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The woman on the table is unlucky: she’s young and a non-smoker, and nearly two-thirds of aneurysms happen to men. But she’s six months pregnant, which is probably what caused it to rupture. Until it happened, she wouldn’t have known it was even there.
The woman on the table is lucky: she has me.
I work quickly and efficiently to save her life. My surgical team know me well, and anticipate my needs effectively and without drama. Once the heart has been repaired, I put the sternum back together, using plates and screws to hold the breastbone and ribs in place as they heal.
Finally I close the incision with three layers: no suture material is visible on or above the skin. I use vicryl sutures for the first two layers and monocryl sutures for below the outside layer of the skin. Both are absorbed by the body within two or three months. My aim is to minimise the trauma to the chest to allow my patient to recuperate faster. I have the lowest mortality rate of any doctor in the hospital, and one of the lowest of any heart surgeon in the country. I intend to keep it that way.
My surgical registrar catches me as I change my scrubs.
‘Ms Lennox, do you have a moment to talk to the husband?’ she says. ‘He’s very anxious.’
Someone will have kept my patient’s family apprised of her progress, but relatives always want to speak to the surgeon. We’re the closest they get to talking to God.
I follow the registrar to the family waiting room. The husband is at least a decade older than his wife, and a good three stone overweight. Nicotine stains his fingers. He should have been the one on my operating table.
He grabs at my arm. ‘Dr Lennox, please, how is she?’
‘It’sMsLennox,’ my registrar corrects.
In the UK, surgeons are never calleddoctor, a convention that harks back to the days when surgeons were butchers without medical degrees and were not considered worthy of the prefix. Americans get very confused.
‘The surgery was very successful,’ I say, gently extricating myself from his grasp. ‘We were able to—’
‘Is she all right? What about the baby?’
‘Your wife and baby are both doing well,’ I say.
‘She couldn’t be in better hands, Mr Sharp,’ the registrar adds.
He’s right. There’s a reason I became the country’s youngest Professor of Cardiac Surgery three years ago at just thirty-seven, leapfrogging surgeons with decades more experience. Since I joined the Princess Eugenie Hospital as a consultant I’ve performed more than two hundred Norwood operations and nearly three hundred arterial switch procedures. My outcomes are among the best in the world.
No one would describe me as a touchy-feely person: I’m aware my bedside manner leaves something to be desired. But if someone you love needs a miracle, I’m the one you want carving up their chest.
I try hard not to see my patients as people: it gets in the way of my clinical judgement. And I avoid their relatives at all costs for the same reason. But there’s something so desperate in this man’s expression, I can’t just walk away.
‘Mr Sharp, I’m not going to let your wife die,’ I say gently. ‘What happened to her was a freak accident, like a burst pipe. And I’ve just fixed it. She’s not sick or fragile. She’s a very healthy woman. They’re both going to be absolutely fine.’
He starts to sob.
I absolutely don’t do tears. I leave before he throws himself bodily at my feet in gratitude: it wouldn’t be the first time.
I’m walking down the ramp into the underground car park when my phone bleeps with an incoming text.
We got the Glass House.
chapter 10
millie
I toss my phone onto the passenger seat within easy reach and put on my sunglasses. Sunlight streams through the panoramic sunroof as I emerge from the car park. In its way, this vehicle is a work of art just as much as the Glass House. Every aspect of the cockpit is a masterclass in efficient simplicity.
An extravagance, yes: but I’m a connoisseur of beautiful things.
The traffic on the Brompton Road is heavy, but moving quickly. On impulse, I stop at the Flower Yard to pick up a bouquet of summer blooms: I’m in the mood to celebrate. Not only did we get the house, but Stacey Porter has just agreed to come to the upcoming hospital gala to raise funds for a new hybrid OR in the Emergency Department.
Even better: she thinks it washeridea.
It wasn’t difficult: it just took an off-the-cuff remark about sick babies and a comment on the power of celebrity when Stacey called me personally to ask me to forward my solicitor’s details.
