Strangers

curarederived muscle relaxant. Though entirely mechanical, those sounds possessed a haunting quality that made it impossible for Ginger to overcome her apprehension.
        On other days, when George cut, there was more talk. He traded quips with the nurses and the assisting resident, using light banter to reduce the tension without also reducing concentration on the vital task at hand. Ginger was simply not up to that sort of dazzling performance, which seemed akin to playing basketball, chewing gum, and solving difficult mathematical problems at the same time.
        Having completed the excursion into the belly, she ran the colon with both hands and determined that it was healthy. With damp gauze pads provided by Agatha, Ginger cradled the intestines, placed the hoe-like blades of the retractors against them, and turned them over to the scrub nurses, who held them out of the way, thus exposing the aorta, the main trunkline of the body's arterial system.
        From the chest, the aorta entered the belly through the diaphragm, running parallel to the spine. Immediately above the groin, it split into two iliac arteries leading to the femoral arteries in the legs.
        "There it is," Ginger said. "An aneurysm. Just like in the X rays." As if to confirm it, she glanced at the patient's X ray that was fixed on the light screen, on the wall at the foot of the operating table. "A dissecting aneurysm, just above the aortic saddle."
        Agatha blotted Ginger's forehead.
        The aneurysm, a weakness in the wall of the aorta, had permitted the artery to bulge outward on both sides, forming a dumbbell-shaped extrusion full of blood, which beat like a second heart. This condition caused difficulty in swallowing, extreme shortness of breath, severe coughing, and chest pains; and if the bulging vessel burst, death followed swiftly.
        As Ginger stared at the pulsing aneurysm, an almost religious sense of mystery overcame her, a profound awe, as if she had stepped out of the real world into a mystic sphere, where the very meaning of life was soon to be revealed to her. Her feeling of power, of transcendence, rose from the realization that she could do battle with death - and win. Death was lurking there in the body of her patient right now, in the form of the throbbing aneurysm, a dark bud waiting to flower, but she had the skill and training to banish it.
        From a sterile package, Agatha Tandy had taken a section of artificial aorta - a thick, ribbed tube that split into two smaller tubes, the iliac arteries. It was woven entirely of Dacrol. Ginger positioned it over the wound, trimmed it to fit with a pair of small sharp scissors, and returned it to the technician. Agatha put the white graft in a shallow stainless-steel tray that already contained some of the patient's blood, and swished it back and forth to wet it thoroughly.
        The graft would be allowed to soak until it had clotted a bit. Once it was installed in the patient, Ginger would run some blood through it, clamp it, allow that blood to clot a bit more, then flush it out before actually sewing it in place. The thin layer of clotted blood would help prevent seepage, and in time the steady flow of blood would form a neointima, a leak-proof new lining virtually indistinguishable from that in a real artery. The amazing thing was that the Dacron vessel was not merely an adequate substitute for the damaged section of aorta but was, in fact, actually superior to what nature had provided; five hundred years from now, when nothing remained of Viola Fletcher but dust and time-worn bones, the Dacron graft would still be intact, still flexible and strong.
        Agatha blotted Ginger's forehead.
        "How do you feel?" George asked.
        "Fine," Ginger said.
        "Tense?"
        "Not really," she lied.
        He said, "It's a genuine pleasure watching you work, Doctor."
        "I'll second that," said one of the scrub nurses.
        "Me, too," the other said.
        "Thanks," Ginger said, surprised and pleased.
        George said, "You have a certain grace in surgery, a lightness of touch, a splendid sensitivity of hand and eye that is, I'm sorry to say, not at all common in the profession."
        Ginger knew that he never gave voice to an insincere compliment, but coming from such a stern taskmaster, this bordered on excessive flattery. By God, George Hannaby was proud of her! That realization flooded her with