Storm Prey

She had to be somebody important.
    Barakat was an emergency room doc, not on the team, or anything close to it, and all the team members knew each other, so he couldn’t risk joining the crowd. What he could do, though, was climb into the small observation theater above the OR. If you wanted a seat, all you had to do was get there early. One of the team members would be narrating the surgical procedures for the observers. The woman, if she were central to the work, would be introduced.

    LUCY AND LARRY RAYNES were with the children, who were still awake, but about to be moved to the operating theater. Sara saw Weather and her eyes misted up. She was still a baby, but she recognized the woman who’d caused her pain in the past. She began to cry, softly, and then Ellen started, not yet knowing why.
    Lucy Raines bent over them, comforting them. Larry flapped his hands around, helplessly, and said to Weather, “They’re about to give them something.”
    Weather nodded: “We’re not the only ones who feel the stress. They’re babies, but they know something is happening.”
    Ellen pushed against the sides of the hospital bed, and that torqued Sara, who stopped crying and thrashed with her hands. The babies could hear each other talking, but had never seen each other.
    Larry said, “We just talked to Gabriel, he said everything was going smoothly.”
    “Yesterday was like a freak accident,” Weather said. “Everything now is just like it was yesterday—maybe better. Maybe some of the nervousness got burned off.”
    “I felt terrible about that guy,” Lucy said.
    “So do I.” Weather bent forward and kissed Sara on the forehead. “It’s hard, baby,” she said.
     
     
    AN HOUR LATER, the twins were rolled into the OR, sedated, but not yet fully anesthetized. As the two anesthesiologists worked to position them, to rig them with the drip lines and to take a final look at the blood chemistry, to check their monitors, Maret wandered over to Weather and said, “It’s time. No problems with the pharmacy this morning.”
    Weather nodded and followed him into the scrub room. A few seconds later, Hanson, the bone-cutter, followed them in, with his resident; the surgical assistant stood waiting behind Weather. They scrubbed silently, until Maret said, “That first day of practice, we started with Vivaldi. If no one objects . . .”
    “Perfect,” Weather said. She’d always had music in her ORs. “Start with ‘Primavera.’ ”
    “Your choice,” Maret said, smiling at her. “You’re okay?”
    “Anxious to get going,” she said. Her part, her first part, would be routine, nothing more than she did every day: cutting down to bone, cauterizing the bleeders, rolling back the scalp. Then, she’d get out of the way until the bone-cutter was done.
    An anesthesiologist stuck his head in: “We’re set. You want to say go?”
    Maret looked at the team members in the scrub room, pursed his lips, smiled, nodded and said, “Go.”
     
     
    THE OBSERVATION THEATER was packed: team members had the first choice of seats, but after that, it was first-come first-seated, as long as you had the right ID. Barakat looked around: the watchers weren’t just residents, but included a lot of senior docs on their own time. He was at the back, in the highest row of seats.
    Down below, three nurses and two anesthesiologists clustered around the two small bodies joined at the skull; so close to perfection, and yet so far. Each was an attractive child—if there’d been another inch of separation, they’d have been just fine. Now they lay on the special table, brilliantly lit, cradled in plastic, asleep, their eyes covered and taped, the bottoms of their faces isolated in breathing masks.
    The scrub room doors opened in, and a small woman led a first group into the OR. A man sitting in the first row of the observation theater said into a microphone, “Doctors Gabriel Maret, Weather Karkinnen, Richard Hanson. Dr. Karkinnen will begin ...”
    She was masked, hatted, robed, gloved and slippered, wearing an operating shield over her eyes; but she was the woman from the elevator and the Audi, Barakat thought. Right size, right shape. Now that he knew her name, he could Google her, just to be sure.
    The narrator said, “For those who just got here, the first procedure will be to open the scalp at the point of conjoin, to remove the first expander, and to prepare the bed for the initial craniotomy.”
    The surgical lights were