And Lara never took her eyes from Jones, while Willig squirmed a bit next to her, no doubt uncomfortable about the apparent impropriety of a bawdy story during a life-and-death procedure. But Lara had the opposite reaction; she watched in reverent wonder. She had spent all of her professional life working at the limits of human ability; she carried within her the skepticism of the scientist, yet even deeper in her heart she harbored the secret hope of wanting to matter, to live, to save. She knew that doubt and hope were at war within the young surgeon, and that Jones was using all the tools of his own courage to distract the doubt and let the hope, the patient, and even the young surgeon blossom into life.
“Now listen, this is good!” Jones was saying. And he lowered his voice again until he said strongly, “Good. Clamp.”
Stafford was nearly hyperventilating as he readied himself for the most crucial move inside the patient’s brain. Jones watched his movements, knowing what was about to happen before it happened, while unrolling his story like a buddy at a ball game. All Lara could make out was the punch line: “He staggers off the porch and his buddy says, ‘When did she say they open up again?’ And the second drunk says, ‘I think she said ‘Thhhhhhhursday,’ but her breath was so bad I didn’t want her to repeat it!’”
Stafford made the cut; Jones handed him the second clamp and Stafford instantly inserted it into the brain. Jones and Stafford looked at the anesthesiologist, who checked his sensors and nodded. The patient’s vital signs were all showing strength; the operation was a complete success.
Stafford stepped back from the table, relief flooding so fully from his heart that his legs buckled slightly. Then he looked at Jones. “Thhhhursday?!” Stafford exploded. And all the surgeons burst into laughter.
In the observation balcony, Willig was flushing with embarrassment.
Lara Blair was transfixed.
Jones was a self-contained man who attended few of the formal functions of the medical school faculty and tended not to return phone calls pertaining to paperwork and bookkeeping, so a few years back the administration had provided him with a bright young secretary named Janet. Jones liked her and referred to her as his electronic dog collar. Janet’s office—Jones refused to call it his own—was on the basement floor of the Med School, closest to the surgical center. As Jones entered and moved past Janet’s desk in the outer office, she said, “Dr. Jones, you have a—”
“I know, I know, but I gotta have some breakfast, or—whoa, it’s almost dinner time. I gotta get something to eat.” He continued without stopping into his office, stripping off both the surgical gowns that covered his filthy T-shirt and bloody, muddy rugby shorts over his skinned-up knees. He was tossing the surgical gown onto the hook on the back of the door when he realized he was not alone in the office; a beautiful, elegantly dressed stranger—Lara—was sitting on the chair in the corner, waiting for him.
“Doctor Jones?” she asked, as if she weren’t already sure it was he.
“Uh, no!” he sputtered. “Jones, he’s uh…”
But before Jones could escape his embarrassment, Janet took delight in calling through the open doorway, “You have a visitor, Dr. Jones!”
“Thank you, Janet,” he said sharply.
Janet almost sang it, in a soprano that would have matched Willig’s baritone: “You’re welcome, Dr. Jones!”
Lara had taken in every fragment of this exchange; her eyes were such a cold blue they added to the impression that her stare was frozen, but Jones had seen that miss-nothing look only on the faces of the brightest people he had ever met; Lara’s eyes reminded him of another pair of eyes he tried never to think about. Lara rose easily from her chair. “I’m Lara Blair. I’m with Blair Bio-Medical Engineering. I’m sorry to barge in on you—I understood you’d be available for a few minutes after your rounds.”
“Uh… could I get you some coffee or anything?” he asked.
“Your secretary already offered, thank you.”
“Yes, she’s very efficient,” Jones said in a tone he knew Janet would notice.
“Thank you, Dr. Jones!” Janet sang from her outer office.
Jones shut the door and moved to his desk, he and Lara studying each other, taking each other in. “Laura Blair?”
“It’s Lara, actually. But yes, Blair. My father started the company.”
“Your father is William Blair? He was a brilliant surgeon. I studied his techniques and learned on instruments he designed.”
“He died four years ago and left me the Bio-Med devices company, and also the Blair Foundation, through which we fund surgical research.”
Jones had dealt with many offers to work for development companies, and he sensed where this was leading. “I’m a teacher now.”
“You’re the best micro-manipulator we’ve ever seen. You may be the best anybody’s ever seen.” She opened her briefcase and lifted up the acrylic box containing the tiny sculpture Malcolm’s scouts had brought her. “One of our scouts came across this a few days ago. Dr. Jones, I have degrees in medicine, engineering, and microsurgery. I’m as good as anyone in our company—probably better. But I can’t do what you can do. I’m working on a device that would save lives—and make a lot of money. We need your skills.”
Jones moved behind his desk, as if it were a wall. “… Well, I’m sorry for you to waste the trip, but—”
“Before you give me your answer, could I show you some scans?” She pulled a scan from her bag. Jones hesitated, then popped the scan onto the lightbox on the wall behind his desk. The scan displayed the interior of a patient’s brain, with light and dark areas that even many doctors could not have made sense of.
Jones sized up the scan in an instant. “A double aneurism. Clip one off, the other blows out. Finally somebody developed the simultaneous clipping technique. That, I believe, was your father, William Blair.”
Lara handed him a second scan. Jones needed only a glance. “This is the fool’s gold of brain surgery. The patient spends two hundred thousand dollars and six months of recovery on a procedure that gives ’em four more years of life—but they would’ve had five without the surgery because the procedure weakens the artery walls.”
“My company’s just developed a titanium shunt that reroutes the blood flow from the problem area so that the prognosis is, essentially, normal life.”
“That’s a great idea; who came up with that?”
“I did; what about this?” she said quickly, handing him another scan.
Jones took the translucent scan from her hand, slid it into his viewing box, and stared at it for a long moment. She drifted up beside him to study the scan—and his reaction. He was silent for a moment, almost reverent, before he spoke. “I’ve seen two of these in my whole career. The condition is congenital. It manifests like a tumor and confuses Radiology when they can’t find one. The problem has to do with this artery here. It could be shunted off and made normal, except that getting to it requires passing through twisting canals of bone and artery, and then through this area that controls all brain function, and threading instruments through that region destroys the patient’s brain.”
Janet poked her head into the office. “They want you in the pediatric ICU,” she said.
The next moment confirmed for Lara Blair her initial instinct about Jones: that nothing he did was casual, lacking the sharp edge of intensity. She watched him grab for his surgical gown, and she was already picking up her bag.
Jones hurried down the hallway with big strides, wrestling back into his surgical gown as he went. Lara rushed to keep up, talking as they walked. “Could you work a needle probe into that area?” She knew he understood the area of the brain she was talking about, the one that no surgeon had ever penetrated without destroying the brain he was trying to save.