by Wilbur Smith
‘It was only a dream,’ he said.
‘David,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow, if anything happens tomorrow—’
‘Nothing will happen,’ he almost snarled the denial, but she put out a hand to his face, finding his lips and touching them lightly to silence them.
‘Whatever happens,’ she said, ‘remember how it was when we were happy. Remember that I loved you.’
The hospital of Groote Schuur sits on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, a tall conical peak divided from the massif of Table Mountain by a deep saddle. Its summit is of grey rock and below it lie the dark pine forests and open grassy slopes of the great estate that Cecil John Rhodes left to the nation. Herds of deer and indigenous antelope feed quietly in the open places and the south-east wind feathers the crest with a flying pennant of cloud.
The hospital is a massive complex of brilliant white buildings, substantial and solid-looking blocks, all roofed in burnt red tiles.
Ruby Friedman had used all his pull to secure a private ward for Debra, and the sister in charge of the floor was expecting her. They took her from David and led her away, leaving him feeling bereft and lonely, but when he returned to visit her that evening she was sitting up in the bed in the soft cashmere bedjacket that David had given her and surrounded by banks of flowers which he had ordered.
They smell wonderful,’ she thanked him. ‘It’s like being in a garden.’
She wore a turban around her head and, with the serene golden eyes seeming focused on a distant vision, it gave her an exotic and mysterious air.
‘They have shaved your head.’ David felt a slide of dismay, he had not expected that she must also sacrifice that lustrous mane of black silk. It was the ultimate indignity, and she seemed to feel it also, for she did not answer him and instead told him brightly how well they were treating her, and what pains they were taking for her comfort. ‘You’d think I was some sort of queen,’ she laughed.
The Brig was with David, gruff and reserved and patently out of place in these surroundings. His presence cast restraint upon them and it was a relief when Ruby Friedman arrived. Bustling and charming, he complimented Debra on the preparations she had undergone.
‘Sister says that you are just fine, all nicely shaved and ready. Sorry, but you aren’t allowed anything to eat or drink except the sleeping pill I’ve prescribed.’
‘When do I go to theatre?’
‘We’ve got you down bright and early. Eight o’clock tomorrow. I am tremendously pleased that Billy Cooper is the surgeon, we were very lucky to get him, but he owes me a favour or two. I will be assisting him, of course, and he’ll have one of the best surgical teams in the world backing him up.’
‘Ruby, you know how some women have their husbands with them when they are confined—’
‘Yes.’ Ruby looked uncertain, taken aback by the question.
‘Well, couldn’t David be there with me tomorrow? Couldn’t we be together, for both our sakes, while it happens?’
‘With all due respects, my dear, but you are not having a baby.’
‘Couldn’t you arrange for him to be there?’ Debra pleaded, with eloquent eyes and an expression to break the hardest heart.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ruby shook his head. ‘It’s completely impossible—’ Then he brightened. ‘But I tell you what. I could get him into the students’ room. It will be the next best thing, in fact he would have a better view of the proceedings than if he were in theatre. We have closed-circuit television relayed to the students’ room and David could watch from there.’
‘Oh, please!’ Debra accepted immediately. ‘I’d like to know he was close, and that we were in contact. We don’t like being parted from each other, do we, my darling?’ She smiled at where she thought he was, but he had moved aside and the smile missed him. It was a gesture that wrenched something within him.
‘You will be there, David, won’t you?’ she asked, and though the idea of watching the knife at work was repellent to him, he forced himself to reply lightly.
‘I’ll be there,’ and he almost added, ‘always’, but he cut off the word.
This early in the morning there were only two others in the small lecture-room with its double semi-circular rows of padded chairs about the small television screen, a plump woman student with a pretty face and shaggy-dog hairstyle and a tall young man with a pale complexion and bad teeth. They both wore their stethoscopes dangling with calculated nonchalance from the pockets of their white linen jackets. After the first startled glance they ignored David, and they spoke together in knowing medical jargon.
The Coops doing an exploratory through the parietal.’
‘That’s the one I want to watch—’
The girl affected blue Gauloises cigarettes, rank and stinking in the confined room. David’s eyes felt raw and gravelly for he had slept little during the night, and the smoke irritated them. He kept looking at his watch, and imagining what was happening to Debra during these last minutes – the undignified purging and cleansing of her body, the robing, and the needles of sedation and anti-sepsis.
The slow drag of minutes ended at last when the screen began to glow and hum, the image shimmered and strobed then settled down into a high view of the theatre. The set was in colour, and the green theatre gowns of the figures moving around the operating-table blended with the subdued theatre green walls. Height had foreshortened the robed members of the operating team and the muttered and disjointed conversation between the surgeon and his anaesthetist was picked up by the microphones.
‘Are we ready there yet, Mike?’
David felt the sick sensation in the pit of his stomach, and he wished he had eaten breakfast. It might have filled the hollow place below his ribs.
‘Right.’ The surgeon’s voice sharpened as he turned towards the microphone. ‘Are we on telly?’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ the theatre sister answered him, and there was a note of resignation in the surgeon’s voice as he spoke for his unseen audience.
‘Very well, then. The patient is a twenty-six-year-old female. The symptoms are total loss of sight in both eyes, and the cause is suspected damage or constriction of the optic nerve in or near the optic chiasma. This is a surgical investigation of the site. The surgeon is Dr William Cooper, assisted by Dr Reuben Friedman.’
As he spoke, the camera moved in on the table and with a start of surprise David realized that he had been looking at Debra without knowing it. Her face and the lower part of her head were obscured by the sterile drapes that covered all but the shaven round ball of her skull. It was inhuman-looking, egglike, painted with Savlon antiseptic that glistened in the bright, overhead lights.
‘Scalpel please, Sister.’
David leaned forward tensely in his seat, and his hands tightened on the armrests, so the knuckles turned white, as Cooper made the first incision drawing the blade across the smooth skin. The flesh opened and immediately the tiny blood vessels began to dribble and spurt. Hands moved in the screen of the television, clad in rubber so that they were yellow and impersonal, but quick and sure.
An oval flap of skin and flesh was dissected free and was drawn back, exposing the gleaming bone beneath, and again David’s flesh crawled as though with living things as the surgeon took up a drill that resembled exactly a carpenter’s brace and bit. His voice continued its impersonal commentary, as he began to drill through the skull, cranking away at the handle as the gleaming steel bit swiftly through the bone. He pierced the skull with four round drill holes, each set at the corners of a square.
‘Peri-osteal elevator, please, Sister.’
Again David’s stomach clenched as the surgeon slid the gleaming steel introduce into one of the drill holes and manoeuvred it gently until its tip reappeared through the next hole in line. Using the introducer, a length of sharp steel wire saw was threaded through the two holes and lay along the inside of the skull. Cooper sawed this back and forth and it cut cleanly through the bone. Four times he repeated the procedure, c
utting out the sides of the square, and when he at last lifted out the detached piece of bone he had opened a trapdoor into Debra’s skull.
As he worked David’s gorge had risen until it pressed in his throat, and he had felt the cold glistening sheen of nauseous sweat across his forehead, but now as the camera’s eye peered through the opening he felt his wonder surmount his horror, for he could see the pale amorphous mass of matter, enclosed in its tough covering membrane of the dura mater that was Debra’s brain. Deftly Cooper incised a flap in the dura.
‘We have exposed now the frontal lobe, and it will be necessary to displace this to explore the base of the skull.’
Working swiftly, but with obvious care and skill, Cooper used a stainless steel retractor, shaped like a shoe horn, to slide under the mass of brain and to lift it aside. Debra’s brain – staring at it, David seemed to be looking into the core of her being, it was vulnerable and exposed, everything that made her what she was. What part of that soft pale mass contained her writer’s genius, he wondered, from which of its many soft folds and coils sprang the fruitful fountain of her imagination, where was her love for him buried, what soft and secret place triggered her laughter and where was the vale of her tears? Its fathomless mystery held him intent as he watched the retractor probe deeper and deeper through the opening, and slowly the camera moved in to peer into the gaping depths of Debra’s skull.
Cooper opened the far end of the dura mater and commented on his progress.
‘We have here the anterior ridge of the sphenoid sinus, note this as our point of access to the chiasma—’
David was aware of the changed tone of the surgeon’s voice, the charging of tension as the disembodied hands moved slowly and expertly towards their goal.
‘Now this is interesting, can we see this on the screen, please? Yes! There is very clearly a bone deformation here—’
The voice was pleased, and the two students beside David exclaimed and leaned closer. David could see soft wet tissue and hard bright surfaces deep in the bottom of the wound, and the necks of steel instruments crowding into it, like metallic bees into the stamen of a pink and yellow bloom. Cooper scratched through to the metal of the grenade fragment.
‘Now here we have the foreign body, can we have a look at those X-ray plates again, Sister—’
The image cut quickly to the X-ray scanner, and again the students exclaimed. The girl puffed busily on her stinking Gauloise.
‘Thank you.’
The image cut back to the operating field, and now David saw the dark speck of the grenade fragment lodged in the white bone.
‘We will go for this, I think. Do you agree, Dr Friedman?’
‘Yes, I think you should take it.’
Delicately the long slender steel insects worried the dark fragment, and at last with a grunt of satisfaction it came free of its niche, and Cooper drew it out carefully. David heard the metallic ping as it was dropped into a waiting dish.
‘Good! Good!’ Cooper gave himself a little encouragement as he plugged the hole left by the fragment with beeswax to prevent haemorrhage. ‘Now we will trace out the optic nerves.’
They were two white worms, David saw them clearly, converging on their separate trails to meet and blend at the opening of the bony canal into which they disappeared.
‘We have got extraneous bone-growth here, clearly associated with the foreign body we have just removed. It seems to have blocked off the canal and to have squeezed or severed the nerve. Suggestions, Dr Friedman?’
‘I think we should excise that growth and try and ascertain just what damage we have to the nerve in that area.’
‘Good. Yes, I agree. Sister, I will use a fine bone-nibbler to get in there.’
The swift selection and handling of the bright steel instruments again, and then Cooper was working on the white bone growth which grew in the shape of coral from a tropical sea. He nibbled at it with the keen steel, and carefully removed each piece from the field as it came away.
‘What we have here is a bone splinter that was driven by the steel fragment into the canal. It is a large piece, and it must have been under considerable pressure, and it has consolidated itself here—’
He worked on carefully, and gradually the white worm of the nerve appeared from beneath the growth.
‘Now, this is interesting.’ Cooper’s tone altered. ‘Yes, look at this. Can we get a better view here, please?’ The camera zoomed in a little closer, and the focus realigned. ‘The nerve has been forced upwards, and flattened by pressure. The constriction is quite obvious, it has been pinched off – but it seems to be intact.’
Cooper lifted another large piece of bone aside, and now the nerve lay exposed over its full length.
‘This is really remarkable. I expect that it is a one in a thousand chance, or one in a million. There appears to be no damage to the actual nerve, and yet the steel fragment passed so close to it that it must have touched it.’
Delicately, Cooper lifted the nerve with the blunt tip of a probe.
‘Completely intact, but flattened by pressure. Yet I don’t suspect any degree of atrophy, Dr Friedman?’
‘I think we can confidently expect good recovery of function.’ Despite the masked features, the triumphant attitude of the two men was easily recognized, and watching them, David felt his own emotions at war. With a weight upon his spirits he watched Cooper close up, replacing the portion of Debra’s skull that he had removed, and once the flap of scalp was stitched back into place there was little external evidence of the extent and depth of their penetration. The image on the screen changed to another theatre where a small girl was to receive surgery for a massive hernia, and the fickle interest of the watching students changed with it.
David stood up and left the room. He rode up in the elevator and waited in the visitors’ room on Debra’s floor until the elevator doors opened again and two white-uniformed male nurses trundled Debra’s stretcher down the corridor to her room. She was deadly pale, with dark bruised-looking eyes and lips, her head swathed in a turban of white bandages. There was a dull brown smear of blood on the sheets that covered her and a whiff of anaesthetic hung in the corridor after she was gone.
Ruby Friedman came then, changed from the theatre garb into an expensive light-weight grey mohair suit and a twenty-guinea Dior silk tie. He looked tanned and healthy, and mightily delighted with his achievement.
‘You watched?’ he demanded, and when David nodded he went on exuberantly, ‘It was extraordinary.’ He chuckled, and rubbed his hands together with glee.
‘My God, something like this makes you feel good. Makes you feel that if you never do another thing in your life, it was still worthwhile.’ He was unable to restrain himself any longer and he threw a playful punch at David’s shoulder. ‘Extraordinary,’ he repeated, drawing it out into two words with relish, rolling the word around his tongue.
‘When will you know?’ David asked quietly.
‘I know already, I’ll stake my reputation on it!’
‘She will be able to see as soon as she comes around from the anaesthetic?’ David asked.
‘Good Lord, no!’ Ruby chuckled. ‘That nerve has been pinched off for years, it’s going to take time to recover.’
‘How long?’
‘It’s like a leg that has gone to sleep when you sit wrongly. When the blood flows back in, it’s still numb and tingling until the circulation is restored.’
‘How long?’ David repeated.
‘Immediately she wakes, that nerve is going to start going crazy, sending all sorts of wild messages to the brain. She’s going to see colours and shapes as though she is on a drug binge, and it’s going to take time to settle down – two weeks to a month, I would guess – then it will clear, the nerve will have recovered its full and normal function and she will begin having real effective vision.’
‘Two weeks,’ David said, and he felt the relief of a condemned man hearing of his reprieve.
‘You will te
ll her the good news, of course.’ Ruby gave another buoyant chuckle, shaped up to punch David again and then controlled himself. ‘What a wonderful gift you have been able to give her.’
‘No,’ David answered him. ‘I won’t tell her yet, I will find the right time later.’
‘You will have to explain the initial vision she will experience, the colour and shape hallucinations, they will alarm her.’
‘We will just tell her that it’s the normal after-effect of the operation. Let her adjust to that before telling her.’
‘David, I—’ Ruby began seriously, but he was cut off by the savage blaze of blue in the eyes that watched him from the mask of scarred flesh.
‘I will tell her!’ The voice shook with such fury, that Ruby took a step backwards. ‘That was the condition, I will tell her when I judge the time is ripe.’
Out of the darkness a tiny amber light glowed, pale and far off, but she watched it split like a breeding amoeba and become two, and each of those split and split again until they filled the universe in a great shimmering field of stars. The light throbbed and pulsed, vibrant and triumphant, and it changed from amber to brightest purest white like the sparkle from a paragon diamond, then it turned to the blue of sunlight on a tropical ocean, to soft forest greens and desert golds – an endless cavalcade of colours, changing, blending, fading, flaring in splendour that held her captive.
Then the colours took shape, they spun like mighty Catherine wheels, and soared and exploded, showered down in rivers of flame that burst again into fresh cascades of light.
She was appalled by the dimensions of shape and colour that engulfed her, bewildered by the beauty of it and at last she could bear it no longer in silence and she cried out.