Robin Cook: Mindbend

“OK, Candy,” said the nurse who’d been helping Dr. Burnham. “We’d like you to scoot over here.” She was on the other side of the operating table, which she patted encouragingly. For a moment Candy felt irritation at being ordered about. But the feeling passed quickly. She really had no choice. She was pregnant with an eighteen-week-old fetus. She preferred to use the word “fetus.” It was easier to think about than “baby” or “child.” Dutifully, Candy moved to the operating table.

Another nurse pulled up Candy’s gown and attached minute electrodes to her chest. A beeping noise began, but it took Candy a while to realize that the sound corresponded to the beating of her heart.

“I’m going to tilt the table,” said Dr. Burnham as Candy felt herself angle so that her feet were lower than her head. In that position she could feel the weight of her uterus in her pelvis. At the same time she felt a fluttering which she had noticed over the previous week and which she thought might be the fetus moving within her womb. Thankfully, it stopped quickly.

The next instant the door to the corridor burst open and Dr. Lawrence Foley backed in, holding up his dripping hands just like surgeons did in the movies. “Well,” he said in his peculiarly inflectionless voice, “how’s my girl?”

“I don’t feel the anesthetic,” said Candy anxiously. She was relieved to see Dr. Foley. He was a tall man with thin features and a long straight nose that sharply tented the front of his surgical mask. Soon all Candy could see of his face were his gray-green eyes. The rest was hidden, including his silver-white hair.

Candy had been seeing Dr. Foley on an infrequent basis for her routine gynecological care and had always liked and trusted the man. She had not had a checkup for eighteen months prior to her pregnancy, and when she had gone to his office a few weeks ago she had been surprised to see how much Dr. Foley had changed. She’d remembered him as being outgoing and not without a touch of dry humor. Candy wondered how much of his “new” personality was due to his disapproval of her unmarried pregnant state.

Dr. Foley looked at Dr. Burnham who cleared his throat: “I just gave her 8 milligrams of tetracaine. We’re using continuous epidural.” Stepping down to the end of the table, he lifted the blanket. Candy could see her feet, which appeared exceptionally pale in the bright fluorescent light from the X-ray view boxes. She could see Dr. Burnham touch her, but she felt nothing as he worked his way up her body until he was just under her breasts. Then she felt the prick of a needle and told him so. He smiled and said, “Perfect!”

For a moment Dr. Foley stood in the center of the room without moving. No one said anything; everyone just waited. Candy wondered what the man was thinking about, since he seemed to be looking directly at her. He’d done the same thing when she’d seen him in the clinic. Finally, he blinked and said, “You’ve got the best anesthesiologist in the house. I want you to relax now. We’ll be finished before you know it.”

Candy could hear some commotion behind her, then the snap of latex gloves as she watched Dr. Burnham fit a wire frame over her head. One of the nurses secured her left arm to her side with the sheet covering the OR table. Dr. Burnham taped her right arm securely to a board that stuck out from the table at right angles. That was the arm with the IV. Dr. Foley reappeared in Candy’s sight, gowned and gloved, and helped one of the nurses spread large drapes over her, effectively blocking nine-tenths of her view. Straight up she could see her IV bottles. Behind her, if she rolled her head back, she could see Dr. Burnham.

“Are we ready?” asked Dr. Foley.

“You’re on,” said Dr. Burnham. He looked down at Candy and winked. “You’re doing fine,” he reassured her. “You may feel a little pressure or some pulling, but you shouldn’t feel any pain.”

“Are you sure?” asked Candy.

“I’m sure.”

Candy could not see Dr. Foley, but she could hear him, especially when he said, “Scalpel.” She heard the sound of the scalpel slapping the rubber glove.

Closing her eyes, Candy waited for the pain. Thank God it didn’t come. All she could feel was the sensation of people leaning over her. For the first time she allowed herself the luxury of thinking that this whole nightmare might actually pass.

It had all started about nine months previously when she had decided to go off the pill. She’d been living with David Kirkpatrick for five years. He had believed she was as devoted to her dancing career as he was to his writing, but sometime after her thirty-fourth birthday she had begun nagging David to marry her and start a family. When he refused, she decided to try getting pregnant, certain he would change his mind. But he had remained adamant when she had told him of her condition. If she continued the pregnancy, he would leave. After ten days of weeping and countless scenes she had finally agreed to this abortion.

“Oh!” gasped Candy as she felt a stab of white-hot pain somewhere deep in her being. It was akin to the feeling when a dentist finds a sensitive spot in a tooth. Thankfully, the stab didn’t last long.

Dr. Burnham glanced up from his anesthesia chart, then stood to look over the ether screen at the operative site. “Are you guys pulling on the small bowel?”

“We just packed it away out of the operative field,” admitted Dr. Foley.

Dr. Burnham sat back down and gazed directly into Candy’s eyes. “You’re doing just great. It’s common for someone to feel pain when the small intestine is manipulated, but they’re not going to do that anymore. OK?”

“OK,” said Candy. It was a relief to be reassured that everything was going as it should. Yet she wasn’t surprised. Although Lawrence Foley’s manner seemed to lack the old warmth, she still had every confidence in him as a doctor. He’d been wonderful to her from the start: understanding and supportive, especially in helping her decide about the abortion. He’d spent several sessions just talking to her, calmly pointing out the difficulties of raising a child as a single parent and underlining the ease of having an abortion, though Candy was already in her sixteenth week.

There was no doubt in Candy’s mind that it had been Dr. Foley and the people at the Julian Clinic who had made it possible for her to go through with the abortion. The only thing that she had insisted upon was that she be sterilized. Dr. Foley had tried unsuccessfully to change her mind about the sterilization. She was thirty-six years old and she did not want to be tempted again to beat the biological clock by becoming pregnant, since it was obvious marriage was not in her immediate future.

“Kidney dish,” ordered Dr. Foley, bringing Candy’s attention back to the present. She heard the clank of metal against metal.

“Babcock clamp,” demanded Dr. Foley.

Candy rolled her eyes back and glanced up at Dr. Burnham. All she could see were his eyes. The rest of his face was hidden by his surgical mask. But she could tell he was smiling down at her. She let herself drift and the next thing she heard was Dr. Burnham saying, “It’s all over, Candy.”

With some difficulty she blinked and tried to make sense of the scene slowly coming into focus before her eyes. It was like an old-fashioned TV warming up: first there were sounds and voices, then slowly the picture and meaning emerged. The door to the corridor opened, and an orderly pulled an empty gurney into the room.

“Where’s Dr. Foley?” asked Candy.

“He’ll see you in the recovery room,” said Dr. Burnham. “Everything went perfectly.” He moved Candy’s IV bottle to the gurney.

Candy nodded as a tear ran down her cheek. Fortunately, before she could dwell on the fact that she would remain childless forever, one of the nurses took her hand and said, “Candy, we’re going to move you over onto the gurney now.”