The Surgeon Was a Lady Read online

  ***

  Willie marched out of the office and passed the Cow in Reception. She banged the door as she left and the Secretary called out to her as she was leaving,

  “Manners cost nothing, Doctor...”

  But Willie’s only comment as she pulled her gloves over her fingers and closed her eyes in contempt, was ‘Drop dead’...

  ***

  “I think she is one of the rudest women I have ever met, Mr. Wexinford,” the Secretary complained when she went in to collect the coffee cups, but old Wexy simply stared out of the window, where he could see Willie striding off in her own inimitable fashion in the street below.

  “You have never seen her in the Theatre,” he said, “She is a brilliant surgeon, just as her father was before her.”

  “I still think she should mind her manners... don’t you?”

  The Professor smiled again and wiped his pince-nez with a tissue from a box on his desk.

  “She’s a rough diamond... rough and uncut, but that is what brings out the finest qualities in her, my dear. I am sorry you feel as you do and I apologies on her behalf, but I have seen her operate... and when she does that, she is no longer rough or uncut... but a diamond, polished and supreme... a jewel beyond price... a brilliant jewel.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Willie snapped off her surgical gloves and slung them haphazardly across the dressing trolley as Staff Nurse Gifford’s eyes showed disapproval from the oblong space between her mask and cap.

  “There’s a hole in these bloody things, Staff... You should have checked them and you know that... Now get me another pair.”

  Gifford’s eyes closed in exasperation, but she went to the glove drum and pulled out a fresh pair with her sterile tongs, plunking them on the trolley and spraying the air with a shower of delicate talcum powder as the sterile drum closed with a bang. She had had more than enough of Pepper-pot-Fehrenbach, by this time she thought, but she had more to endure before the operation started... Much more, but she expected it.

  “Scalpel... Swab... Forceps... not those, the Spencer Wells, stupid.” but the forceps landed heavily on the floor, twenty pair of them on a long pin and crashed against the Theatre table. Willie would never admit to having dropped them... that was not her style. “Forceps,” she demanded again, “the correct ones... for a change... and put them INTO my hand this time... This is not a juggling act.”

  She worked fast and with great precision, stopping only for Staff Nurse Gifford to swab her perspiring brow from time to time and even that, had to be done at regular intervals... There was no mercy for Willie’s staff, once her operation was in progress. There was no dithering and if a nurse should faint by any chance, she was carried out and replaced before you could count to five... Willie’s Theatre staff were expected to match her efficiency and more than one nurse had found herself back in ward-nursing when she didn’t...

  ***

  The operation took just under three hours and Gifford swathed the head of the patient in crepe bandage before she called a porter to take her back to the ward.

  “Keep that kidney dish at her mouth until she comes round, Nurse... and I want to examine the barf... understood?” snapped Willie, but Nurse Gifford stood back, uncertain of what was expected of her until Willie shouted her orders again.

  “The barf, girl... the barf... the vomit, stupid,” she rasped as she raised her eyes to the heavens in exasperation.

  “Yes Doctor Fehrenbach.”

  Nurse Gifford ripped her mask from her face as the porter smiled at her.

  “And three bags full Doctor Fehrenbach,” he whispered as Gifford grinned.

  “That must be the fourth craniotomy this week, isn’t it Nurse?” Willie asked as she sat down to her coffee in the duty room. “How many ops does that make in total since last Monday?”

  The Staff Nurse looked at her Report Diary. It was Thursday March 24th. Her lips moved as she counted in silence.

  “Seventeen counting that minor scalp abrasion,” she said and Willie screwed her eyes up as she blew on her coffee.

  “Make that sixteen then. The scalp wound only had to be cleaned up and the skin sutured. You did that yourself, didn’t you Nurse?”

  Gifford nodded as Willie stood up and tore her Theatre gown from her shoulders, breaking the tapes in her hurry, which she knew would have to be repaired again before it could be washed and sent to the autoclave. She would willingly have done another seventeen operations and more for the rest of the week, rather than perform on the one person who haunted her mind. She still could not bring herself to operate on Paul... She would not trust her own integrity... and yet, she was aware that with every operation she had ever performed, there came a moment when she had to use, not only her skill... but her morality as a human being, let alone a surgeon on that anonymous body that lay so still before her... awaiting her every move with hope... at the end of her knife... Why couldn’t she turn off then when it came to her husband? He was just another body under the influence of the anaesthetic... He would feel nothing. She shuddered... he wouldn’t... but she would... Why could she not regard him as number one or two or seven in a daily list with no faces and no names. Why couldn’t she just do that and get on with it? After all, when the sterile towels were clipped, it was only an inch or two of skin that would be visible to her on that shaven head. There were no eyes to condemn or recriminate... No tongue to praise or defame and no ear to hear the click of the instruments... or the one that dropped to the sterile scrubbed floor through nervous fingers.

  ***

  She made her way to the outer hall and asked the porter to call her a taxi as a voice whispered near her ear.

  “Penny for them...”

  “What? Oh hell... Are you still here?”

  “’Fraid so... Does that worry you too much?”

  It was Bret whatever his name was... she couldn’t remember and yet... he could have been the father of the child she lost... No... He WAS the father of the child she miscarried... McGregor... McFarlane or something like that, she thought and delved into her purse for her handkerchief.

  “You flatter yourself,” she said with her head in her handbag... “You working here now... At St. Mark’s? Haven’t seen you around... Wasn’t particularly looking, but the smell should have told me, eh?” She yawned and closed her bag.

  “Theatre 3,” he answered, “Mostly abdominal and all the other lower fleshy parts,” he grinned as he spoke, hoping it might bring a smile to her solemn face, but it didn’t and Willie looked at him sleepily, wondering what the hell she ever saw in him. This thin streak of humanity who kept his brain between his skinny anaemic legs... and she felt a sudden wave of self-disgust as she looked at him, standing there, in his clean-cut and well ironed Theatre gown, without the slightest trace of sweat, let alone blood, preening himself for having been accepted at his interview for the post of a junior surgeon in ‘bellies and balls’... She wouldn’t let him touch her now... No way, not in a million years and not if he wore ten rubbers on his pathetic appendage.

  “Doing anything this evening?” he asked as he disrobed his gown and handed it casually to a nurse standing nearby. Willie yawned again but made no answer.

  “Oh Come on Willie. I’m asking you out to dinner... that’s all. I won’t rape you.”

  “Too bloody sure you won’t,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Why can’t we just be friends, eh? What? We always did get along well together in the old days, didn’t we, old girl?”

  She was about to leave the hospital building but her taxi hadn’t yet arrived and Bret touched her arm as she stuck her nose in the air.

  “Hey... Did you hear the one about the two old virgin nurses who always went into the Theatre together, because they were afraid of what the surgeon would say? He was a rude old bloke, you see, Bret went on. “Didn
’t give a toss how he described the naughty bits...”

  Bret moved a step nearer to Willie as he spoke and Willie shuffled where she stood and wished her taxi would come as she kept looking at her watch, but Bret would not be dissuaded from telling his tale. “Well now, this old surgeon used to crack jokes to make these two old dears blush, you see. Well, you know what its like, don’t you?”

  “DO I?” she remarked in a loud voice, showing her annoyance, but Bret was determined to finish his story.

  “Now he was doing a circumcision one morning... this old surgeon... straight forward thing you know... no complications, but in order to shock the ladies, he started talking about some island he knew where the men were known to have willies that were sometimes as long as twelve inches and as thick as your wrist... Of course the old dears downed tools immediately and marched out of the Theatre in disgust... but just as they got to the door, the old boy called after them. ‘No need to rush girls. There’s no boat there till Friday.’

  Bret Whatsisname roared with laughter and waited for Willie to laugh also.

  “Is that IT?” she enquired.

  “Yes that’s it... Don’t you think it’s funny?”

  She glanced at the ceiling.

  “Ha... Ha...” She said dryly and yawned again. “I must be off. That’s my cab at the door.”

  “Finished your little lot for the day then, have you?” he asked as the porter held the revolving door for her to leave.

  “Yes and I just want to get home and have a nice bath to wash off all this hospital crap that’s suddenly blown in... then I’ll have an early night.”

  She hoped he would take the hint; leave her alone and go away.

  “Oh Ho... Early night, eh..? Whose the lucky chap this time?” he sneered and Willie turned slowly to face him. She knew that she should have left the hospital that moment as her taxi was waiting outside but she couldn’t resist an answer to his snide remark.

  “Someone right outside of your league Bret... He’s got class... He’s got style and he knows how to treat a lady.”

  “Cor! Who is this Adonis? Do I know him?” he shouted after her as she got into the taxi, closed the door and opened the window.

  “You might do,” she shouted, “I married him seven years ago... Good-bye.”

  But she didn’t go straight home to her bath and an early night as she had promised herself, instead she dismissed the taxi after she had been on her journey for only a few miles and went into a little garden square, situated quite near the hospital and sat down on one of the long wooden seats there.

  It was cool and fresh in the early part of the evening. The sky was red... Shepherd’s delight, she thought as she shook her hair loosely around her face to free it of the lingering smell of ether. A purple grey cloud slid along the horizon, waiting to pounce over the watery moon and declare the night. Willie reflected again on her life as she had been living it and she wasn’t very pleased, even if she knew that the circumstances could never be changed... or if indeed, she wanted them to be. She sighed... longing for something that she didn’t know existed and feeling that whatever that was, it had passed her by... somewhere along the way. There was an emptiness in her heart and in her soul... that tantalized and mystified her at the same time. She would fill that chasm with something, if she only knew what that something was, but she was also aware that she might fill it with more crap than she already had at present and she wondered as she stared at the russet sky, what her life would have been like if she had been allowed to be simply, the daughter of Sylvana De Marco. How she would have lived and more to the point, how she would have loved... She certainly would never have become a brain surgeon and she tried to picture her mother’s face. They say she was beautiful... but she would never know. She had no photograph of her and her other mother couldn’t or didn’t want to help her discover what Sylvana had been like... and then like a bolt out of the blue, she suddenly thought... if her mother had been an actress, surely there must have been photographs of her somewhere.

  “Am I like her?” she asked the moon, but only the wind blew in answer and a few drops of light rain peppered her face. Willie had never considered herself to be particularly beautiful, but she admitted to having regular features and someone at the Medical College had once said of her that she had a particularly attractive shaped head... but was that for anatomical dissection and analysis, she wondered... after she had gone on beyond?

  A faint wind started to blow up and made her pull her coat collar around her neck and tiny rain spattering wet her hand. She rose from the old wooden seat, reluctant to abandon her thoughts at that moment, but the purple grey clouds had won the day and the sky was beginning to look decisively darker than it had when she first sat down. She looked at the seat as she was leaving, where someone had carved their initials through a cut-out heart and arrow at the back rest. Somewhere she hoped Brian still loved his Elizabeth... and she tried not to think too cynically. She had enjoyed the peace of those few moments sitting there alone and undisturbed... except for the crying rain... and where she was totally devoid of the scientific ramifications that cluttered her life and with only the faintest trace of that awful ether to remind her of who she was. She resolved that she would return to the garden square soon and hoped to continue the thoughts that were hers alone and where she had found such peace and stillness in a heart that throbbed with such fear for the future.

  ***

  “Good evening Seyone... Is Paul asleep?” she asked, respecting Fred’s new name as she met her male nurse on the stairs. It was ten o’clock and he had been on duty since eight.

  “I think so... he was dozing off when I left him about half-an-hour ago, but I’ll just look in on him now.”

  Willie put out her hand and touched Seyone’s arm.

  “No... No, don’t do that... but thank you.” Seyone was surprised at the display of courtesy and manners. “Seyone... if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend a little time alone with my husband,” she added softly and as he smiled at her she could see by the tenderness in his face that he understood.

  “I’ll go down to the lounge,” he said, “ There’s a programme on the television I’d like to watch. Call me if you need me.”

  She ran her fingers across her brow and tucked her hair behind her ear as she closed her eyes.

  “Open a bottle of wine... Share it with Danny,” she said. Willie was getting used to the new names by now and she liked them.

  She closed the door quietly behind her as she slipped noiselessly into Paul’s room and stood still, watching him from a distance with only the light of the moon reflecting across his pale face. She approached the bed slowly but he didn’t stir. Strange, she thought as she looked down at him sleeping, breathing lightly with his lips trembling slightly at odd moments, quivering sensitively as if pleading to be kissed. It occurred to her that she had never seen him like that before and then she realized in the silent shadows of the moonlit room, where only the cricket could be heard in his incessant, monotonous chirping from his hearth outside, that much to her own disgust... she had never ever taken the time...

  She had never cared to be alone with Paul since his illness and for any length of time and she felt ashamed. She touched his thumb lightly, afraid that she might wake him, but he did not move. She was happy to be where she was and memories crashed through her mind, like a torrent of blustering rain... Paul was standing beside her, eagerly waiting to pronounce his marriage vows and proud to have her as his wife... His face radiant and his eyes full of joy and love... “I do,” she could hear him say again. “I do... I do...” Her eyes filled with tears and she brushed them away hastily with the back of her hand. “For better... for worse... for richer... for poorer... in sickness...” She could stand no more. Her heart was breaking... aching as his cool fingers moved in her hand and he opened his eyes to tell her in his own particular way how m
uch he loved her.

  Tears stood out in her eyes again, but she did nothing to prevent them from falling this time, allowing them to roll freely down her warm, shamed cheeks. Paul watched her mouth as she tried to speak to him, but no words would come. No words would suffice for the ecstasy of that sublime moment when she lay down by his side and kissed his hand. It was her way of telling him that all was well and that she was there with him... the place where every wife should be with the husband she loves... He moved, trying to turn so that he could see her face, but the agony in his eyes told her that it was too much.

  “Don’t, my darling... don’t... but soon, yes very soon, you will be able to turn as you wish... and walk and talk and laugh again... and the time for tears will be over... I promise you...”

  His fingers moved again and his brow furrowed as he could not understand what she meant and she placed her lips close to his ear.

  “Darling... I have seen Mr. Wexinford. There may be a way for you to recover all of your senses, but it would require surgery and... very, very soon. The operation may take quite some time... about five or six hours, perhaps, I imagine. Do you think you could stand that, my love?”

  Paul’s eyes widened and his fingers pleaded earnestly with her to allow this miracle that she talked about and before she could say anything else to him, he pointed his finger towards her... with a peace and serenity in his face that baffled her.

  “No darling... Not me. Someone else, but not me,” she said softly and a quick reaction in his eye told her of the disappointment and displeasure he felt when she said that... That she should refuse him this chance of freedom from the Purgatory that now held him fast... and again, shame filled her heart. “It is not that I would not do it my darling... I cannot... I could not,” she said but his eyes would not leave her face as his visual demand became even stronger.

  She released her hand from his feeble hold and dried her eyes as she walked across the room and picked up the telephone, dialling slowly and resolutely and waiting sadly for someone to answer.