Under the Knife(61)

There were none.

Montgomery clapped his hands once and smiled a shark’s grin. He looked hungry. “Okay, then! Let’s head over to the OR and the future of surgery!”

The audience rose as one and shuffled toward the exits.





RITA


Rita heard them before she saw them: the murmur of many voices, Chase’s radio-deejay rumble rising above the rest.

With the help of Thomas and Lisa, she’d already prepared everything for the big show: had slid Mrs. Sanchez into proper position on the table and inflated her abdomen with carbon dioxide, pumped through a hollow needle stuck in the skin, until she’d resembled a fat Buddha, the normal contours of her body flattened into soft, convex curves.

She’d made four incisions across her shaved, sterilized abdomen, and sunk through each incision an object shaped like a large screw, with a flat circular head on one side and sharp-tipped cone on the other. Finally, through one of the screws (or ports), she’d inserted Delores’s camera, which was beaming a live image of Mrs. Sanchez’s internal organs to the operating-room Jumbotron.

Rita was now sitting next to Mrs. Sanchez, in sterile gown and gloves, her hands resting lightly on a table covered with sterile instruments, Lisa sitting next to her. Thomas, who wasn’t scrubbed, hovered in the back of the room, ready to help on a moment’s notice. Nikhil and Dr. Chow were in position at the anesthesia station. The med students had been dispatched to other operating rooms.

Finney had again lapsed into silence.

Rita gazed up at Delores. The young project engineers who had helped design Delores used words like cool and retro to describe the metallic curves and jointed arms. But to Rita, Delores was … unnerving. Even a little sinister. A gigantic metallic insect, straddling Mrs. Sanchez, a leg secured to each side of the table, with the camera and three-jointed arms pointed at her abdomen like four enormous stingers.

The protuberance from the central cylinder looked like a misshapen head, complete with colored dials for beady eyes, and a panel that could pass for an ogling mouth. She hoped the next version, Delores 2.0, would be less intimidating. Because if she was a patient and caught a glimpse of this damn thing perched over her, she thought she’d never set foot in a hospital again.

No turning back now, lovely Rita.

She drew a deep breath.

Please, God.

She stood up as Chase led the visitors into the room.

Please. Let everything turn out okay.

She counted about twenty of them, more than Chase had been expecting, and they fanned out in a rough semicircle facing the operating table.

“Well, here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Step right in, there’s room for everyone. This is our biggest operating room, designed to comfortably accommodate up to thirty visitors. Can you hear me in the back? Sir? Wave your hand if you can hear me. Good. Can you see me? Good. Now. I’d like to introduce you to one of our star faculty members and our auto-surgeon team leader, Dr. Rita Wu.”

As part of the prearranged routine she and Chase (well, Chase, mostly) had worked out, Rita waved to the group. She was grateful for her mask, which covered her mouth, so she didn’t have to muster a fake smile.

“Good morning!” she called out with an enthusiasm she was not experiencing. She felt like a tour guide addressing a high-school field trip. “Thank you all for being here today. Delores and I are excited to demonstrate the world’s first fully automated surgery.” She laid her hand on Delores’s cylindrical core, which was covered by a transparent, disposable sterile cover. “This is Delores. Delores, say hello.”

“Hello, Dr. Wu.” Delores’s stereophonic speakers were located on the central core, close to the panel that looked like a mouth.

“Delores, how are you feeling today?”

“I feel like a million dollars, thank you, Dr. Wu.”

“Which is almost how much she costs!” Montgomery added (right on cue), to much laughter.

God, Chase has them eating out of the palm of his hand.

“Delores, what kind of surgery will you be performing today?” Rita asked, staying on script.

“I will be performing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, an operation in which the gallbladder is removed through small incisions in the abdomen.”

“Gallbladder removal is a very straightforward operation,” Chase said. “One of the first our surgical trainees are able to perform on their own.”

“What does the gallbladder do?” someone asked.

“It stores a digestive enzyme called bile. Bile is made in the liver and helps absorb fat. The gallbladder can be removed without any long-term consequences.”

“Are there any other operations you’ve been developing for the robot?” the hospital CEO asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact: a laparoscopic appendix removal. We’ve already written the software for it, and we’re currently searching for a suitable patient. Now. I’d next like to introduce you to Dr. Chow, our chief of anesthesiology, who will discuss a second system we’re testing today: a machine that automatically delivers anesthesia.”

Dr. Chow took a step forward, his hands clasped primly behind his back. “Thank you, Chase. In concert with our surgical colleagues, we’ve developed a robot for administering anesthesia medications. We’ve nicknamed it Morpheus, after the Greek god of dreams.” He placed his hand on a nondescript black-and-silver box the size and shape of a laser printer, sitting on a metal table a short distance from Mrs. Sanchez’s head. “This is Morpheus. I’m sorry to say Morpheus doesn’t talk! But Morpheus has an important job: to automate the job of the anesthesiologist.”