Susan smiled in return but it was a half-smile. She was expecting the tirade to commence immediately,
“After I recovered and realized what you were after,” continued Bellows, “I started to think that it was a pretty ridiculous response on my part to bolt. If I had had any sense I would have stood there and faced you despite my dress … or the lack of it. At any rate, it made me think that I might have been relying on appearances a bit too much this morning. I’m a second-year resident, that’s all. You and your friends are my first group of students. What I really want to do is to make this time here as profitable as possible for you all, and in the process, profitable for me as well. Least of all, we should enjoy ourselves.”
With a final smile and slight nod of the head, Bellows walked away from the stunned Susan to check which room the staff gallbladder was in. It was Susan’s turn to feel a sense of confusion as she looked after him. The resolve her feelings of anger and rebelliousness had evoked had been undermined by Bellows’s sudden insight into himself. In fact it made her rebelliousness seem a trifle foolish and out of place. The fact that Susan had stimulated the insight fortuitously made it obvious that she couldn’t take credit for it and that she would have to revise some of her impressions about Mark Bellows. She watched Bellows walk all the way over to the main OR desk; he was obviously at home in the alien environment. For the first time Susan was a little impressed. In fact, she thought that he really wasn’t that bad looking either.
The others were already prepared to go down to the OR. George Miles showed Susan how to put on the paper booties over her shoes and tuck in the conductive tape. Next she put on the hood and finally the mask. Once everyone was so attired, they passed the main OR desk and pushed through the swinging doors into the “clean” area of the ORs themselves.
Susan had never been in an OR before. She had seen a couple of operations through the gallery windows but such an experience was akin to watching it on TV. The glass partition effectively isolated the drama. One did not feel a part of it. While walking down the long corridor Susan felt a certain excitement mixed with fear of the mortality of people. As they passed OR after OR, Susan could see clusters of figures bent over what she knew were sleeping patients with their fragile insides open to the elements. A hospital gurney approached them with a scrub nurse pulling and an anesthesiologist pushing. As the group came abreast Susan could see that the anesthesiologist was matter-of-factly holding the patient’s chin back while the patient retched violently. “I hear there’s almost forty inches of packed powder at Waterville Valley,” said the anesthesiologist to the scrub nurse. “I’m going Friday right after work,” returned the scrub nurse as the pair passed by Susan toward the recovery room. The image of the tortured face of the patient so recently operated on imprinted itself in Susan’s susceptible consciousness and she shuddered involuntarily.
The group pulled up in front of room 18.
“Try to keep the chatter to a minimum,” said Bellows, looking through the window in the door. “The patient is already asleep. Too bad, I wanted you to see that. Well, no matter. There will be a lot of moving around during the draping procedure, etcetera, so stay back against the right wall. Once they get underway, move around so that you can see something. If you have questions, save them until later, OK?” Bellows looked at each student He smiled anew when he met Susan’s gaze, then pushed open the OR door.
“Ah, Professor Bellows, welcome,” boomed a large, gowned, gloved, and sterile figure hovering in the background near some X-rays. “Professor Bellows has brought his brood of students to watch the fastest hands in the East,” he said laughing. He held up his arms in an exaggerated Hollywood surgical fashion with the hands up and bent outward as far as they would go. “I hope you have told the impressionable youths that the spectacle they are about to see is a rare treat.”