When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [116]
Using my scalpel, I began to debride the area, ridding it of ruined skin and tissue. Then I cut.
I worked on the chest wound first. I was afraid of blood leaking into the pericardial cavity. All of us were. But the lung wasn’t punctured. It hadn’t collapsed. I did what I could, then moved on to other problem areas, other serious wounds.
“I’m right here, Max. I’m still here,” I whispered. “Can you hear me? I know you can hear things better than most of us.”
The tendon that stretches from the humerus to the third wing finger of her left wing was badly lacerated, but not severed. I used a Bunnell-Mayer suture pattern for the tendons, and then closed my incision. I was pretty much working on instinct now.
Beside me a pediatric surgeon worked on a long, deep gash in Max’s cheek, and then one under her clavicle. The surgeon, a woman, was good. For long periods of time, I almost forgot she was there.
Max was fighting so bravely. I knew she would.
“You’re doing great, Max. Keep it up. You’re the best, Maximum.”
I became aware of a nurse sponging my brow. It was something I could definitely have used at the Inn-Patient.
I heard snatches of the hushed conversations of the nurses and doctors around me, but I was concentrating on the complicated operation and didn’t pay attention to what they were saying. I needed to figure out how all the unusual pieces fit together. This operation wasn’t in any anatomy books—not at the University of Colorado, not at Berkeley, or Harvard, or Chicago. Not yet, anyway.
I used a PDS suture and performed an end-to-end penorrhaphy. I quickly decided on a simple interrupted pattern, a long row of little knots.
I glanced up at the stainless-steel wall clock. I was stunned that nearly three and a half hours had gone by like an instant. I realized my body was soaking wet.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard one of the doctors softly say, “We’ve done what we can for her.”
Chapter 125
WE COULDN’T LOSE MAX. Not after what we’d been through—after what she’d been through.
I waited until she was getting amoxicillin and saline subcue, and then I placed figure-eight-shaped bandages on each of her wings. This would help protect her if she went ballistic when she came to. It was a small thing, but I had done everything else I could for her. I hoped it was enough.
I was close to tears, but I wouldn’t allow them to come. Not here, not with the hospital nurses and doctors looking on. I shed my scrubs in the surgeon’s locker room and quickly washed up. Then I found my way to the ICU.
Kit had been operated on by a second team of surgeons, the best doctors available. He was plugged in to so much monitoring equipment that it was hard to tell where the man ended and the tubes began.
His chart had him down with a broken clavicle, two broken ribs, a punctured lung, and pleurisy. He was receiving a blood transfusion and antibiotics, and all of his vitals were being monitored. His signs were all strong, the opposite of Max’s.
I pulled an armchair up to his bedside and I collapsed into it. I sat there for a long time, trancelike, just looking at him. I finally let myself cry. Tears streamed down both cheeks and I couldn’t make them stop once they had started.
I remembered the first time I saw him at the Inn-Patient, when there was an Inn-Patient. And then the magic moment when he sang so beautifully at Villa Vittoria. And our “last night on earth” in Gillian’s basement. So much had happened to us in such a very short time. We’d been through so much together.
I whispered, “I love you, Kit, Tom, whoever you are. I love you so much.”
I must have dozed off after that. I don’t know for how long. I felt Kit softly stroking my hair.
“Oh, Kit,” I said, when I saw he was conscious. I kissed him on the cheek as gently as I could, and he smiled brilliantly.
“How is she?” he asked.
“She’s extremely critical. I don’t know what will happen. There’s no precedent for the operation we did.”
I stayed in Kit’s room for what seemed a long time, several hours. I didn’t have