Green for Danger (8 page)

“Won't be long now. You'd better wait outside while they're doing Higgins; he won't be very interesting anyway.” She clumped off in her big, white rubber boots. Sister Bates broke open little glass phials and threaded up needles with gut. Eden fished out a bluish-pink coil of intestine, holding it clamped to the stomach while Moon cut and stitched. They packed it all into the belly at last and tucked it neatly away. “Won't be long now, Barney. Retract please, Eden. Harder if you can …”

It was over. Major Moon threw the last of the forceps on to the tray and stood looking down at the patient, peeling off his gloves, with an expression of calm satisfaction in his faded blue eyes. All gone off nicely; no strain or fuss; and as pretty an ulcer as he had ever seen. He went out to the washroom, followed by Eden. “I
thought
it wasn't a diverticulum.… Crossley seemed to think from the X-ray that it might have been a diverticulum …” Sister Bates and Woods bound up the yellow abdomen with its rough, red, five-inch wound all puckered together with stitches and metal clips, tossed aside the rubber sheet and pulled down the blankets, leaving the mouth and nostrils free to the air. Barney tidied up his trolley, got to his feet and stretched himself and went out to the washrooms. Woods scurried about the theatre clearing away swabs and dressings, placing a new basin of saline for the surgeon's hands, staggering across the room with a fresh cylinder of gas clasped like a large, black baby in her arms; tidying away the used tubes and scraps of gauze from the anæsthetist's trolley and placing a fresh airway tube in an enamel bowl. Esther went out to the anæsthetic-room and wheeled Higgins into the theatre; they lifted him on to the table, and slid away the metal poles of the stretcher, leaving the canvas under him, ready for lifting him off again. He stared about him with frightened and clouded eyes.

Barney came over to him and took his hand, speaking to him gently and soothingly. “You're going to be quite O.K., old man. I'll just put a mask over your nose and you'll breathe in and out quietly and you'll soon be fast asleep, and when you wake up you'll be in your bed and it'll all be over.…”

Higgins turned his head on the pillow. “Nurse! Nurse!”

“Yes,” said Esther. “I'm here. I'm with you.”

“I'm going to be all right, nurse, aren't I?”

“Yes, you'll be fine, Higgins, honestly. It's only quite a little operation, hardly anything at all.”

“What are they going to do to me?” he said piteously, his eyes roving round the theatre, shying away from the instruments laid out in readiness.

Barney had a fad about using the anæsthetic-room. He preferred to start the anæsthetic with the patient already on the table; but he acknowledged the extra fear and distress involved and he now explained, kindly and gently: “It's really only a very small thing, Higgins; hardly an operation at all. You've broken your femur, that's the thigh bone, and we're going to put a little thin steel pin through, above the knee, to pull the bone into place. That's all there is to it. It won't take very long and it isn't serious a bit—is it, nurse?”

“Not a bit,” said Esther.

“There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to wake up all right?”

“Oh, Higgins, of course you are. There's nothing to be frightened of.”

“Promise me, nurse?” he insisted. “
Promise
me?”

“Yes, Higgins, of course; there's no danger—I promise you.”

“You'll tell the missis, will you, my dear?” he said anxiously. “She's waiting in the hall outside, and she'll be fretting a bit. Tell her there isn't any danger will you, my dear?”

“Yes, all right, Higgins, I will. As soon as you've gone off to sleep.”

He relaxed on the pillow, comforted. “Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear.” He gave her a little, rather pathetic smile, and Barney put the rubber mask down, gently, over his mouth and nose.

The water bubbled gaily in the little glass jar at the top of the trolley bracket, through which the gas and oxygen pass. “Breathe quite normally, old boy. Don't worry. Relax and breathe gently. No hurry …” Barney's voice was quiet and soothing, but the mask was pressing down more heavily on Higgins' face. “Just quite quiet, old man; nothing to worry about …” Woods stood beside the table, ready to hang on to kicking legs or flailing arms. Major Moon and Eden came back again from the washroom, pulling on fresh rubber gloves.

4

Something was going wrong. Higgins' face was turning from blue to a dark plum colour, showing on the cheek bones and at the edges of the mask. He breathed noisily and under the blankets his limbs jerked convulsively. The line of bubbles in the jar altered as Barnes cut down the gas and increased the oxygen: he looked rather troubled.

Two minutes later the man was still a bad colour, and the red rubber bag in its black net, heaved in and out with the heavy, stertorous breathing. Only the oxygen showed bubbling now in the jar. Major Moon said anxiously: “He's an awful colour.”

“I can't make it out,” said Barney, his eyes flickering over the apparatus for signs of anything wrong. “He's having nothing but oxygen now.”

“There doesn't seem to be any obstruction,” said Eden, watching the heaving bag.

“I'll just slip an airway in, to make sure.” He caught up the tube from the trolley, dabbled its rubber end in a pot of lubricant, and, removing the mask for a moment, thrust a gag between the teeth to keep the mouth open, and forced the tube down Higgins' throat. Blue lips closed over the metal mouthpiece and Barney replaced the mask. After another half minute the man's breathing changed. The respirations became light and shallow and irregular. The jerkings gave way to little twitchings and jactitations and the livid colour was replaced by a leaden grey, infinitely more horrible. Barney said, staring down at him: “He's collapsed!”

Major Moon flung back the blankets and started artificial respiration, pressing down upon the ribs and relaxing them with a slow rhythmic movement that yet was pregnant with urgency. Barnes plucked open a little bottle and filled a syringe: as he plunged the needle under the rib into the heart he said briefly to Woods: “Give some coramine—intramuscularly.”

Even the shallow respirations had now ceased. Major Moon worked on, slowly pressing and relaxing. Barnes stood by helplessly. He said after a minute: “Shall I try more oxygen?”

Eden shrugged his shoulders. “I should shove in some more coramine, intravenously,” said Moon, not pausing in his work. He added gravely: “As a last resort.”

Barnes found a vein and thrust the needle in. “It's no use, I'm afraid.…”

Moon took no notice. It was horrible to see him working so rhythmically, working with that air of panic-stricken calm, on a body now beyond all help. After five whole minutes more of it, he straightened himself and stood erect, his hands on his aching back. “It's no use.… We can't do any more.…”

Esther stood frozen with horror at the foot of the table. “There isn't any danger, nurse? I'm going to be all right?” and she had promised him: “Of course you are, Higgins; there's nothing to be frightened of.” “You'll tell the missis, my dear, will you? Tell her I'm going to be O.K.” “Yes, Higgins, I'll tell her as soon as you've gone off to sleep.” “Thank you, my dear,” he had said. “God bless you, my dear.…” Those were the last words he had spoken; and he had smiled at her and turned his head on the pillow, satisfied to give himself up to the unknown since she had promised him that he would come through ‘all right'. “Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear.” The last words he had spoken. Joseph Higgins was dead.

CHAPTER IV

1

N
ot many surgeons remain unmoved by a death ‘on the table'. The patient may die on his feet if he will, or in his bed, or even on the trolley bringing him up to the theatre; but to die in that shining little room, with the hot, bright lights beating down upon him, is to cast a gloom over a group of comparative strangers; to clutch icily at hearts that will not be warm again until a succession of straightforward, everyday cases has brought back reassurance and strength. Major Moon said sadly: “First time this has happened since I've been here,” and pulled up a blanket over the dead man's face.

They stood round in stricken silence, gazing helplessly at the quiet form. Eden's thin, grey face looked more grey than ever. Barney was white and miserable, Sister Bates' blue eyes round with horror over the green mask; there was a small black speck on the bosom of Woody's gown, and she picked at it with nervous fingers. Moon, who was a Catholic, crossed himself with unobtrusive simplicity and said a little prayer. Two big tears gathered in Esther's eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “Thank you, my dear. God bless you, my dear.…” She could not forget the little smile.

Major Moon pulled himself together. “Eden, perhaps you and Barnes would get him on to the trolley for the girls, would you? Will you be all right, nurse, after that?”

“I'll take him,” said Woods, glancing at Esther's face. She added perfunctorily: “If that's all right with you, Sister?”

Bates pulled the mask up over her face and head; she looked very pretty with her ruffled fair hair. “Yes, very well. Sanson can stay and clear up in here.” Her tone boded ill for V.A.D.s who were too squeamish to wheel a dead man down to the mortuary.

“We'll close the theatre for to-day,” said Moon abruptly. “If there's anything else urgent we can take it to emergency. I—I hope there won't be.” He looked very old and shaken.

Woods wheeled the body away without a backward glance. As Bates and Esther went out to the washrooms, the men gathered about the anæsthetic-trolley. Barney said desperately: “I checked up on everything.… There doesn't seem to be anything wrong; and yet—the old boy was all
right
.…”

“He was pretty badly shocked when they brought him in last night,” said Eden.

“Yes, but he was quite over that. I went over him this morning with the stethoscope and he was as sound as a bell. He should have taken the anæsthetic without turning a hair.” He said again, wretchedly: “There doesn't
seem
to be anything wrong.”

“What
could
be wrong, old boy? The tubes aren't crossed. I looked at them several times while we were working.”

Coloured rubber Y-tubes led from the cylinders of nitrous oxide and oxygen and the (unused) central cylinder of carbon dioxide; but there was nothing out of order at all. Barney said: “God knows what went wrong.
I
don't.”

“These things happen, Barney,” said Eden. “They seem to be perfectly O.K. but they pip off for no rhyme or reason and you never know exactly why; I don't know why we're all getting quite so het up about it!”

“Such a bother,” said Major Moon, suddenly rather careless and offhand. “It will have to be reported to the Coroner, of course, in the ordinary way of things; and it'll mean an inquest and all that. What a pity! These things create such a stink!” He was full of funny little schoolboy expressions, surprising in a man of his age.

“Stink'll be just about the word, as far as I'm concerned,” said Barney bitterly.

“You mean because of that other case?” said Eden; and put his hand to his mouth as though he had said too much.

“Yes, I was thinking of that,” said Major Moon. “It's all rubbish, of course, because you couldn't be held responsible in either case, my dear boy; but the death took place before we'd even started operating—and people talk.”

“Are you telling me?” said Barnes.

“Nobody outside need know anything about it,” said Eden.

“My dear fellow—with the local police bumbling round asking the regulation questions! They'll probably all be cousins and brothers-in-law—everybody's related to everybody in a place like this. I was thinking, Barney—if there's an open verdict at the inquest, and there has to be any investigation, I'll ring up Cockrill for you. He's the high ding-a-ding at Torrington, and he'll see that there isn't a lot of undue fuss.”