He positioned her facing him with her back to the patient, standing between the unconscious woman's bare feet. She resisted the urge to cover her tried not to think of the way her flesh must belly, look in the glaring light. His eyes glowed behind the operating mask. She could hear his coarse, exciting breathing.
She felt dizzy, almost drunk. This wasn't how she had imagined it. He was scarcely himself. is this how men were? She ached with longing and fear. He reached past her and moved the patient's feet out of Pamela's way, clearing a small space between them on the operating table.
Suddenly, he scooped Pamela up and planted her sitting in this space on the end of the high operating table, centered between the patient's ankles. He took one of her hands and placed it on her raised knee, then the other, so she held herself open for him. He spun the scalpel before her eyes. Light glinted from its edges. He lowered it. He nicked the waistline of her underwear, and then threw the scalpel to the floor. He placed both hands on her underpants, and tore them open.
He asked, "Are you sure?" She nodded, unable to speak. "We can stop," he offered. "No." He touched her with his gloved hands. She rocked her head back and stared open-eyed into the harsh, sterile light. Her left leg cramped; she wanted to let go of her knee, but she didn't dare do anything. This was all so new to her, not at all what she had imagined. Better in some ways. Worse in others. He felt removed and distant, and yet his touch was intense and knowledgeable. She wanted him to want her.
He unfastened his belt. She grew light-headed. He took her legs and pulled them toward him, drew her to him, causing her to plant her arms and lean back, her head nearly touching the patient, her legs wrapped around him, her body half on, half off the metal table. The farther back she leaned, the easier it was to support herself, but the more contact she made with the woman behind and beneath her. Humming one of the operas that he played during their surgery, he penetrated her. A sharp pain. She cried out. She could tell by his reaction that he liked it, so she didn't try to stifle the sounds that shuddered through her with each of his thrusts. He went after her with a frenzy.
Her body went numb as all of her senses focused, instead of on herself, on him. His eyes closed. He smiled! He liked this!
Then nothing. He stopped. Was it over? He withdrew and shoved her away from him, back onto the table.
She was filled with a vague longing for something soft-muted light, a pillow, a kind word. "Was it any good?" she asked. "You can't answer that yourself?"
"It was wonderful!"
"There, you see?" Then he said mechanically and without emotion, "Now put on a smockthere's work to be done. She won't stay under forever."
Pamela went into the adjacent storage room, cleaned herself off and changed into a smock, remaining naked underneath. The sensation thrilled her. Everything about this night thrilled her. With her clothes as they were, she would have nothing but the smock to wear for her drive home. Wild! She giggled with the thought.
When she returned, he seemed nervous, almost frantic, not at all himself. He kept checking his watch. She joined him at the table alongside the patient and the stainless steel tray of hemostats, scalpels, and needles.
Only then did she notice: "She's not prepped!" She blurted this out without thinking. "She isn't shaved." Their eyes met then, and she saw panic in his, so foreign a sight that it was made all the more obvious, like a virtuoso missing a note, or an actor forgetting a line. He had neglected to prep her. Inconceivable! Elden Tegg? He never forgot a single detail of any operation, large or small. Had the sex been that good? She didn't know this man. He had treated her so differently this evening, done things she had always wanted but had never dared ask for, that it was almost as if she was with someone else. "You're right," he conceded, "she's not properly prepped."
Elden Tegg admit a mistake? He never made a mistake! What was happening?
He instructed her, "Get what you need and prep her." When she failed to respond, he commanded harshly, "Go on!"
She didn't like that voice. It wounded her. A few minutes later, as she was soaping the patient's side and abdomen, she noticed that the surgical cloth covering the patient was damp in the center of her chest. It had been dry earlier, when Pamela had left the room. She shaved the woman, but her eyes wandered the room curiously and she spotted a surgical sponge stained with Betadyne resting on the edge of the sink. This too was new since she had been out of the room. She put the two together: The Betadyne had earlier been used to prep the epidermal for surgery, and then the patient's chest had been washed clean of it while she was out of the room.
A heart? Impossible! He wouldn't do that. They had talked about that recently. A lung perhaps. "All set," she said to him. All set? Her hands were shaking, her knees weak. Her eyes fell upon that sponge across the room. She thought about the sex, what he had done to her: Out of desire? Or had it been to distract her? To keep her attention off this patient. She glanced over at him. She felt a distance between them. If this was a scheduled harvest, why hadn't she been notified? Who was the courier if not her?
"All set," he said, his eyes dancing nervously, his hands trembling slightly-hands usually as steady as the steel he held. Yes, another man entirely.
He leaned over the patient, his dark eyes trained on her.
Slowly, carefully, he lowered the blade. "Her name is Sharon," he said to Pamela. "Thank you, Sharon."
This was part of his ritual-every donor had a name, every donor was thanked for the contribution about to be made. He insisted on this. "Thank you, Sharon," Pamela echoed in an unsteady voice that betrayed her inner thoughts and caused Tegg to glance up at her briefly. But not for long. Only an instant. The sharp blade came in contact with the woman's skin. The first drop of her blood seeped from the incision. Pamela lifted a sponge. There was work to do.
As Elden Tegg began the invasive surgery for the kidney harvest, thoughts swarmed inside his head like angry bees. The problem lay in the fact that Pamela would never approve of a heart procurement-the procedure for which this woman had been prepped prior to Pamela's intrusion. There was no predicting what she might do if she found out about it, hence the charade-the lovemaking, the distraction, the ruse that he had forgotten to prep him!-and now an unplanned kidney harvest. Worse, Maybeck was due shortly, hopefully to inform Tegg that Wong Kei's wife had been successfully admitted to the Vancouver hospital, and then to act as courier for both the harvested heart and the other organs once the various procedures were completed. A single kidney harvest wouldn't interfere with any of that-this donor wouldn't need any kidneys where she was going, that was all part of Tegg's plan-but Pamela's curiosity was sure to peak if she encountered Maybeck. Maybeck delivered donors, and he returned them to the streets, but this was too soon after surgery for a pickup; she would have to wonder what he was doing here this time of night. Pamela Chase was no idiot; she would figure this out in minutes. And then what?
There was one possible excuse, he realized, and he congratulated himself for thinking of it. On rare occasions they performed a "private" harvest, selling an organ directly to a friend of Tegg's, a transplant surgeon in Vancouver-as opposed to shipping it off to the Third World market. Patients on the low end of transplant waiting lists became desperate, and this surgeon in Vancouver-along with Tegg was willing to do something about it. For a fee. This heart was a "private" arranged through the same man. Although Pamela had previously delivered the "privates," there had been talk recently that perhaps Maybeck should do it, and this provided Tegg his out.
He paid particular attention to his work, for he continued to see this woman's body as a treasure trove, a chalice from which to draw life itself. Several lives. One begets many: it was almost poetic! He felt a small twitch in his neck but paid it no mind-just nerves.