Harvest by Tess Gerritsen Read Free Book Online

was Aaron who was thinking about it."
    For a while Mark drove without saying a word. "You must have misunderstood," he said at last.
    She shrugged. "Maybe I did."
    "Light, please," said Abby.
    A nurse reached up and adjusted the overhead lamp, focusing the beam on the patient's chest. The operative site had been drawn on the skin in black marker, two tiny x's connected by a line tracing along the top of the fifth rib. It was a small chest, a small woman. Mary Allen, eighty-four years old and a widow, had been admitted to Bayside a week ago complaining of weight loss and severe headaches. A routine chest x-ray had turned up an alarming find: multiple nodules in both lungs. For six days she'd been probed, scanned, and x-rayed. She'd had a bronchoscope down her throat, needles punched through her chest wall, and still the diagnosis was unclear.
    Today they'd know the answer.
    Dr. Wetfig picked up the scalpel and stood with blade poised over the incision site. Abby waited for him to make the cut. He didn't. Instead he looked at Abby, his eyes a hard, metallic blue over the mask.
    "How many open lung biopsies have you assisted on, DiMatteo?" he asked.
    "Five, I think."
    "You're familiar with this patient's history? Her chest films?"
    "Yes, sir."
    Wetfig held out the scalpel. "This one's yours, Doctor."
    Abby looked in surprise at the scalpel, glittering in his hand. The General seldom relinquished the blade, even to his upper level residents.
    She took the scalpel, felt the weight of stainless steel settle comfortably in her grasp. With steady hands, she made her incision, stretching the skin taut as she sliced a line along the rib's upper edge. The patient was thin, almost wasted; there was scant subcutaneous fat to obscure the landmarks. Another, slightly deeper incision parted the intercostal muscles.
    She was now in the pleural cavity.
    She slipped a finger through the incision and could feel the surface of the lung. Soft, spongy. "Everything all right?" she asked the anaesthesiologist.
    "Doing fine."
    "OK, retract," said Abby.
    The ribs were spread apart, widening the incision. The ventilator pumped another burst of air, and a small segment of lung tissue ballooned out of the incision. Abby clamped it, still inflated. Again she glanced at the anaesthesiologist. "OK?"
    "No problem."
    Abby focused her attention on the exposed segment of lung tissue. It took only a glance to locate one of the nodules. She ran her fingers across it. "Feels pretty solid," she said. "Not good."
    "No surprise," said Wettig. "She looked like a chemotherapy special on x-ray. We're just confirming cell type."
    "The headache? Brain metastases?"
    Wetfig nodded. "This one's aggressive. Eight months ago she had a normal chest x-ray. Now she's a cancer farm."
    "She's eighty-four," said one of the nurses. "At least she had a long life."
    But what kind of life? wondered Abby as she resected the wedge of lung containing the nodule. Yesterday, she had met Mary Allen for the first time. She had found the woman sitting very quiet and still in her hospital room. The shades had been drawn, the bed cast in semidarkness. It was the headaches, Mary said. The sun hurts my eyes. Only when I sleep does the pain go away. So many different kinds of pain... .
    Please, doctor, couldn't I have a stronger sleeping pill?
    Abby completed the resection and sutured the cut edge of lung. Wetfig offered no comment. He merely watched her work, his gaze as chilly as ever. The silence was compliment enough; she'd learned long ago that just to escape the General's criticism was a triumph.
    At last, the chest closed, the drain tube in place, Abby stripped off her bloodied gloves and deposited them in the bin labelled: contaminated.
    "Now comes the hard part," she said, as the nurses wheeled the patient out of the OR. "Telling her the bad news."
    "She knows," said Wettig. "They always do."
    They followed the squeak of the gurney wheels to Recovery. Four post-op patients in various states