Making Amends

MAKING AMENDS

The OR clock had shown 01.22 as I'd left my resident to staple the Pt. Then I’d washed and bedded down in the call room planning a few hours sleep before checking on Dulce, my wife, now recovering in the converted Covid Wing. But it wasn’t to be a - “please call me” on the bedside beeper woke me at 03.20. Most people think pagers are caveman technology but at St Mary’s we still like them. I rang Janice.   

      ‘Hi Doc, very sorry to wake you so soon. A gunshot has just been brought in. Neck wound. Bleeding. Carotid I think.’

      I checked my forehead for lacerations or abrasions, (I’d banged my head on the bed as I jerked awake), ‘thank fuck there’ll only be bruising’, I thought. Then a quick face wash, a breath mint and I finger-combed my hair - now beginning to be streaked with grey. Distinguished. Think Clooney before he became so dog-eared. I shrugged on my brown cashmere and my twill slacks - ready to battle, once more, with the Reaper.   

       I’m senior thoracic and after 15 years Janice knows I’m the best there is even though ENT isn’t my specialty. Our new Pt was laid out on a stretcher in the passage annex outside theatre 2: a young woman, long, straight black hair fanned out on the pillow, her face whiter than a frog’s belly. A beautiful face. Full lips, high, prominent cheek bones, a deep dimple on her pointed chin. The emergency wound dressing, tight around her neck, was still leaking fresh blood, bright red, oxygenated. Arterial. Janice had been right as always.

     ‘The Reaper can’t have this one’. I wanted her for myself. Life, I’ve found, is about comprises and accommodations.

      After my last indiscretion had been discovered, (publicly, embarrassingly), I had begged Dulce for a second chance. I had promised, on my knees, in tears, there would be no more young women in my life. Ever. Dulce and the twins would become the very centre of my universe. Corny I know, but then Dulce wasn’t the brightest deb at the ball: but then again being an heiress does count for a lot. The last months have been hard for me: a divorce would mean the loss of the estate and of my racehorses and I’ve kept my promise, I’ve been a very good boy. Making amends.   

      The scrub room was busy -

      ‘Morning Doc’,

      ‘Hi again T’ - this from Hector, my Gas Man,

      ‘Morning Tarq’,

      ‘Good morning Doctor Roberts’ – from a new theatre nurse (chic in rose pink scrubs with a deep slant V that revealed a promising upper thorax).

       I’d better introduce myself. I’m Tarquin Joseph Sleigh Roberts. Known here as Doctor T so to differentiate me from the other Doctor Roberts: Doctor J - for Justin, (poofter name) and, whilst also a “cutter”, he’s a “rear admiral”, a proctologist, so there oughtn’t to be confusion. He’s fifteen years younger – but without my looks and gravitas. He’s also without breeding. An appalling “Brummie” accent. Long ago I added a hint of “regional” to my “county accent”, why can’t he change his? The worst of it is that most of St. Mary’s women have the hots for him. Dulce included.  

      In theatre, Janice was finishing the ice pack around our Pt’s head, Hector had put her under and I quickly made the anterior sternum incision, exposing the wound area. ‘Pressure please’ I called to Hottie (the new nurse). She quickly pressed and kept her index and middle finger hard down on the superior thyroid. ‘Well trained’, I thought, ‘we can work together’. Later I had a chance to study her a little more closely. Skin warm, the colour of milky cocoa, a few shades darker than is normal around here. Skin I’d love to run my lips and my tongue over. All over.

       Janice sucked as much exudate, blood, and plasma from the site as she could, double clamped the artery above and below the wound and once I had the correct size patch in place I used PolyG sutures and my superfine stitches to sew up. I slowly released the clamps (one by one to reduce the pressure surge) and checked  for leakages (there were none) and left Janice to close.

       At 04.30, still in blood-spotted greens and paper overshoes, I headed over to my Dulce. She could have been sent home by now, but with the third semester twins she was carrying I couldn’t be too careful. The twins, a boy and a girl, are dizygotic: rare in families with no twins in their bloodlines, but not unheard of. In neither Dulce’s nor my family is there a history of twins but, all the same, three very precious lives. They had their bloods taken and late yesterday I had the results: there’d been no viral antibodies in the twins but their blood typing had given a different confirmation.

I unlocked the Virus Wing’s airlock containment doors into a deserted passage and, in the makeshift dressing-room, over scrubs, I put on gown, hood, 3mm nitril gloves, and duct-taped the joins. Then N95 mask and goggles. Finally I replaced the dirtied overshoes with fresh. One can’t be too careful. In the mirror I could be anyone at all: I was unrecognisable.

       A full vial was in my left pocket and two unwrapped syringes in my right. The corridors were still empty – it was shift change. Vital staff only. My darling Dulce, in a room to herself, as befits my wife, was dead to the world: she’d been given something to help her sleep, to aid recovery. ‘She really is a GLM’, I thought, (Good looking Mum in medics slang): the little weight loss from the sickness really suited her. When we had married I hadn’t known that one can’t love someone simply because they look like a supermodel - there needs to be another reason (as well as her wealth) and I have never found it.

       Holding the vial upside down I filled a syringe with cloudy fluid, tapped it, pressed the plunger to release any bubbles that may cause a life-threatening embolism, raised her gown, (her pregnancy bump had dropped lower I noted), then emptied it in the crease of her groin. They’d all be dead within minutes. Three more “virus victims”. Dulce and the Rear Admiral’s bastard babies.

       After changing into the new tweed two button blazer that Harold had sent from Dene and Skinner (10 Savile Row), and, after Daisy’s special breakfast in the Doctor’s dining room, I planned to check on my gunshot. In life, I’ve found, careful planning is all. Later, maybe the new OR nurse would enjoy a country drive in the Aston Martin Vanquish. ‘Appropriate name in the circumstances’, I thought.

      I had wondered a little whether I’d feel any remorse, (for the babies, not for the slut), but I didn’t then and haven’t yet – Dulce had simply made amends.