The Ghosts of Eden by Andrew JH Sharp

Author:Andrew JH Sharp [Sharp, Andrew JH]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Picnic Publishing Ltd
Published: 2011-06-10T04:30:00+00:00

Two

‘Surgery is grievous bodily harm,’ Michael said.

The surgical trainees sat taut at their desks, scribbling his words down in frantic haste, lest they miss that essential tip. James McCree had told Michael that he, the visiting maestro, would be addressing the elite survivors of a hard and long journey: from their mothers’ perilous giving of birth, through an infancy where one in five died, via exposure to a myriad body-invading creatures, biting reptiles, arachnids and arthropods, via miles and miles on bare feet to school, via the eye of the needle to get into medical school, via the volumes of books imbibed in dimly lit nights, via scarce patronage and tenacious grit to get onto the surgical training programme.

Michael had woken that morning at the McCrees’ house to see the first rays of the sun lancing through a chink in the curtains. Above his bed, on the wall, the light cast a bright feather-like shape. He recalled the previous day’s troublesome events, but now, looking at the light playing a little as if filtered by leaves, he felt that he had slept away an oppression. Any notion of having been jinxed had vanished. He lifted his hand to the sunbeam and sensed its warmth, noticing the pattern change to a crescent moon on his palm. How the mind’s eye hunted for meaning, and how the heart also, seeking significance and implication, making associations that were as ephemeral and futile as the conjuring of his eye on the pattern of light. Thinking back, he saw now that he had let a few incidents (regrettable as they were) and Audrey McCree’s intrusive questioning disturb his equanimity. It was time to get a grip.

By the time he entered the classroom of surgical trainees he was in particularly good spirits and relished the chance to teach and to inspire. The conference had started at last, he would be giving it his all, and then in a couple of days he would be on his way back to work.

‘We surgeons cut, saw, burn, bruise; we wound; we traumatise; we violate. We split the skin, breaching the body’s primary protection against a hostile environment. Then we spill its blood, dehydrate its tissues and dissipate its hard-won heat.’ The students’ pens slashed across their notebooks. ‘My job today is to teach you how to repair the damage you’ve done on your way in, as you come out.’

A refrigerated pig’s trotter, pale as exsanguination, lay on a wooden platter on each student’s desk. A surgical blade, needle holder, scissors and forceps were arranged around each trotter like a dinner setting.

‘Never forget that to make our craft possible we rely entirely on the body’s remarkable restorative powers. Very rarely, an unlucky person is born with a profound defect in the mechanism of healing. The smallest injury fails to knit; no amount of suturing, by the most expert of surgeons, can fuse the tissues together. Death comes in childhood. Our sutures and clips only approximate what we’ve rent apart; the healing is nature’s work.

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