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    The two circulating nurses, Rhona May and Cathy Stravinsky, pushed Sophie's instrument tray-on-wheels over the patient's recumbent body, then pushed a large wheeled table holding more instruments and a double bowl-stand with more equipment and gauze sponges into position at right angles to the patient's legs. These were for Sophie to organize, from which she would pass instruments to the surgeon as he needed them.
    Clay waited until Sophie was in position. He felt perfectly calm, his mind focused. The room was quiet, everything orderly, all in place as it should be.
    'Ready, Ms Dunhill?' Clay said.
    'Yes.'
    'OK, Alex?'
    'Sure.'
    'Knife.' Clay held out his right hand.
    With the razor-sharp scalpel blade, held in a steady hand, he made a long incision with a single, careful stroke in the rectangle of exposed skin. The cut went through the skin and a little of the underlying tissue. The long incision, pink against the brown of the iodine, quickly became dotted with little beads of blood. Rick Sommers blotted them carefully with a pristine white gauze sponge.
    Sophie took away the scalpel that had been used for the skin and handed Clay a fresh one. He didn't need to ask her, she knew exactly what to do. He would deepen the incision with the knife, then use curved scissors to make the final cut into the abdominal cavity.
    Every person in the room had a specific job to do, an area of responsibility. An atmosphere of concentration and calm descended as each individual geared up mentally to see the job through to the best of his or her ability.
    Clay cleared his mind of everything other than what he could see and feel in front of him. Although he had a very good idea of what he would find, it wasn't until he could actually see the state of Mike Dolby's gut that he could plan his final strategy.
     

CHAPTER THREE
    The surgical team arrived in the coffee-room of the OR at more or less the same time to have a late coffee-break, all except Alex White who was still with Mike Dolby in the recovery room to make sure he was recovering well from the anaesthetic, before handing over to the very competent nurses there.
    'That went as well as we could have expected,' Rick commented as they joined other staff who were taking a much-needed break. 'He's sure going to be happy that the ileostomy won't be permanent. Do you want me to explain to him, sir, that it's just a temporary one?' Rick helped himself to a mug of coffee and a doughnut from the large box that someone had provided. Not the hospital—they didn't supply anything free these days.
    'If you would like to,' Clay said. 'Whichever one of us gets to him first after he's capable of comprehending what we say to him.'
    Sophie was part of the crowd. She was sitting with a small group of her nursing colleagues, who were all drinking coffee. They tended to gather at one end of the fairly spacious room, away from the doctors. It wasn't easy to relax with people you worked with in what was a relatively formal setting, where certain rules of professional conduct applied. Clay noted her presence without appearing to do so, wondering why he was so aware of her.
    Most of them would have a fifteen-minute coffee- break, before having to rush back to keep the momentum of the operating lists going. There were twenty-two operating, rooms on this floor of the hospital, including the neurology service but not the cardiac service which was on another floor.
    'Ah, it's great to get a shot of caffeine,' Rick commented, taking a swallow of liquid from his mug, 'and a bit of glucose to keep the blood sugar up.'
    'Mmm,' Clay agreed. 'Not too much longer now, Rick, before you can crash out.'
    Jerry Claibourne came into the room and immediately came over to Clay, who stood up to greet him.
    'Hi, Clay. How are you?' Jerry Claibourne was of medium height and solidly built, one of those muscular men who made Clay think of a bricklayer. A handsome man, charismatic and even-tempered, he seemed unaware of his