elevators, they both reached down and touched their weapons.
Lucas said, "He's maybe got hand grenades."
"I was just thinking that," Virgil said. "Shoot first, ask questions later." WEATHER OPENED the operation as she did each day, moving fast now. Moving fast, she was in and out in ten minutes, laying bare the ring of bone that connected Ellen and Sara. Most of the bone had been taken out, and Hanson, at her elbow, was ready to take out all but about a centimeter of the rest of it.
"Anything I can do before I go?" Weather asked him.
"I could use a couple more sterile hands in close," he said.
She stayed, to help hold the babies' heads, six hands in close and tight. Maret asked, through the crowd, "Hearts?"
"Okay so far," somebody answered from the back.
The saw, in cutting through the bone, kicked up the stink of raw blood mixed with something else… almost a floral scent. Dead peonies, maybe.
Hanson was a half hour, against an estimate of forty minutes. His mask was dotted with sweat when he backed away. "We're good."
The neurosurgeons moved up.
Weather backed out, stripped off the operating gear, dumped it, washed, and walked down to talk to the Rayneses again.
Lucy, anxious, wide-eyed. "Is something wrong? You were gone so long…"
"I stayed to help with some bone removal. At this point, their hearts are stable, we've got everything but the last half-inch of bone out. Rick can take that out in one minute if he has to."
Larry: "So the neuro guys are working?"
"Yes. Still a way to go," Weather said.
They talked for a couple more minutes; the Rayneses said the overnight crew had reported that the twins had gotten their best sleep since the operation began.
A team nurse popped in, looked at Weather: "Gabe wants you in the OR."
"Something happened?" Larry Raynes asked.
"Looks like it's going okay to me," the nurse said. "I'm not a doctor, though." WEATHER STEPPED inside the OR and said, "Gabriel?"
Maret looked up from the operating table and said, "Ah, Weather, come around here."
She walked carefully around the edge of the working crew, and Maret pointed at the babies' skulls. "The seven vein," he said, and she nodded.
The seven vein had been difficult to image, but they didn't know why, exactly. It rose close to the edge of the defect, up out of Sara's brain, before apparently edging over to a trough where it dumped the blood.
"It doesn't do that. It actually curled around the edge of the defect and dumps into Ellen's side. So, we can ligate it and forget it. But there's another vein we didn't see-we're calling it fourteen-that comes up beside it. If we could splice seven into fourteen…"
"How big are they?" Weather asked.
"Not big. But not so small as the ones you did on the toe operation…"
"I was using the scope for that. If we drop the scope on them, you guys would have to get out of the way."
"I think they might be large enough for you to do with your loupes… I'm hoping."
"I'll scrub up," she said. SHE WAS BACK in ten minutes, robed in another five, operating glasses in place. Maret moved sideways, pushing one of the nurses away from the table, and Weather moved in close. The other neurosurgeon continued working on the other side of the babies' heads.
Maret said, "Here," and indicated the two veins with a tip of his scalpel.
Weather's operating glasses were equipped with an LED, and the light illuminated the patch of dura mater as though it were an illustration in a medical text. The veins were small, dark, wire-like-a bit smaller in diameter than the wire in a coat hanger.
Weather looked at them for a full fifteen seconds, until Maret asked, "What do you think?"
"How bad do you need it?"
"Well, it's impossible to know. But the babies are doing okay, so far, we are ahead of schedule, and better to do this now, if we can-we need to move as much blood as possible…"
"I can do it, but it'll take a while," she said finally. "Sandy might have to stop working every once in a while. I couldn't have the slightest bit of movement."
"How long?"
"Thirty, forty minutes. They're well exposed."
"Thirty minutes?"
"Thirty or forty."
"Thirty minutes. I believe you can do this." THE VEINS were not especially delicate, but they couldn't be yanked around, either. Weather tied off the smaller fourteen, and began the process of splicing it into the seven. The process was slow: she would be placing four square knots, each smaller than a poppy seed, around the edge of the splice. Ten minutes in, she had one knot; in seventeen minutes, she had two.
An anesthesiologist said, "We've got a gradient showing up."
"I'll be out in ten or fifteen," Weather said. The gradient was the blood pressure in Sara's brain.
"Let's stay with it," Maret said.
Weather did the third knot and asked, "Where's the gradient?"
"Need to move along," the anesthesiologist said.
"We could bleed her for a minute," Weather said. "I think we're tight enough that we won't damage the established sutures."
Maret said, "How long to go ahead and finish?"
"Six or seven minutes, if there're no problems."
"Bleed her just a minute…"
Weather released a ligature on the fourteen, and blood began seeping out of the incomplete splice. They stood for a minute, then two, soaking up the blood, and the anesthesiologist said, "Better," and Weather closed the vein again.
Six minutes later she was out, removed the ligatures on seven and fourteen, and she and the other neurosurgeon, Sandy, watched the splice for ten seconds, fifteen, and then Sandy said, "Just like shooting free throws."
Weather said, "You should explain surgery to my husband."
Maret: "What does this mean, free throws?"
"Means we're good," Sandy said. "Get your ass back in here. We're coming to the stretch."
"Sometimes, I wish I understood English," Maret said. To Weather: "Thirty-two minutes."
"Best I could do," she said, a little stiff.
He said, "If you'd told me an hour, I would have asked for forty-five minutes. Thirty-two, I hardly believe."
That made it all better. WEATHER WAS SITTING in the observation theater when Virgil and Lucas squeezed in, and Lucas reached down and tapped her on the shoulder and gave her the thumb. She followed them out into the hall.
"Have you seen a skinhead orderly around?" Lucas asked.
She shook her head. "Not close by. I haven't really noticed one. You mean a guy with a shaved head?"
"Not shaved, just a super-butch. Virgil's seen him around."
"You think?"
"We think. Gotta call Marcy, let her know, see if we can break out the guy's name. It bothers me that Virgil may have seen him here. So I'm sticking close. I'm going to get Jenkins and Shrake over here…"
"We'll be done this afternoon," Weather said. "We're moving fast now."
18
CAPPY SAID, "I don't see any other way to get her. Has to be inside the hospital, but the cowboy guy is all over her."
A car door slammed close by-the driveway?-and Barakat went to the window, peeked, turned and said, urgently, "They look like police. Man and a woman. Get in the bedroom, and keep quiet."
There were two open twists that'd held cocaine, sitting on the coffee table, and as Cappy disappeared into the back, Barakat snatched them up, looked frantically around the room for other problems, and stuffed the twists in his pants pocket.