Read Online Green for Danger by Christianna Brand - Free Book Online

anæsthetic, on the table. Barney pulled down his mask to say kindly: “You look very shaken, Woody. Did he startle you? Are you all right?”
    â€œYes, yes,” she said hastily, “I’m perfectly all right,” and, with a glance of purely professional inquiry, stepped forward to pull back the blankets from the patient’s body, folding back the grey flannel gown on to his chest, unwrapping the bandages, removing the sterilised towels, and leaving the abdomen bare.
    Eden picked up a brush and idly sloshed iodine over the gently heaving patch of flesh; Major Moon came and stood opposite him, and together they arranged the rubber sheets and sterile green cloths across the body, leaving only a naked, yellow-painted square. They looked for all the world like two women helping each other to make a bed. Eden said, grinning: “I regret to inform you, sir, that the patient has a pimple right in the line of fire!”
    Moon smiled absently, standing turned a little away from the table, pushing with bunched fingers at the slack stomach. He nodded to Barnes. “Yes, he’s very nice,” and, without further ado, picked up a knife and made a long, slow, deep slash, apparently at random, across the yellow square. The flesh gaped, fatty white, turning to deep red against the dark green of the surrounding cloths: opening out after the point of the knife like the wash in the wake of a ship. Eden took forceps from Sister Bates’ hand and clipped up the blood-vessels, holding each for a moment while Moon tied it off with gut, before dropping it and passing on to the next. There was no flow of blood, but swabs and instruments became stained in ugly patches. Barnes forced open the man’s mouth and thrust in a short, red rubber air-way to keep clear the breathing passages.
    Moon worked steadily, freeing the adhesions from the slack, veined balloon of the stomach with little half-scraping, half-paring movements of the knife, plunging his whole hand into the wound to feel his knowledgeable way about. He might have been a woman washing out old and fragile lace—his hands moved with the same delicate care, the same scrupulous attention to detail, the same cool competence and freedom from hesitation or strain. When the stomach was finally exposed, they wrapped it up carefully in a wet, green gauze and left it, bubbling pale pink and faintly blue, out on the abdomen, at the edge of the wound. Moon said to Barney, in the voice of a man asking for a little more butter on his bread: “Let’s have him a bit slacker, will you?” and Barnes fiddled with a tap. The patient gave a little grunt as though in response, and was silent again.
    Major Moon rinsed his hands in the saline at his side, already discoloured with blood from his rubber gloves. Sister Bates said: “Change the basin, nurse.” It was an education in itself to watch her handing the instruments, each held so that it presented itself most readily to the surgeon’s fingers. Major Moon exposed the duodenum.
    Woods tipped blood-stained swabs on to the rubber sheet in the corner of the theatre and began sorting them out. She said, out of the corner of her mouth, to Esther as she slipped back into the theatre: “How’s the old boy now?”
    â€œOh, he’s quietened down again. He thought he’d heard your voice somewhere.”
    â€œSo I gathered,” said Woods drily. She crouched on her hams, busily separating swabs with a pair of long-handled forceps, holding them well away from her spotless gown. “How are you liking your first abdominal?”
    â€œI feel a bit sick, to be honest.”
    â€œWell, you can’t be sick here. You look rather green I must say; it’s the heat, I expect. Why don’t you sit down?”
    Esther moved over to a stool and sat down quietly. Barney looked at her over his mask and raised an eyebrow; he had fastened the rubber mask over the patient’s face