A Time to Heal

by Claire Rayner

For a moment, Harriet let herself imagine the situation at conference tomorrow when she made the announcement—as indeed she would have to if this morning went well. Oscar had been undeniably lofty about the research she was doing, had made it fairly clear that he regarded it with a certain kindly condescension. That had been galling. To put in front of him her concrete results would be very satisfying there was a relish to be found in the thought. Not very scientific, perhaps, but …

  “Think about when to tell Oscar, Harriet,” Theo said again softly as Catherine went into the oxygen chamber to prepare the table for Ferris and John took the coffee tray out. “Politics, you know! Oscar needs careful handling.”

  “Do stop talking about him as though he were a—a horse or something, Theo! Anyway, since I am—as you so carefully reminded me—his mistress, I hardly need any advice on handling Oscar.”

  He stood up and came to put an arm around her shoulders and kiss her cheek. “Hattie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bitch, believe me. I was simply upset to see you looking so …”

  “Haggard.”

  “Tush! Worried would have been a better word. Forgive me?”

  She looked at him for a moment, and then smiled. “Oh, of course! I should have more sense than to listen when you start griping about Oscar. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect jealousy.”

  “Dear heart! Sexual jealousy, thank God, will never complicate us! Unless, of course, you meant I might have a tendre for Oscar? Heaven forfend! I find my tastes to be quite other, I promise you. Even if I were foolish enough to involve myself with any member of the Establishment—which I would never do, since I am far too discreet—it would no more be with Oscar than that absurd Caister. Such an obvious young man! Nothing is more boring in any individual, of whatever sexual bent, than obviousness. My gem of wisdom for the day. Ah—your patient at last! May I examine him before you start?”

  “I’d be glad if you would. Will you provide confirmation at conference if I decide to announce tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Good morning, Mr. Ferris. And how are you?”

  The man in the wheelchair, swathed in a heavy dressing gown and with his knees wrapped in a red rug, grinned up at them cheerfully. A small man, with a heavily scored face and very dark restless eyes under a crest of thick black hair, he had a simian look that made him appear very like the capuchin monkeys Harriet had used for her animal trials—a resemblance that had contributed to her decision to use him for the first human trial of her treatment.

  “Right as ninepence, thanks, Mr. Fowler. Morning, Dr. Berry! Last date we’ve got, you and me, eh? Got to make the most of it, I have. My old woman swears if I don’t stop talkin’ about you, she’ll give me the push! Not that she don’t appreciate all you’ve done—my Gawd, she thinks you’re an angel straight from Heaven, and that’s a fact—but jealous! Well, you should hear ’er! I’ve told ’er, I’ve got a right to go on about you, seeing I really did hear the angels singin’ loud and clear—though my old woman reckons I heard the devil, and had a right to—but you know what she says?” He grinned again and winked at Theo. “Says I’m disrespectful to a great woman, saying you’ve got a pretty face—the which you have—and a smashin’ figure—the which you also have. She reckons ladies in science oughtn’t to be talked about that way, but there, I said to her, a handsome woman’s a handsome woman, and—”

  “Mr. Ferris, have you always been as full of words as this?” Harriet said, smiling across him at Theo. “Or has the treatment done something unexpected to your tongue as well? I set out to treat your disease, not to turn on a cascade of chatter.”

  “Always was like this, before I got ill! Called me Polly when I was in the mob, they did. That’s why my old woman married me, I reckon. She never got a chance to get a word in edgeways, not even to say no! Still, better than being dead from the neck up, ’n’ it?”

  The grin on his face slackened then and he added, “Or from the neck down. And I was, wasn’t I? As near as you can get. I was having a bit of poke around myself this morning—seeing it was the last treatment. I knew before, you know. Knew what I had in there. Cancer—I knew all about it. I mean, I was thin as a bloody rail, and I could feel that great hard lump under my ribs”—he put his hand on his right side—“and those up here, in my neck, not to mention in a couple other more personal places, and I tell you, not one can I feel. It’s a bloody miracle, if you ask me. Injections, and a bit of a cookup in that there fancy oven of yours—and look at me! Believe me, Dr. Berry, I know what you’ve done for me, and never will I forget it. Anything I can ever do for you—”

  “Mr. Ferris, you talk too much,” Harriet said good-humoredly. “Now, can you get out of your chair yourself, and onto the table in the chamber? Mr. Fowler wants to have a bit of a poke around himself—not that we don’t believe you, of course, but we want to be sure.”

  “Oh, can I! Just watch me!” And he got out of the chair and walked bouncily across to the oxygen chamber door, an absurd figure in his oversized dressing gown.

  Theo examined him with great thoroughness, Harriet watching as his thick square fingers moved over the belly, felt the neck and armpits and groin, palpated the healed reddish scars of the several operations that had been performed to remove tissue for examination. And when he had finished, and they left Mr. Ferris to Catherine to be arranged comfortably on the table for the treatment, Harriet watched him write his short report in the case notes.

  “Absolutely clear, clinically, Harriet. Indeed, I do congratulate you. I’m still not absolutely au fait with how the method works, but work it has for James Ferris.” He smiled up at her. “This last treatment should confirm it then? Will you be able to be reasonably sure?”

  She nodded. “Quite apart from the clinical evidence—not only the disappearance of masses but a normal biochemistry—there’ll be the thermographs. Catherine’s technique is remarkably delicate. She can accurately detect abnormal temperature areas that indicate even very small neoplasms, even in highly vascular tissue.” She smiled a little wryly. “You were right before—I am being a little superstitious in refusing to say I’ve succeeded until after this morning. The last three weeks’ thermograph results have been clear. I just wanted to run the full course as I’d planned. To be certain.”

  “Of course. You must be certain! Well, are you ready? I’d like to stay all through the treatment, but I’ve work of my own to do—”

  “Yes. We’re ready, I think—Catherine?”

  The three of them, John and Catherine and herself, slid into the pattern of the treatment. As Harriet scrubbed her hands and put on sterilized gown and gloves in the small utility room, Catherine set the injections ready at the head of the table and connected the electroencephalogram leads to Ferris’s skull before attaching the heating pads to his body, while he chivvied and teased her, she snapping back at his badinage without rancor. Even Catherine liked little James Ferris, and anyway, his ability to joke and chatter was very precious to all of them. John connected up the blood perfusion apparatus at the foot of the table, and checked, yet again, his oxygen gauges, and both were standing ready when Harriet came in. Theo perched himself on the table just outside the door and watched.

  “I don’t know about angels from Heaven, mind you, when it comes to this bit,” Ferris said. “Feels more like the fires of Hell and that’s a fact, once it starts.”

  “You don’t really mind, though, do you?” Harriet said absently, as she uncovered her tray of equipment and clipped the sterile cannulas to the blood tubes leading from the perfusion apparatus.

  “Nah, not really. Bit achy when it starts, like, but once I get a real hot sweat on, it’s like floatin’ away. Nice really—and a bloody sight cheaper than gettin’ high on a skinful.”

  “That’s all you know, ducky,” John said. “I could keep myself in champers for a year on what one of these treatments costs, I promise you …. Blood temperature forty degrees centigrade, Dr. Berry. Body temp thirty-seven point two degrees centigrade—”
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br />   “That a fact? Well, get me! Always said I’d be worth a bomb if right was done—whoops—felt that, I did.”

  “Sorry—just another small prick.” Harriet had eased the needle on the big syringe into a vein in the right ankle, and very slowly the colorless liquid began to drip into the bloodstream. “Right, John. The cannulae are all patent? You can start the blood flow—now—that’s it. Right, Catherine—blood pressure and pulse readings starting now …”

  Almost twenty minutes ticked away, with only the reports from Catherine and John breaking the silence.

  “BP one twenty over seventy. Pulse seventy.”

  “Blood temperature thirty-nine, body temp thirty-eight point eight—thirty-nine. Blood up to forty now—”

  “BP steady—pulse ninety-eight, bounding a little–”

  “Blood now forty-three. Body temperature equal. Shall I start the oxygen?”

  “Yes.” Harriet completed the injection and straightened up. “Well, Mr. Ferris? Feeling all right?”

  “Bit achy, like I said,” Ferris said, less ebullient now, his pointed, creased face glistening wetly. “But it’ll go off in a minute, when it gets a bit ‘otter—gettin’ sleepy now—nice …”

  “Good man. Just lie there and dream for a while. You can reach your bellpush? Remember, if you want us, just ring it.”

  They left him lying there on his table, the tubes gleaming redly as blood pulsed through them to and from the perfusion apparatus, and Catherine sealed the heavy door as John bustled over to his console. Then the four of them stood and watched as the gauges’ needles swung, recording the buildup of oxygen pressure within the chamber, the temperature of the blood, the pulse and blood-pressure readings, and the electroencephalogram tracings.

  Theo said, “How long, Harriet? And how hot can you safely get him?”

  “He can take half an hour once we get him to forty degrees. No longer. He tolerates it very well indeed. Remarkably well. I could have used a generalized method, inducing fever by giving him some sort of toxin—I’d considered streptococcus erysipelas—but that isn’t as easily controlled as this heated blood method, and I add to the effect with surface body heating. You notice I connected up a special link to the portal system. That way I get increased heat to the primary growth area in the liver, but he needs it generally, of course, for the lymph node deposits. And giving it in the presence of high-pressure oxygen enhances the effect. His blood pressure holds a remarkably satisfactory level, you see? Whether I could use the method on a patient with any other disorder in that area, of course, is a moot point.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps Ross-Craigie’s work will link up with yours, then. His technique certainly seems to clear any atheroma problems.”

  Harriet looked startled for a moment. “I suppose so,” she said slowly. “But would a patient with severe and widespread disease of this degree be able to tolerate his treatment? It would have to be done first, before my method could be applied, and I doubt if a patient as ill as Ferris was would have survived long enough for both approaches.”

  “But if this treatment has further trials that confirm it, my dear Hattie, surely there’ll be no need to wait until the disease has reached a terminal stage before starting it? You used a terminal patient because you couldn’t possibly experiment on a case in which orthodox proven methods had not already been tried and failed!”

  She smiled then. “Oh Lord, Theo, I’m a pretty one-eyed scientist, aren’t I? I’ve been so involved in treating this one case that I just haven’t thought much about the future—about how and when the method will be applied if it does achieve success. You’re right, I suppose! If this goes go into the armory of acceptable treatments, we’ll get early-stage disease to work on, and more time to do it in. So Ross-Craigie’s method may well fit in. Ye gods, what a thought!”

  “What a thought indeed! Here’s another one for you. Whither surgery?”

  “What? How do you mean?”

  “Dear Harriet! What do I spend most of my time doing? Providing surgical treatment for an assortment of cancerous conditions! If the treatment of tomorrow is to be the Berry treatment, what will I and my knife-happy colleagues do for our bread and butter?”

  “Patch up the fools who smash themselves to jam on the roads,” Catherine growled. “When Dr. Berry’s work gets cancer out of the way, there’ll be a hell of a lot more people looking for different ways to destroy themselves. They’ll keep you busy enough.”

  “And you could go into the patchwork business in a big way, Mr. Fowler,” John said. “Think of all those lovely transplants you could play around with!”

  “Hmmph! You could be right. Anyway, Harriet, my dear, this method of yours is going to create a considerable stir in a great many ways you obviously hadn’t thought of! I wonder if Oscar has? So much of the work that’s going on here is tied up with cancer—what about his bread and butter if you’ve pipped him at the post with the Berry method? The Bell method goes right down the drain! Ah well, those are problems of the future, and right now I have a problem of my own. Such as the fact that I must go and wield my ironmongery on one of the patients in Geoffrey Cooper’s series. What possible long-term results he can get in treating obesity with surgery I cannot imagine—but then, I’m just a simple surgeon, not a high-powered thinker like you research bods. Harriet, dear, when will you have completed?”

  Harriet looked up at the clock. “Say twelve thirty. You’ll have had time to check the thermograph by then, Catherine? He should be cool enough for it by what—eleven thirty?—yes. Half past twelve, Theo.”

  “I’ll be in the theaters. Phone me, will you? I’ll be waiting.”

  She phoned him at quarter to one.

  “Theo? Well, we’ve finished …. Yes. Ferris is going home tomorrow morning …. Yes. He’s clear. Quite clear.”

  2

  SHE SAT with her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her hands and staring out of the dark window, and sighed softly with pleasure. An exciting day’s work, and when she got home, George was in a more tractable mood than he had been for weeks, despite their breakfast-time argument, with only a few petulant complaints about Mrs. Davies’s care of him. There was a letter from Gordon enclosing a new photograph of young Giles (absurd to think of herself as this child’s grandmother, she had thought, looking at the small face squinting into the sunlight, and strange to see how like David he was growing, strange to think that Gordon himself had been younger than Giles when David had died). And now, one of Oscar’s excellent dinners and a bottle of Oscar’s excellent wine.

  She looked across at him, then, and some of her contentment shriveled. He was twisting his glass on the table, staring into it, his head bent and his shoulders straight and tense.

  Oscar had greeted her warmly enough, kissing the top of her head in the way he always did, behaving as though he hadn’t been away more than a few hours. Despite his prolonged absence there had been no gift for her, not so much as a bottle of duty-free perfume bought hurriedly at the airport. But although this had hurt her a little, as such omissions always did, she had accepted it with the equanimity with which she always accepted his hurtful behavior—even found a certain comfort in it. He was always so, and it was as much a part of his attraction for her as the shape of his body and the smell of his skin.

  He had fussed amusingly over his dinner preparations, still behaving very much as he always did, for he took a certain malicious pleasure in being so much more sophisticated a cook than she was. He had talked amusingly, too, about the “absurdly overdone” hospitality his American colleagues had provided, about some Middle Westerners who had enlivened the flight home with their “exaggerated touristy” behavior, and had asked with a careful display of kindliness after her family, wanting to know whether her father-in-law was any less difficult to handle, whether there was any news of Patty’s latest emotional involvement (“Such an agreeable young woman, your Patricia—so like you”; typical of Oscar to offer her a compliment at remove).

  But h
e had said nothing about what had actually happened while he had been in the States; asked no questions at all about the state of affairs at Brookbank. And although they had long ago made it a rule that they never talked shop when they were away from the Establishment, just as they never displayed any evidence that their relationship was other than a working one when they were there, she would have expected him to say something about his visit. To ask or not to ask? That, she told herself a little owlishly (for they had finished the bottle of wine between them, and were now drinking cognac), is the question.

  He saved her the trouble of deciding.

  “They’re tipping him for this year’s Nobel, Harriet,” he said abruptly. “Apart from Müller in Switzerland and his metabolism work, there’s nothing else that comes near it. And it’s showy enough, God knows. He’s made sure of that. The man’s got a genius for personal publicity. I saw two television programs with him posturing like an organ-grinder’s monkey—most embarrassing exhibition I’ve ever seen. But he has no grace, none at all. Not a mention of the work we did here, nor that I—we—put him on to it in the first place. None at all.”

  He stood up, and moved across to the Regency secretary in the corner to select a cigar, fussing with the handsome gold cutter and lighter; Oscar had a taste for the elegancies of life. “God knows I don’t grudge the man his success—if he’d stayed at Brookbank and completed the job properly with us, he would have had his share of attention. It’s the rank ingratitude that I find so distressing. Really distressing. I gave him every facility I could, worked very closely with him—even neglecting my own field of research to an extent, in order to help him. Then off he goes in a fit of pique because I wasn’t prepared to tolerate any shoddiness in his work—and what Establishment head of any integrity would have acted otherwise?—and published in this helter-skelter fashion—oh, it’s infuriating.”

  “Have you seen his reports? I’ve been too busy to read much. Do his findings really stand up?”