Storm Prey

out, stripped off the operating gear, dumped it, washed, and walked down to talk to the Rayneses again.
    Lucy, anxious, wide-eyed. “Is something wrong? You were gone so long ...”
    “I stayed to help with some bone removal. At this point, their hearts are stable, we’ve got everything but the last half-inch of bone out. Rick can take that out in one minute if he has to.”
    Larry: “So the neuro guys are working?”
    “Yes. Still a way to go,” Weather said.
    They talked for a couple more minutes; the Rayneses said the overnight crew had reported that the twins had gotten their best sleep since the operation began.
    A team nurse popped in, looked at Weather: “Gabe wants you in the OR.”
    “Something happened?” Larry Raynes asked.
    “Looks like it’s going okay to me,” the nurse said. “I’m not a doctor, though.”
     
     
    WEATHER STEPPED inside the OR and said, “Gabriel?”
    Maret looked up from the operating table and said, “Ah, Weather, come around here.”
    She walked carefully around the edge of the working crew, and Maret pointed at the babies’ skulls. “The seven vein,” he said, and she nodded.
    The seven vein had been difficult to image, but they didn’t know why, exactly. It rose close to the edge of the defect, up out of Sara’s brain, before apparently edging over to a trough where it dumped the blood.
    “It doesn’t do that. It actually curled around the edge of the defect and dumps into Ellen’s side. So, we can ligate it and forget it. But there’s another vein we didn’t see—we’re calling it fourteen—that comes up beside it. If we could splice seven into fourteen ...”
    “How big are they?” Weather asked.
    “Not big. But not so small as the ones you did on the toe operation ...”
    “I was using the scope for that. If we drop the scope on them, you guys would have to get out of the way.”
    “I think they might be large enough for you to do with your loupes ... I’m hoping.”
    “I’ll scrub up,” she said.
     
     
    SHE WAS BACK in ten minutes, robed in another five, operating glasses in place. Maret moved sideways, pushing one of the nurses away from the table, and Weather moved in close. The other neurosurgeon continued working on the other side of the babies’ heads.
    Maret said, “Here,” and indicated the two veins with a tip of his scalpel.
    Weather’s operating glasses were equipped with an LED, and the light illuminated the patch of dura mater as though it were an illustration in a medical text. The veins were small, dark, wire-like—a bit smaller in diameter than the wire in a coat hanger.
    Weather looked at them for a full fifteen seconds, until Maret asked, “What do you think?”
    “How bad do you need it?”
    “Well, it’s impossible to know. But the babies are doing okay, so far, we are ahead of schedule, and better to do this now, if we can—we need to move as much blood as possible ...”
    “I can do it, but it’ll take a while,” she said finally. “Sandy might have to stop working every once in a while. I couldn’t have the slightest bit of movement.”
    “How long?”
    “Thirty, forty minutes. They’re well exposed.”
    “Thirty minutes?”
    “Thirty or forty.”
    “Thirty minutes. I believe you can do this.”
     
     
    THE VEINS were not especially delicate, but they couldn’t be yanked around, either. Weather tied off the smaller fourteen, and began the process of splicing it into the seven. The process was slow: she would be placing four square knots, each smaller than a poppy seed, around the edge of the splice. Ten minutes in, she had one knot; in seventeen minutes, she had two.
    An anesthesiologist said, “We’ve got a gradient showing up.”
    “I’ll be out in ten or fifteen,” Weather said. The gradient was the blood pressure in Sara’s brain.
    “Let’s stay with it,” Maret said.
    Weather did the third knot and asked, “Where’s the gradient?”
    “Need to move along,” the anesthesiologist said.
    “We could bleed her for a minute,” Weather said. “I think we’re tight enough that we won’t damage the established sutures.”
    Maret said, “How long to go ahead and finish?”
    “Six or seven minutes, if there’re no problems.”
    “Bleed her just a minute ...”
    Weather released a ligature on the fourteen, and blood began seeping out of the incomplete splice. They stood for a minute, then two, soaking up the blood, and the anesthesiologist said, “Better,” and Weather closed