Down Among the Dead Men by Michelle Williams Read Free Book Online

Samuel had made a full
recovery from the anaesthetic and the surgeon, Mr Wilson, was happy that there had been no technical problems. Two days later, though, he had begun to feel unwell and very soon after that he had
become very sick. Mr Wilson went back in and found bile and inflammation all over the abdominal cavity. He had tried to wash this out and then sent Mr Chandler straight to Intensive Therapy, but
the poor man died just twelve hours later.
    When Graham and I got Mr Chandler out of the body bag, I was shocked at the state of him. He was bloated with fluid that had leaked out of him so that he looked, as Graham remarked, as if
he’d been dragged from the river. He was covered in a patchy red rash and there was a liverish tinge to his waxy skin. Something else that I was amazed at was the number of places that
intravenous lines had been inserted – one into the crook of each elbow, one into each wrist, one into his left ankle and one (with six tubes spreading out from it) into the right side of his
neck. There was a urinary catheter, a tube down his nose and one poking out of his mouth from his throat. Running down the front of his tummy was a long adhesive dressing with two smaller ones just
under the ribs on the right. He wasn’t smelling too clever, either.
    Graham told me to make a note of all the lines and tubes, but not to start the post-mortem yet because he thought Ed would want to see Mr Chandler as he was. I did as I was told, then we went
back into the office for some coffee. Clive had gone to our sister hospital for a meeting, so Graham and I exchanged chat about this and that for half an hour. Ed came in, wished us both good
morning, then went into the dissection room. Almost immediately we heard him cry out, ‘Oh, my God! Not another ITU failure?’
    When we followed him in, he was reading the notes and looked up to say, ‘Mr Wilson, surgeon to the stars, strikes again, then.’
    Graham laughed. ‘Looks like it.’
    Ed explained to me, ‘Charlie Wilson is a regular contributor to our workload. He’s a surgeon of the old school, which basically means jack of all trades and master of none. All
around him, younger colleagues are coming through and techniques are being developed, and he can’t quite seem to cope with either.’
    While he was talking, he was walking around Mr Chandler, checking that I had noted all the tubes correctly, looking for old surgical scars, and recording the swelling of the tissues and the
rash.
    ‘Michelle’s doing this one with you,’ said Graham.
    ‘Good. You get started while I change. When you take the dressing off the wounds, don’t forget to measure them.’ With that he was off to the changing room, and the bell for the
front door sounded, so that Graham left the room too. From watching Clive and Graham, I knew that I could now take out the lines and make the first midline incision, but what I would find when I
did worried me greatly.
    Inside two minutes, I knew that I had been right to worry. In the few weeks I’d been doing this job, I’d seen a lot of astonishing things – blood filling the abdomen when an
aortic aneurysm burst, a liver almost completely replaced by white cancer deposits, an ovarian cyst eighteen inches across – but this topped them. The abdominal cavity is normally a clean
place but Mr Chandler’s was filled with curdled, yellow pus. I had to step back and turn away because it not only looked horrible, it stank horribly too and, forgetting his poor
stomach, mine began to churn at the sight.
    At this point, Ed came back into the PM room and sniffed the air. ‘Eau de peritonitis, I think,’ he said cheerily. ‘Hang on.’ Having put on an apron, a cap, a mask,
plastic sleeves and gloves, he came to stand beside me. ‘Forget about removing the intestines first. Just take it all out in one.’ Normally, we tie off and remove the intestines before
taking out the rest of the organs, but delving around in that horrible