“There you are, bonny beastie.” A slug from a German 8mm Mauser rifle. He’d pulled out thousands of them since the start of the war, yet it never failed to amaze him the amount of pain a single body could endure. Nor the amount of horror a human could inflict upon another. How senseless was war in its incessant drive to destruction. If the human race could see the wonders that composed their bodies, the intricacies of veins, the precise perfection of the humerus in its rotating cuff, or the delicacy of a heart pumping, they would not be so quick to sacrifice themselves at the altar of fevered battle. Sheer waste.
He dropped the bullet into a sterile dish the nurse held and then the forceps into another.
“Breathing dropping,” the anesthesiologist said.
Words no surgeon wanted to hear.
“Heart stopped.”
Even worse.
“Stand clear.” Wynn waved back the flap of nurses and positioned himself over the patient’s heart once more. Every fiber of his being tuned to the absent heartbeat.
“Begin manual resuscitation.” He gently massaged. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Again. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Wynn gritted his teeth, refusing the well of panic. He hadn’t given in to it before and he wouldn’t start now. One. Two. Three. “Come on, laddie. Don’t go out on me in front of the nurses. Bad cricket, that.”
Sweat puckered his brow. One. Two. Three. Not Harkin. Not after Wynn had given the man his solemn oath of care. It was a vow given on the rarest occasion as it benefited no one but a patient’s peace of mind and set the surgeon to a not-always-possible standard of achievement. A momentary lapse of weakness, or perhaps a sense of reassuring himself in the dangerous endeavor, and the vow hung suspended like a thread of hope between patient and surgeon, ready to be severed at the hand of Fate.
Fate would not sever them now.
Massage. One. Two. Three.
A pulse rippled through the heart. Another. Life thumped into a steady beat.
Wynn let out a shaky breath.
“Heart rate climbing. Breathing maintained. Closing into normal,” announced the anesthesiologist in a shaky tone of his own.
Wynn glanced across the table to where Gerard stood immobilized. “Ready for closure, Doctor?”
Gerard blinked several times at the pulsing heart within reach of his fingertips and finally lifted his gaze to Wynn as a nurse placed sterilized packing gauze in his hand.
“Ready on your count.”
An hour later Wynn sat on the back steps of the hospital, arms looped over his knees and head dragging down. Exhaustion wearied every bone of his body until the angles seemed to morph into one sagging mass. Yet the thrill of success could not escape him. It bounded from one fatigued muscle to the next, skipping over synapses like sparks of lightning that blazed through his nervous system with blinding excitement.
He’d done it. He’d kept his promise to Harkin.
The sheer magnitude of what had been accomplished in that operating theater deprived him of words. A rare occurrence indeed, but mere mortal words could not express the awed response demanded by this unprecedented surgery. The practice of medicine existed in closed, round rooms where the select privileged were admitted to trod. There to bloat themselves among the shelves of practices deemed favorable for centuries, hardly daring to open the door for new possibilities but for the fearless souls in search of better treatment. The doors to Wynn’s medical chamber had been flung wide open. What might exist beyond the walls?
The door banged open behind him. Gerard huffed down the steps. Orange hair blazing like a crinkled carrot, he furrowed his hands through it as he paced on the grass in front of Wynn. Back and forth he strode with a determination lacking conviction of direction.
Wynn sat quietly in the fading heat of day and waited for his friend to settle on the words tossing about in his mind. It wouldn’t be long. Gerard never could bottle his reactions for extended amounts of time.
Gerard stopped directly in front of him. “That was the most insane, terrifying, mad, not to mention off the chump stunt I have ever witnessed.”
Wynn dropped his head. “Anything else?”
“It was bloody brilliant. I’ve never seen anything like that.” Gerard bent over and grabbed his knees. “Don’t ever do it again. My heart can’t handle the theatrics.”
“You call saving a patient’s life theatrical?”
“The way you perform, yes. Always invoking the most drama into theater instead of sticking to the rules.”
Wynn’s head snapped up. “I hardly think Harkin would agree with sticking to the rules in there. He’d be shoving daisies on the table.”
“You were reckless. Sometimes I think you care more for the triumph in the challenge than the actual patient.”
“That’s absurd.”