Coma

“The OR’s backed up. I’ll be back later to give you your pre-op meds.

Just relax.” The nurse departed. Berman’s mouth was open, ready for another question, a hundred questions. Relax? Fat chance. In fact, until Susan’s appearance, Sean Berman had spent the entire morning in an uninterrupted cold sweat, dreading the passage of each moment, yet at the same time wishing time would hurry by. Several times he had felt a tinge of embarrassment at the depth of his anxiety, and he wondered if his feelings were relative to the seriousness of the anticipated surgery.

If that were the case, he felt he could never undergo a truly serious operation. Berman was worried about feeling pain, worried that his leg might not be ninety-eight percent better, as his doctor had promised, worried about the cast he would have to wear on his leg for several weeks after the operation. He wasn’t worried about the anesthesia. If anything, he worried that they might not put him to sleep. He did not want local anesthesia; he wanted to be out cold.

Berman did not worry about possible complications, nor did he worry about his mortality. He was too young and healthy for that. If he had, he would have thought twice about having the operation. It had always been one of Berman’s faults, to miss the forest for the trees. Once he had designed an architecturally award-winning building only to have it turned down by the local city council just because it did not fit into the surroundings. Fortunately Berman was unaware of the stricken Nancy Greenly in the ICU.

For Berman, Susan Wheeler had been a star on a cloudy night. In his overly sensitized and anxiety-ridden state, she had seemed like an apparition coming to help him pass the time, to ease his mind. But she had done more. For the first few moments of the morning Berman had been able to think of something besides his knee and the knife. He had given every ounce of concentration to Susan’s comments and all too brief self-revelation. Whether it was Susan’s attractiveness or her obvious wit or just Berman’s own emotional vulnerability, he had been charmed and delighted and felt immeasurably more comfortable on his ride in the elevator down to the operating room. He also considered that the shot Ms. Sterns had given him might have contributed, because he began to get a little light-headed and images began to be slightly discontinuous.

“Guess you see a lot of people on their way to surgery,” said Berman to the orderly, as the elevator approached floor two. Berman was on his back, his hands beneath his head.

“Yup,” said the orderly, uninterested, cleaning under his nails.

“Have you ever had surgery here?” asked Berman, enjoying a sensation of calmness and detachment spreading through his limbs.

“Nope. I’d never have an operation here,” said the orderly, looking up at the floor indicator as the car eased to a stop on two.

“Why not?” asked Berman.

“I’ve seen too much, I guess,” said the orderly, pushing Berman into the hall.

By the time his gurney was parked in the patient holding area, Berman was happily inebriated. The shot he had received on orders from the anesthesiologist, a Dr. Norman Goodman, was 1 cc of Innovar, a relatively new combination of extremely potent agents. Berman tried to talk to the woman next to him in the patient holding area, but his tongue seemed to have become unresponsive, and he laughed at his own ineffectual efforts.

He tried to grab a nurse who walked by, but he missed, and he laughed.

Time ceased to be a concern and Berman’s brain no longer recorded what happened.

Down in the OR things were progressing well. Penny O’Rilley was already scrubbed and gowned and had brought in the steaming tray of instruments to put out on the Mayo stand. Mary Abruzzi, the circulating nurse, had located one of the pneumatic tourniquets and had carried it into the room.

“One more to go, Dr. Goodman,” said Mary, activating the foot pedal to raise the operating table to gurney height.

“How right you are,” said Dr. Goodman cheerfully. He let I.V. fluid run through the tube onto the floor to remove the bubbles. “This should be a rapid case. Dr. Spallek is one of the fastest surgeons I know and the patient is a healthy young man. I bet we’re out of here by one.”