“Thank you. I think I’ll head right over there and see if I can catch him.”
“You’re welcome,” Tracy said. She returned Kelly’s wave and then watched the woman walk swiftly back around the rink. “Good luck,” Tracy murmured to herself.
TWO
Friday, January 16th
All twenty-five of the University Medical Center’s operating rooms were identical. Having been recently renovated and re-equipped, they were up-to-the-minute in every way. The floors were a white composite that gave the impression of granite. The walls were gray tile. The lights and fittings were either stainless steel or gleaming nickel.
OR twenty was one of two rooms used for open-heart surgery and at four-fifteen it was still in full operation. Between the perfusionists, anesthesiologists, circulating and scrub nurses, the surgeons and all the necessary high-tech equipment, the room was quite crowded. At that moment the patient’s still heart was in full view, surrounded by a profusion of bloodstained tapes, trailing sutures, metal retractors, and pale green drapes.
“Okay, that’s it,” Dr. Kim Reggis said, as he handed his needle holder to the scrub nurse and straightened up to relieve the stiffness in his back. He’d been operating since seven-thirty that morning. This was his third and final case. “Let’s stop the cardioplegia solution and get this ticker going.”
Kim’s command resulted in a minor flurry of activity at the console of the bypass machine. Switches were flipped. “Warming up,” the profusionist announced to no one in particular.
The anesthesiologist stood and looked over the ether screen. “How much longer do you estimate?” she asked.
“We’ll be closing here in five minutes,” Kim said. “Provided the heart cooperates, which looks promising.”
After a few erratic beats, the heart picked up its normal rhythm.
“Okay,” Kim said. “Let’s go off bypass.”
For the next twenty minutes there was no talk, everyone on the team knew his job, so communication wasn’t necessary. After the split sternum had been wired together, Kim and Dr. Tom Bridges stepped back from the heavily draped patient and began removing their sterile gowns, gloves, and plastic face shields. At the same time the thoracic residents moved into the vacated positions.
“I want a plastic repair on that incision,” Kim called to the residents. “Is that understood?”
“You got it. Dr. Reggis,” Tom Harkly said. Tom was the Chief Thoracic resident.
“But don’t make it your life’s work,” Kim teased. “The patient has been under long enough.”
Kim and Torn emerged from the OR into the operating-room corridor. Both used the scrub sink to wash the talc off their hands. Dr. Tom Bridges was a cardiac surgeon like Kim. They had been assisting each other for years and had become friends although their relationship remained essentially professional. They frequently covered for each other, especially on weekends.
“That was a slick job,” Tom commented. “I don’t know how you manage to get those valves in so perfectly and make it look so easy.”
Kim’s practice over the years had evolved into mostly valve replacement. Tom had gravitated more toward bypass procedures.
“Just like I don’t know how you can sew those tiny coronary arteries the way you do,” Kim answered.
Leaving the sink, Kim interlocked his fingers and stretched them high over his six-foot-three-inch frame. Then he bent down and put his palms on the floor, keeping his legs straight to stretch out his lower back. Kim was an athletic, trim, sinewy type who’d played football, basketball, and baseball for Dartmouth as an undergraduate. Because of the demands of time his current exercise had been reduced to infrequent tennis and lots of hours on a home exercise bike.
Tom, on the other hand, had given up. He, too, had played football in college, but after years of no exercise, the muscle bulk that he’d not lost had turned mostly to fat. In contrast to Kim, he had a beer belly despite the fact that he rarely drank beer.
The two men started down the tiled corridor, which at that time of day was relatively peaceful. Only nine of the OR’s were in use, with two more available for emergencies. It was about standard for the three-to-eleven shift.
Kim rubbed his stubbled, angular face. Following his normal routine, he’d shaved that morning at five-thirty, and now, twelve hours later, he had the proverbial five-o’clock shadow. He ran a hand through his long, dark brown hair. As a teenager in the early seventies he’d let his hair grow beyond shoulder length. Now, at forty-three, it was still on the long side for someone in his position, though it was nowhere near as long as it had been.