Healing Knife

L. Russell S.

Description

'Perfect blend of gritty life and romance. Engrossing!' Carol A. Brown, author of Highly SensitiveTo Rachel Keyte death is the enemy. The early loss of her beloved father from heart failure ignited a single-minded determination in her: to save as many patients as she can, and to become a consultant before the age of forty. Everything else friendship, love, empathy is sacrificed to her obsession.Now Rachels surgical skills are twelve-year-old Craigs only hope for a normal life. His mother Eve holds a deep distrust of doctors, and her son is all she has. Reluctantly, she agrees for the operation to go ahead. But surgery is never predictable, nor is a devastated mothers terrifying reaction. Eve, it seems, wants a life for a life...

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782643043
• Langue: English

Extrait

A gripping contemporary tale told with a rare elegance. Captivating. C.F. Dunn, author of Fearful Symmetry
Perfect blend of gritty life and romance. Engrossing! Carol A. Brown, author of Highly Sensitive

Text copyright 2020 S.L. Russell
This edition copyright 2020 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of S. L. Russell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by
Lion Hudson Limited
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park
Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 1 78264 303 6
e-ISBN 978 1 78264 304 3
First edition 2020
Acknowledgments
Scriptures quotations are from the Good News Bible 1994 published by the Bible Societies/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd UK, Good News Bible American Bible Society 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992. Used with permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover images: both iStockphoto.com
(surgeon andrei_r; knife kunertus)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It s been said before, but bears repetition: no book is the product of one mind alone. I am most grateful to my perceptive beta readers and my supportive family and friends, and for the skill, enthusiasm, and patience of the Lion team.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Part One: Porton West
Part Two: Brant Lyon
Part Three: Roqueville
Part Four: Home
January 2016
PART ONE
PORTON WEST

D eath is everywhere, and it makes me angry.
Those months when I couldn t afford to live in the city, looking out of the bus window in the early morning, close-packed with other half-awake commuters - shoppers - whoever they were, with just the occasional cough or muttered word breaking the silence, I d see slumped by the roadside a fox, or a rabbit, maybe even a badger. Something that had once had a purpose, however mysterious it might be to human understanding; something that had sight and hearing, could feel the wind in its pelt and food between its teeth, now pathetic in death, nothing but a broken body of no significance. I should be used to it by now - death - and I am, but I give my fury rein, because after all it s that hatred of death that drives me.
I d never admit to it - of course I wouldn t - especially not to any of my colleagues. They d raise their eyebrows and laugh. Do they feel it? Is it what drives them too, but they hide it for fear of ridicule, just as I do? Or is it just a job to them? Did they have it once, but now are fixated on their careers to the exclusion of all else? I don t know. I hardly know them, and I don t care to.
Of course I can t win - not ultimately; I know that. I m not so deranged or arrogant to think that I can make much of a difference at all, not when I look at the vast numbers of living creatures dying every day. Everything that breathes comes to an end, and so will I. That miraculous pumping organ on which we all depend will wear out eventually, even if there is no disaster. But I can work, one day at a time, cut by cut, stitch by stitch, and give someone a bit longer to live and breathe and love and laugh - or not, depending on their circumstances.
I know I can t win the war. Death, with his scythe and grinning skull, always has the last word. But I can win a few of the battles. I can send a person out with the chance of a few more years of life. I can give the old tyrant something to think about. That s what keeps me going.
I was never much of a speculative thinker. More of a practical person, which is as well in my work. If I were to give in to what if? thinking I d be paralysed. These last months, though, I ve found myself taking a long, hard look at things. Life. Myself. My motives. My choices.
I didn t think in those terms that day, of course. I didn t know then - how could I? - that my ordered world was about to crack open like a melon under a hatchet. But since then I ve wondered what would have happened if I d ignored the phone, which I often do on my day off. Would Malcolm have called on someone else? He said there wasn t anyone, but that s not true. Someone could have done the job. If they had, would everything have come out differently? Useless to wonder now. The fact is, I did pick up the phone. I expected it to be something to do with the hospital, but I wasn t prepared for what came.
Rachel? It s Malcolm. I m in A and E.
What? What s up?
I heard a sheepish laugh. I fell off my bike. Just coming into the car park. A lorry was reversing, I swerved out of the way, must have hit an icy puddle. The bike s a mess.
I could feel myself frown. What about you?
That s just it. I ve broken my arm - quite a nasty complex fracture. Must ve fallen awkwardly.
Oh, Malcolm! What were you thinking of, riding your bike to work in January? Have they patched you up?
Yes, I m in plaster. He hesitated. Rachel, you know I wouldn t ask if there was any other way. I was due to do the Rawlins op on Monday, first on the list. The other things can be given to someone else, or postponed. But not this one.
My frown was rapidly turning into a scowl. Malcolm, I m not a paediatric surgeon.
I know. But you re the best choice, Rachel. Wesley s in the Caribbean somewhere. Sefton s got something infectious, and - this is off the record, by the way - Chan has put himself in rehab.
About time too, I muttered.
And, Malcolm pursued, Craig Rawlins is hardly a baby. He s nearly thirteen.
And undersized.
Well, of course he s undersized! So would you be, if you d had his problems. Look, Rachel, he has to have this operation now. It can t wait any longer. You know what a mission it s been getting his mother to agree to it. And it s his best hope of anything like a normal life. Or life at all, come to that.
I exhaled loudly, making sure he d hear. All right, all right, I ll do it. But you ll need to brief me.
They re bringing me home by ambulance, so there ll be a wait. I should have time to get up to my office for the file. If you drive over to my place now you ll be there before me. Bridget will find you something to eat, I m sure.
Malcolm, did you fall on your head?
What? No, just my arm. They gave me all the scans - everything else is OK. Bruised to hell, but nothing worse. Why?
You re not thinking straight. If I have to get my car out, I can take you home. You don t have to wait for an ambulance.
You re right. He sounded slightly bewildered. Perhaps it s the shock.
Have you rung Bridget?
Not yet. She wasn t expecting me home for hours, so she won t be worried. I ve spent ages ringing round for cover. Scuppered today s clinics, obviously.
Don t you have a secretary for all that?
Well, yes. She s been ringing people too. Had to cancel some routine appointments, and there ll be a few people having to wait a bit longer for their operations. But Craig Rawlins can t wait.
All right, Malcolm - you win. Give me half an hour; I need a shower. Then I ll drive over and you can bring me up to speed.
Yes, he said, sounding brighter. We can go up to my office, and I ll show you the latest angiograms. They ll convince you if nothing else does.
Half an hour, then. And for goodness sake ring Bridget.
I will. Thanks, Rachel. You re a good friend.
Standing under pounding hot water ten minutes later I reflected that Malcolm and Bridget Harries were the nearest thing I had to friends at the hospital - despite their being quite a bit older than me - even after two years, four if you counted the time I was doing locum work to finance my PhD. He wasn t exactly my boss; it didn t work that way. I had my own patients, my own clinics, my own preferred teams. But as a professor at a respected teaching hospital he was certainly a senior colleague. He was where I planned to be in a few years time, if all went well. Unlike some, he treated me with professional courtesy and trusted my ability. The fact that I was a woman in a specialism dominated by men, many of them boorish sexist jerks, didn t seem to make a jot of difference to him. I didn t want to do the Rawlins surgery, but in a way it was flattering he d asked me. As for Bridget, she did her best to mother me, for reasons I couldn t fathom. She d eye me up and down and complain I was too thin. I ate whatever she put in front of me, even though it didn t seem to make me any fatter. I can cook - more camping cookery than haute cuisine, if I m truthful - but I d much rather not. So as I reversed my car out of its parking space that afternoon I was anticipating something hot and tasty when I got Malcolm home.
It was at least another two hours before we were on our way to the Harries place, because I wanted to have a handle on everything to do with Craig Rawlins case. Malcolm had talked about him, of course, and I had some idea of his background, but none of the details. If I was to operate on this boy in a few days time I needed every last morsel of information that was relevant. Malcolm copied sheets from the paper file and we studied the latest angiograms, taken only the week before.
There s an aneurysm forming here, I think. He pointed to the image on his computer screen. As well as the enormous one that practically hits you in the eye here. He looked at me, the late afternoon sun glinting on his steel-framed glasses as he turned his head. You can see why I m concerned.
So these developments are relatively recent?
He sighed and shook his head. We ve been keeping an eye on Craig for years, he said. You know he suffered considerable damage to his coronary arteries following that attack of Kawasaki s he contracted at age four. Undiagnosed till too late.
I nodded. This much I knew.
Well, it was very much a watching brief u