Chapter 30 – — Professor Clementine, Endurance of Pain #2
The placard glows bright for a moment, and then the sound in the operating room comes through, carrying clearly into the observation room.
Thank you.
“Most of the muscles are intact. If not for the corrupted claw, we could place the eye back inside. He would lose sight, but with proper reconstruction, his eye would still move and look normal to everyone else.” Nestor’s voice fills the small gallery as he teaches the two blood years assisting him.
I want to yell at them. Yes, that’s a viable option. Try to remove the corruption and place the eye. Jace would want to keep his eye at all cost, even if only for aesthetic purposes.
But I don’t hit the window or I’ll be kicked out of the observation room too.
Gods, I can’t stop replaying what he said in my head. My hand slowly drifts over my chest where it aches.
Did he mean, “I don’t want to die looking at the girl who hurt me?” Or did he mean, “I don’t want to die looking at the girl I love, because if I do, I won’t have the strength to fight?” Or perhaps it was, “I fucking hate you, Mae. Get out of my face.”
I need to get out of my own head and stop over analyzing. The important thing is that Jace is going to live. He’s going to be okay.
“The corruption has tracked along the optic canal,” Nestor says as he works. “We cannot save the globe. We are proceeding with enucleation.”
I squint. The eyeball is lifted free in his gloved hands, the dark claw still penetrating the side, black veins lacing the sclera where they should be red. He places it in the kidney dish at his elbow.
“Note the involvement of the optic nerve. Completely transected. There is no scenario where vision could have been preserved.” His voice is calm, technical, detached.
He looks down at his glove, where Jace’s blood has soaked into the linen of his sleeve. His head tilts a fraction. His brow furrows. He looks up at one of the blood years assisting him then back down at the wound.
“The blood is unusual,” he says, quieter than before. “Higher viscosity than I would expect. Note that. Continue suction.”
Malric leans in.
Nestor’s voice resumes its measured pace, and I cannot tell if he is bothered by what he saw or if he has already filed it away somewhere. Is he worried the corruption spread to his blood? No, there’s no way it would happen that fast.
“We will fill the socket with a current weave to preserve the shape of the orbit. Without it, the lid will sink and the angel’s face will be marked beyond what the wound itself has done.
Watch the layering. The current must be set in three passes, here, here, and here before the conjunctiva is closed.
We close with silk. The socket will be stitched shut and patched.
He will wear the patch for the rest of his life. ”
I turn away. I can’t watch this. My heart is breaking for Jace, and I didn’t even ask Lux if Ellavee was injured.
Nestor is right. I need to go be useful somewhere else.
I descend the few steps out of the gallery, and Professor Bale nearly runs me over pushing a gurney, a mender on the other side of it.
“Miss Rose, join us. We can use an extra pair of hands.” He locks eyes with me briefly then hurries into operating room seven.
I see a flash of long blonde hair when I turn to follow him.
I clean my hands and gown up as fast as I can and push the door open with my back, entering the room. Bale and a mender are pulling instruments and potions from the cabinets, setting up a tray, and I look over at the patient and confirm it.
It’s Ellavee.
She’s not conscious. A jagged piece of dark wood, longer than my forearm and splintered at the protruding end, is buried in her below the ribs on her left side. Someone has already packed clean cloth around the entry wound to keep it stable, but it doesn’t look good.
At least it’s from a branch and not a twisted creature.
I take a step closer. I don’t see any corruption.
“Miss Rose, I don’t have a second healer who can hold the angles I need on a frame this small. You have the smallest set of hands on this floor.”
Mender Theo looks over at me, his eyes narrowing.
I swallow, thankful he doesn’t say anything about how miserably I failed at helping Nella.
“What’s the injury?” I ask, moving next to Ellavee.
“Impalement, left flank, below the costal margin. I won’t know what it’s hit until we open.”
“Spleen?” I ask, trying to remember demon anatomy. I do believe it’s slightly different from human anatomy.
“Possible. Possibly the diaphragm. The object is acting as a tamponade right now. We pull it out too soon, and she bleeds out.”
Mender Theo pulls the tray of instruments over to the table, ready to assist Bale in handing him whatever he needs.
Bale comes to the side of the table across from me, next to Theo, and meets my eyes.
“Maelis, this is your friend on the table, and that is going to make this harder. I need you to put that somewhere else right now so you can help me with this. Can you handle it?”
I nod quickly, not looking up at Ellavee’s face, focusing only on the wound. Where he packed the clean cloth, it’s already steadily darkening. Her abdomen is rising and falling shallowly. Her pulse is steady under my fingers when I press them to the inside of her wrist out of habit.
Demons run a slightly faster baseline than humans.
“Penetrating wound, left flank, below the twelfth rib. The object is angled medially and slightly upward. If it has gone deep enough, it has hit either the spleen at the upper pole or the diaphragm. Possibly both. If it had hit the splenic artery, she would already be dead, so I am hoping for a tear in the parenchyma rather than a vascular injury. If it has hit the diaphragm, we will see air movement in the wound.” I impress even myself with how I know all of that in the heat of the moment.
All my studying is paying off. I need to stay focused.
“Good. What is your first cut?”
“A vertical incision parallel to the object. I open the wound around it. I do not pull it. I expose what it has hit.”
“Length?”
“Six inches. Down through skin, fascia, muscle layers. Slow. I do not want to nick the object and shift it.”
“Hand,” he says, and I reach out.
Mender Theo places a scalpel in my hand, and my heart starts to race.
“Ready?” Professor Bale looks at me and I nod, meeting his stare.
“Cut.”
I look down and cut.
My hand doesn’t shake.
Some distant part of me starts to think of my father on the table. Of the forceps stuck inside him. Of the bleeding I couldn’t stop. But I breathe through it, and I feel Poppy sending calming energy through our bond.
My confidence takes over. I can do this, and I’m not alone this time. Professor Bale is here with me, and he knows exactly what to do.
The scalpel goes in cleanly. I make the incision long, slow, parallel to the wood. The skin parts. The fascia parts. The muscle layers underneath part with the precision Bale taught me to use, layer by layer, identifying each one before I cut it.
“Good. Keep going. Identify the peritoneum. Do not breach it yet.”
“Identifying.”
“There.”
“I see it,” I tell him.
“Is the object touching it?”
“Yes, the object has gone through fascia and muscle and is sitting against the peritoneum. I can see where it has dimpled the membrane.”
“Has it punctured?” he asks.
“I can’t tell yet.”
“Open it carefully. If she has a hemoperitoneum, blood will come up the moment you breach. Be ready,” he instructs.
I take a breath and open the peritoneum with the tip of the blade.
Blood does not come up.
“Clean,” Bale says with relief. “She didn’t penetrate the abdominal cavity. The object is contained in the retroperitoneum. Spleen is unlikely then. Likely it is the diaphragm.”
“Air.”
“Look for air.”
I lean closer. The wound bed is dark, but I can see the white of the diaphragm underneath, and I can see the hole.
“It punctured the diaphragm. I can see a small tear, maybe a centimeter, around the tip of the object.”
“That is a fixable injury. Listen carefully. We are going to clamp around the tip of the object and remove it slowly. I will pull. You will hold the diaphragm closed with the curved forceps as it comes out. The instant the wood is clear, you suture the tear. Three interrupted sutures. Silk.”
“I haven’t stitched a diaphragm before.”
“You have stitched in the lab. The diaphragm is muscle you can see. Stitch the muscle. I will guide you if you hesitate.” His voice is completely calm and not the battlefield yelling I’m used to hearing from him.
“Yes.” I nod.
Mender Theo places the forceps in my left hand. The needle driver and pre-loaded silk in my right.
“Position.”
I lean over Ellavee. I don’t look at her face. I look at the diaphragm.
“On three. One, two, three.”