A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies_Stories by John Murray

Author:John Murray [Murray, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9780060509286
Google: 47yhSaOKxQ0C
Amazon: 0060509287
Goodreads: 10875720
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2003-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I cast a last look at the wounded on the stretchers and walked inside. Things got going quickly. Chaswick Rashid already had the first two cases induced, intubated, and fully under on the respirators. He was using ketamine for the anesthesia, with infusions of diazepam and midazolam, and had cardiac monitors set up. Being the first in the room, he had taken the opportunity to put some heavy urban rap—his music of choice—on the cassette player, and the booming back beat echoed around the concrete room. Stefan made a face—he was a Gustav Mahler man—and we scrubbed and gowned. We had a supply of sterile kits with drapes and prep materials for a large number of cases. There were prepackaged sets for the abdominal work, and we had a steam sterilizer, so we planned to sterilize and reuse the instruments when we needed to. The kits included the usual range of scalpels and absorbable suture materials for abdominal work, as well as large-toothed scissors, toothed dissection forceps, curettes, hemostats, medium-lipped retractors, and a few self-retaining retractors. There were some sterile kits for head and bone cases, if we needed them. The regular suck and clack of the respirators calmed me down. As we began working, I looked out through the high windows along one wall, and saw lines of wood smoke from cooking fires rising into the sky.

Two Honda generators had been put in place to feed the theater, and Marlboro Man was in charge of getting these cranked up and working when we were operating. They provided enough juice to power the hundred-watt overhead lights, the suction and cautery equipment, and the respirators. If we needed it, we would turn on the air conditioner, as well, but it was brisk enough up in the hills not to need it. The generators roared outside, along the back wall. Every time someone opened the door, diesel fumes washed into the room and we had to keep all of the windows shut.

Virgin Atlantic and Madonna were the theater nurses and Stefan and I were impressed with their skills. They were neat and efficient, very useful with retractors and suction, and knew where to put their hands. They were both women in their forties and had beautiful round faces with shining coffee-colored skin and smooth fine-boned fingers. Each of them had five children at home. Like the others, they were quiet and self-contained, saying little, but laughing under their breath as they watched Chaswick Rashid jive his way between cases, in time to the pounding music. Chaswick did not care what people thought of him—he did his job well and said what he thought, and just got down to business. He made everyone feel better and I should have told him this when I had the chance.

Gabriel, the teenager, was my first case, and he set the pattern for the rest of the day. A lot of blood. I was cleaning the wound and having a closer look at the damage when a large arterial cut opened up and a jet of blood shot up to the ceiling.

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