Ben gave cynical grunt. ‘No doubt she’s touching up her make-up.’
Linda raised her brows. ‘You are in a fine mood this morning, Ben. Did you get out of the wrong side of bed or something?’
‘Sorry Lindy,’ he said gruffly. ‘I had a run-in with a car door this morning.’
‘That’s what you get for cycling to work,’ Linda said with a hint of maternal chastisement. ‘Why don’t you drive a BMW or a Mercedes, like all the other neurosurgeons in
Sydney?’
‘You sound like my mother,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘It so happens I wasn’t actually cycling to work. I planned to go home and shower and shave and drive back in my ute but I ran out of time.’
The patient was wheeled in and he continued, ‘Come on, we’d better get started. I’m not going to wait around for the registrar to turn up.’ He looked up at the anaesthetist assigned to his list that morning. ‘Things OK your end, Matt?’
‘Yes, Ben. I’ve got all the lines in, and we’re ready to induce.’
Ben took the hand of the thirty-five-year-old woman as she was transferred from the trolley to the operating table.
‘Hello, Mrs Patonis. You’ve had a long wait to get into hospital but here you are now. Everything should be fine—we’ll resect that meningioma, and hopefully stop those headaches and improve that weakness,’ he reassured her.
‘Thanks, Mr Blackwood. I’ve waited nearly a year to get in,’ Maria Patonis said. ‘Do you think I’ll be able to take up my golf again?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, touching her arm briefly. ‘Let’s just stop the damage first, and take things a step at a time. I’ll see you after the surgery in Recovery.’
Georgie could feel her stomach churning and twisting with nerves as she ran up the stairs to the operating theatre floor. Turning up late was a no-no in any workplace, but in a busy public hospital, where every minute was so precious, it was not going to win her any favours with the staff. To make things worse, this was her first list on her new term of neurosurgery. Although from what she’d heard, Ben Blackwood was a very approachable and supportive neurosurgeon, she didn’t want to push her luck by getting off to a bad start with him.
She did the preliminary scrub and then gowned and entered the theatre just as the consultant neurosurgeon looked up from the now anaesthetised patient, his dark blue eyes meeting hers.
‘Oh my … God,’ she gulped, her stomach dropping.
‘You must be Georgiana Willoughby,’ Linda said, when Ben didn’t say a word. ‘Welcome to the unit.’
‘Er … thank you.’ Georgie mumbled. Grimacing, she added weakly, ‘Sorry I—I’m late … I had a bit of an accident …’
‘How nice that you could make it to join us in spite of your … er … little accident,’ Ben said with an unreadable look. ‘How about you come over here and draw out where you think the skull flap should be made.’
Georgie bit her lip as she shuffled over. ‘I—I can’t say I’m totally sure, Mr Blackwood. This is my first neurosurgical term.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Ben said. ‘But the best way to learn is on-the-job experience. So just draw where you think it should go, and we’ll correct it if it’s a bit off.’
Georgie drew a curved line over the right parietotemporal region of the shaved scalp with a purple marking pen, trying to keep her hands steady under the watchful midnight-blue gaze trained on her.
Wasn’t he going to say something? she wondered. Surely he wasn’t going to let such an incident pass without a comment or two. As coincidences went, it was up there with the spookiest, which no doubt her flatmate would insist was the celestial forces at work.
Georgie concentrated on the purple line she was drawing and thought about how relieved she was to see he was all right. More than relieved actually. She had been preparing herself for a jail term for negligent driving, although strictly speaking she hadn’t been driving so—
‘That’s pretty good really,’ he interrupted her wandering thoughts. ‘We just need to make it a bit bigger to make access easier, but the shape and position are fine.’
Georgie felt her shoulders go down in relief. ‘Thanks …’
‘I’ll show you how I like to position, prep and drape for a parietal craniotomy. From then on, I’d like you to set the patient up,’ he said.
She watched as he showed her how to position the skull in a head ring and stabilise it in position with braces attached to the sides of the operating table.
Once they had both re-scrubbed and gowned for surgery, Ben showed her how to prep the scalp with Betadine and then drape the skull with adhesive drapes, leaving the operating area exposed.
‘Now, if you can make the incision, Dr Willoughby, I’ll show you how to control the scalp bleeding with clips. Make the incision down to the periosteum,’ he directed.
Georgie made the incision along the pre-marked line, and Ben showed her how to apply stainless-steel clips along the length of the incision to control the bleeding.