Мариус Габриэль - The Ocean Liner

‘And only a local anaesthetic is necessary,’ Dr Freeman added. He smiled at Rosemary. ‘In fact, we need Rosemary to be wide awake, so she can tell us how it’s going. The operation is performed through small incisions, which will soon heal, leaving almost no scarring. It’s no worse than going to the dentist. She’ll be a much happier young woman, less frustrated, calmer. Have no fears, Senator. This is going to change her life – and yours.’

Everybody fell silent when he said that, and they all stood around without saying anything, looking at Daddy, waiting. Daddy was looking at the ground. Rosemary felt so proud of him at that moment. He was so tall, and handsome, and important. Everybody treated him like the President. To her, he was far more important than the President, and she’d got into trouble with the nuns for saying he was more important than God, but that was how she felt. The nuns had told her to trust in God, but God had let her down too many times. She only trusted Daddy.

At last Daddy turned to look at her. He looked into her eyes and smiled in that way that always made her heart sing with joy. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said.

‘Yes, Daddy,’ she replied happily.

And then she realised that he was going away, and was going to leave her there, and she didn’t think it was going to be all right after all.

They came for her early the next morning. She was still sleepy, and she hadn’t had her breakfast yet, but they said there was no breakfast today. She was hungry and thirsty and starting to lose her nerve. She wanted badly to see Daddy but they said Daddy would come along later in the day.

She had to lie on a trolley and be pushed along the corridor, so she couldn’t see where they were taking her. All she could see was the rows of lights in the ceiling above her. The way they swept slowly overhead was queer, and made her feel sleepy again.

She was woken up when they reached a bright, white room where they told her to get off the trolley and sit in a chair. The nurse there had a real smile, not a doctor smile. She was kind. She said, ‘I’ll just cut your hair now.’

Rosemary said she’d already had her hair cut short, which was true. They’d taken her to have it bobbed the week before, because they said bobbed hair was in, and now it curled just below her ears.

‘Didn’t they explain?’ the nurse asked. ‘We’ll need to shave the front of your head completely for the operation.’

‘You mean, bald?’ Rosemary asked in astonishment.

‘They can’t very well work through all that hair, can they?’ the nurse said reasonably, draping a sheet around Rosemary, like at the hairdresser’s. ‘But it’ll grow back in no time. You’re very lucky. You have such lovely thick hair.’

Rosemary didn’t feel very lucky. She started crying as the nurse switched on the electric clipping machine. The hard steel teeth buzzed over her head. Dark locks fell into her lap. She tried to get her hand out of the sheet to pick up the silky strands that were falling, falling into her lap, but the nurse said she had to sit still.

Dr Freeman and Dr Watts came in to see her. They were wearing very strange clothes, like gardeners’ overalls, except that their arms were bare right to the shoulder. Dr Freeman had bruises on his arms, as though he’d been wrestling, and someone had grabbed him really hard. You could see the finger marks.

‘Don’t cry, Rosemary,’ Dr Freeman said. ‘This is all worth it. You’re never going to be angry or sad again. You’re going to be a much calmer, happier person.’

They gave her a pill to swallow. They said it would make her feel more relaxed. She took it, hoping it would work fast.

Dr Watts didn’t say anything, but he put his hand on Rosemary’s forehead and tilted her head this way and that, as though she wasn’t even a person, just maybe a melon he was thinking of buying. He had a grease pencil and he wrote something on either side of her head, but she didn’t know what it was.

Someone held her head tight. She felt the sharp sting of needles going into her temples, first on one side, then on the other. It hurt so much that she started crying again. But then her face went numb. It felt like they were still holding her head, except they had let go now. She just couldn’t feel anything. She asked them if that was it. They laughed and said, just a little bit longer, Rosemary. Just a little bit longer.

She got on the table as they asked her and lay back. She hadn’t noticed, but there were leather straps fastened on the table, and now they started to buckle them over her wrists and ankles, pulling them tight so she couldn’t move.

Before they started to operate, the nurse tilted her head right back, so she was almost looking at the people standing behind her. She could smell disinfectant and alcohol and the man-smell of Dr Watts’s skin as he bent over her. She could feel them cutting into her temples with the knife. It didn’t hurt, though she could feel the blade scraping on bone, and the tug of the skin being pulled back. There was sizzling and flashing and the smell of barbecue. They told her they were cauterising the incision to stop the bleeding, and that she was being very brave. That helped her not to lose her nerve. She had never been a fraidy-cat. Her brothers had taken care of that.

And then the worst started. The drilling into her skull with the machine that was so terribly loud and pressed so terribly hard. The grinding of the steel against the bone that rattled her teeth and made her cry out in terror, ‘Daddy. Daddy!’

First the left side. Then the right.

It stopped at last. She lay trembling in her bonds, listening to the murmur of strangers’ voices and the rattle of instruments, feeling like doors had been cut into where her soul lived, and that it was in danger of flying out, never to return, like the nuns said happened when you died.

Then Dr Freeman’s happy-devil face hovered over her, smiling.

‘We’re ready to start the operation now, Rosemary. We’ll need you to help us with this part, okay? And then it will all be over. Can you help us?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Good girl.’ He looked away from her at the other people standing around the table. ‘Dr Watts is going into the brain now. You can see the dura exposed through the access holes. We’ll need to penetrate that to get to the frontal lobes. The patient herself will guide us as to how much we need to cut.’

There was a sudden pain, much worse than any of the other pains, worse than the worst headaches she’d ever had. She felt dizzy and weak, and she started to pant like a dog in the sun.

‘Rosemary,’ Dr Freeman said, ‘can you say your Hail Mary for us?’

‘Hail Mary,’ she panted, ‘the Lord is with thee. Blessed – blessed art thou among women and blessed – blessed – blessed is the fruit of thy womb—’

‘Go on Rosemary. Don’t stop.’

She could feel Dr Watts twisting something into her head, something that scraped and sliced. ‘—the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now – now and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

‘Very good,’ Dr Freeman said, as though she’d done something really clever. ‘What’s your favourite book?’

‘ Winnie-the-Pooh ,’ she whispered.

‘Can you tell us what it’s about?’

The twisting and scraping was going deeper and deeper. She could hear Dr Watts breathing through his nose, close to her ear, in that way men did when they were concentrating on something, or when they lay on top of her in the grass. ‘It’s about a teddy bear.’