Under the Knife(56)

All in all, Sebastian had to admit, a goddamn impressive show.

The hologram hovered behind and above Montgomery, spinning in slow revolutions. One end of it came within a few inches of Montgomery’s head, appearing as if it would give him a good whack across the skull.

“The answer to your question, Ms. Grant, is robotics. We built the world’s first fully automated surgical robot.”





RITA


Rita was waiting in OR 10 when Mrs. Sanchez—

(whom she needed to operate on)

—arrived.

She’d been running equipment checks with her handpicked, two-person surgical team: Lisa Rodriguez, and a physician’s assistant named Thomas—a gruff, large man of few words, many tattoos (some of which ran across the top of his bald head), and extraordinary surgical competence who was a die-hard Oakland Raiders fan and rode a Harley-Davidson. Had the hospital allowed for such things, Rita was sure he would wear black scrubs in the OR, maybe accessorize them with some shoulder chains and make the whole ensemble look good.

Chase didn’t much care for Thomas. Rita suspected it was some kind of guy-testosterone thing because Thomas was so completely not her type but exuded a manly charisma that she nevertheless found sexy, and which probably set men like Chase on edge. Whatever. To Chase’s credit, at least he hadn’t interfered with the composition of Rita’s team.

Spencer, on the other hand, liked Thomas. He always had.

Finney hadn’t said a word since the locker room. That could be good or bad. Rita decided probably bad. She knew he was still there, could sense his presence. She wanted to ask him why he’d stopped talking, but the company of so many others precluded doing so.

And, at any rate, all that couldn’t be helped, because she needed to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.

Her eyes swept the room, across the operating table and all of the equipment, verifying everything was in its place. OR 10 was enormous: three times the size of the other operating rooms and designed to accommodate large groups of observers for teaching. An outsize video screen, seven feet high by nine feet wide, dominated one wall, its purpose to project live images of the operation being performed. Sort of a Jumbotron for the OR.

She shifted her gaze from the screen to the door as two anesthesiologists, Dr. Henry Chow, the affable head of anesthesia, and a young assistant professor, Nikhil, wheeled Mrs. Sanchez to the operating table—

(The same one I woke up on this morning but don’t think about that now, can’t think about that now.)

—located near the room’s center.

For a routine operation, Nikhil would be the senior anesthesiologist, and Dr. Chow would be off in administrative meetings, or maybe overseeing several different operating rooms at once. But this was no routine operation.

A young woman and man, their ID badges and timid postures identifying them as med students, followed a few respectful paces behind the gurney, as if trailing a hearse in a funeral. Rita sensed it was their first time in an OR: Their eyes were wide, and their movements as stiff and rigid as wooden puppets.

Rita had no med students with her today. Or residents. Chase had decreed that the auto-surgeon project was too important to allow for the presence of surgical trainees.

Nikhil and Dr. Chow took position at the anesthesia station located at the head of the table, amidst an array of video monitors, a wheeled cart containing a pharmacy’s worth of drugs, a few IV poles, and several cylindrical steel tanks full of gas.

Rita thought Nikhil a good guy: young and inexperienced, in only his first year of practice, but smart. Confident, but not too confident. He knew when to ask for help and wasn’t self-conscious about doing it. Better still: He spoke fluent Spanish, in which he was now talking to Mrs. Sanchez in reassuring tones. She nodded, and Nikhil, Thomas, and Lisa helped her scoot from the gurney over to the operating table—

(The same table the EXACT same table I woke up on NAKED but don’t think about that now because I need to operate on Mrs. Sanchez.)

—and lie down on her back. Lisa drew warm blankets up over her as Thomas pushed the empty gurney out into the hallway.

Rita stepped up and took Mrs. Sanchez’s hand. As always with surgery, Mrs. Sanchez was the only person in the room not wearing a surgical mask. She smiled bravely, but her jaw muscles looked tensed.

“Okay, Doctor?” she asked. “Okay?” She squeezed Rita’s hand, and a few tears spilled from the corners of her eyes. Gravity tugged them down toward her ears, and they left silvery wakes over her crow’s-feet before disappearing underneath the elastic rim of her scrub cap.

To hell with sterility.

Using her free hand, the one not locked in Mrs. Sanchez’s grip, Rita pulled down her surgical mask and rallied a feeble smile. “Yes. Okay.”

Oh, God, please let that be so.

“Está bien,” Mrs. Sanchez said. Nikhil placed a clear plastic mask over her nose and mouth.

“Respire profundo por favor, se?ora.”

Mrs. Sanchez inhaled and exhaled, in and out, deep and slow. Her chest rose and fell.

“Muy bien,” Nikhil said.

Mrs. Sanchez closed her eyes.

Please, God, don’t let it be for the last time.

To distract herself from the churning in her stomach, Rita concentrated on what Nikhil was doing. She watched him depress the plunger of a syringe filled with milky white fluid, which sped through an IV line and into Mrs. Sanchez’s arm. She groaned and jerked her arm.