Coma

“Screw the dress,” said Susan to the mirror. The scrub dress arched in a tumble into the canvas hamper while Susan retraced her steps into the hall. She paused before the doctors’ lounge, and she almost lost her nerve. Impulsively she pushed open the door.

Bellows was at that very instant next to the door that Susan opened.

He was reaching into one of the cabinets at the entrance for a scrub suit. He was clothed in his James Bond-style skivvies (that’s what he called them) and black socks. He looked as if he belonged in the beginning of a grade C porno movie. Horror spread across his face as he caught sight of Susan. In a flash, he fled into the safety of the depths of the dressing room. As in the nurses’ locker room, one could not see into the dressing room from the door. Spurred by her rebelliousness despite the unexpected encounter, Susan advanced to the cabinet and selected a small scrub top and pants; then she left as quickly as she had entered.

She could hear a tangle of excited voices in the interior of the doctors’

lounge.

Back in the nurses’ locker, she completed changing rapidly. The pale green shirt was too large, as were the pants. Because of her narrow waist she had to cinch up the pants to their absolute maximum before tying the cord. Mentally she began to prepare for the inevitable diatribe from Bellows, the mighty surgeon-to-be, by deciding how she would counter. During their brief introductions on the ward, Susan had been very aware of the condescending attitude Bellows had directed toward the nurses. This attitude was ironical coming so soon after the commendable defense of the nurses he had made to explain their lack of enthusiasm toward new medical students. It was pretty obvious to Susan that Bellows was, among other things, a typical chauvinist. Susan decided that she would challenge that aspect of Bellows’s personality. Maybe it would make the surgical rotation at the Memorial a bit more bearable. Of course she had not planned to see Bellows in his underwear in the dressing room, but the image and symbolic aspects made Susan laugh out loud before she passed through the door into the OR area.

“Miss Wheeler, I presume,” said Bellows as Susan emerged. Bellows was leaning casually against the wall to the left of the doorway, obviously waiting for Susan to appear. His right elbow was on the wall, with the hand supporting his head. Susan literally jumped at the sound of his voice since she hardly expected him to be waiting there for her.

“I must admit,” continued Bellows, “you really caught me with my pants down.” A broad smile spread across his face, changing him in Susan’s eyes to a rather human individual. “That was one of the funniest things that has happened to me in a long time.”

Susan smiled in return but it was a half-smile. She was expecting the tirade to commence immediately,

“After I recovered and realized what you were after,” continued Bellows, “I started to think that it was a pretty ridiculous response on my part to bolt. If I had had any sense I would have stood there and faced you despite my dress ... or the lack of it. At any rate, it made me think that I might have been relying on appearances a bit too much this morning. I’m a second-year resident, that’s all. You and your friends are my first group of students. What I really want to do is to make this time here as profitable as possible for you all, and in the process, profitable for me as well. Least of all, we should enjoy ourselves.”

With a final smile and slight nod of the head, Bellows walked away from the stunned Susan to check which room the staff gallbladder was in. It was Susan’s turn to feel a sense of confusion as she looked after him.

The resolve her feelings of anger and rebelliousness had evoked had been undermined by Bellows’s sudden insight into himself. In fact it made her rebelliousness seem a trifle foolish and out of place. The fact that Susan had stimulated the insight fortuitously made it obvious that she couldn’t take credit for it and that she would have to revise some of her impressions about Mark Bellows. She watched Bellows walk all the way over to the main OR desk; he was obviously at home in the alien environment. For the first time Susan was a little impressed. In fact, she thought that he really wasn’t that bad looking either.

The others were already prepared to go down to the OR. George Miles showed Susan how to put on the paper booties over her shoes and tuck in the conductive tape. Next she put on the hood and finally the mask. Once everyone was so attired, they passed the main OR desk and pushed through the swinging doors into the “clean” area of the ORs themselves.

Susan had never been in an OR before. She had seen a couple of operations through the gallery windows but such an experience was akin to watching it on TV. The glass partition effectively isolated the drama.