The Children God Forgot by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800240230
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2021-02-03T18:30:00+00:00

21

Dr Macleod had given up smoking over twenty years ago, but as he prepared himself for a second attempt to remove the malformed foetus from Susan Nicholls’s womb, he would have given almost anything for a cigarette.

Once he had tied on his surgical mask, he stared at himself in the mirror over the washbasin, trying to see if his eyes were betraying any sign of his anxiety, but he was surprised how dispassionate they looked. He held out both hands, to make sure they weren’t trembling, but they were rock steady.

‘Right, Stuart,’ he told himself, out loud, his voice muffled behind his mask. ‘Ghosts or no ghosts, this thing is coming out of her. Full stop.’

He had been trying his best to persuade himself that what had appeared yesterday – that smoky apparition – was only an illusion, caused by stress. A shared illusion, yes, which was mind-shrinkingly rare, but an illusion nonetheless.

Yesterday afternoon, the centre’s maintenance crew had checked the theatre’s fuse box and all the electrical circuits but found nothing that could have caused the lights to malfunction. They had also dismantled the air-conditioning unit, but they had been unable to explain how any smoke could possibly have leaked into the operating theatre.

Dr Macleod used his elbows to push open the double doors that led from the scrubs into the theatre. Susan Nicholls was already anaesthetised, lying on the operating table as she had before, like a brightly lit human sacrifice on a catafalque. Dr Bhaduri and Dr Symonds were waiting for him on either side of her, and Janet Horrocks, the midwife, was sitting in the right-hand corner of the theatre, along with another junior midwife, Kisi Adomako.

Duncan, the anaesthetist, gave him a thumbs up and said, ‘Heart rate, blood pressure, everything’s normal.’

‘Any movement from the foetus?’

‘Its vital signs are the same as before, so it is still alive,’ said Dr Bhaduri. ‘The latest scan shows that it is already firmly attached with microvilli to the wall of the uterus, but there is no movement, no. Perhaps it is waiting for us. Perhaps it sleeps.’

Dr Macleod looked across at him but said nothing. He could clearly imagine that angelic face with its eyes closed and its tentacle-like limbs tangled all around it, and the thought of that gave him a crawling sensation down his spine. In a matter of minutes he would have to cut it out and confront it, and this time he would euthanise it, instantly. Nurse Harris had already prepared a hypodermic with a three-milligram dose of fentanyl, which was easily enough to kill an adult, let alone an unformed foetus.

‘Okay, everybody,’ he told them, ‘let’s go for it.’

Dr Symonds folded back the sheet that had been covering Susan Nicholls’s stomach. Dr Macleod stepped up to the operating table and held out his hand for the scalpel to make his first incision. He hesitated and looked up, in case there was any indication that the surgical lamps were starting to flicker or change colour, but they remained steady, without even the faintest tinge of green.

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