Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [66]
So was I. But now was not the time to show it.
“Everything will be OK,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “You said they’ve found it early, and I’ve researched everything on the Internet. You’re going to be just fine. You’ll see.”
“Oh, Nick,” she said, grasping my hand very tight. There were tears in her eyes.
I pulled her close to me, and we sat in silence as the taxi maneuvered through Regent’s Park and out onto the Euston Road.
It was a difficult evening, and night, for both of us.
Claudia was checked into the hospital by the admissions staff, for whom it was a regular routine to be completed with brisk efficiency. They didn’t mean to be uncaring, but quite a few times they made us feel uncomfortable and even foolish.
I kept having to wait in the corridor outside her room as nurses and technicians came to perform some procedure or other. Swabs were taken from up Claudia’s nose and inside her mouth, and then others were then taken from more intimate areas. Blood was drawn for this, and urine was tested for that.
After a couple of hours they finally said that she was ready for the morning and left us in peace. I turned off the bright overhead lights and dimmed the reading light to a much more subdued level. Suddenly, everything did not look quite so stark and antiseptic. Much better.
I sat on a chair by her bed and held her hand.
“You ought to go home,” Claudia said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Unless they physically throw me out,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Claudia laid her head back on the pillow and smiled. “Good,” she said.
I still couldn’t believe how badly I had read the situation between us. What a fool I had been, and what a greater fool I might have become. Just thinking about it caused me to break out in a cold sweat.
“You get some sleep now, my love,” I said to her. “You’ll need all the strength you can get for tomorrow.”
“This bloody bed is so hard, it makes my back ache.”
I spent a few minutes using the electric bed control, lifting the head or feet, trying to make her more comfortable. It didn’t really work.
“Why can’t they have bloody beds that are comfortable to lie on?” Claudia complained. “You’d think that would be the first priority.”
I recognized what was happening. She was getting irritated by the slightest little thing. It was a sign of the nervous condition she was in. I would just have to smile gently and agree with her.
“Yes, darling,” I said. “Please try and close your eyes and get some rest.”
“You try resting on this bloody thing,” she snapped, turning herself over once again to face away from me.
In the end, she settled, and in time I could tell from the sound of her breathing that she was asleep. I settled down into the chair and closed my eyes.
One of the nurses came into the room and snapped on the overhead lights.
“Time for your vitals,” she said loudly.
And so it went on through the night, with temperature, pulse and blood pressure being measured in two-hour intervals, each time accompanied by the Blackpool Illuminations. Hospitals were clearly never designed for relaxation and recovery.
No one told me to go home, so I didn’t, although I had to admit it was not the best night’s sleep I’d ever had.
Breakfast wasn’t eaten by Claudia, or even offered, there being a large NIL BY MOUTH sign hanging on a hook by the door, so I went down to the hospital lobby at about six a.m. in search of coffee and a bun for myself while the patient had a shower.
At about eight-thirty, Dr. Tomic, the surgeon, arrived, wearing light blue scrub tunic and trousers, all set for the operating room. He brought with him some paperwork and a thick marker pen, which he used to draw a big black arrow on the left side of Claudia below her belly button.
“Don’t want to take out the wrong one, now do we?” he said.
That, somehow, wasn’t very encouraging.
“What, exactly, are you going to do?” I asked.
“I will make two small incisions here and here,” he said, pointing to each side of Claudia’s lower abdomen. “I will then use a laparoscope to have a good look at all her bits