The Serpent's Shadow

Today, however, there seemed to be more visitors than students. The usual hum of voices contained was louder, and there were finer coats in the audience than was normal.

But Maya didn't bother to examine her audience, not when there was far more pressing business at hand. The quicker she could operate, the less blood the girl would lose; next to infection, it was blood loss that carried off the largest number of patients after an otherwise successful procedure. But by the same token, she had to be as careful as she was quick. Being too hasty could mean she would slice through major vessels, or worse.

She adjusted the box full of sawdust under the table with her foot, nudging it to the place where she judged that the blood from the surgery was likeliest to begin dripping. Then, with a glance at O'Reilly and a nod to her dressers, Maya went to work.

She had planned this operation carefully in her mind as she and the patient were in preparation. The position and size of the uterus meant that nothing was straightforward. She took her scalpel and made her incision.

Almost immediately a cry arose from the tiers of 'Heads! Heads!' since her own head and body obscured the small incision she had made. She ignored the cry, concentrating on making her cut so that she did not cut across any major vessels. Blood began to trickle down the girl's hip, onto the oilcloth, to drip into the pan of sawdust beneath the table.

Maya did not get the benefit of having as many dressers and attendants as she wanted; there was no one vying for the honor of holding her instruments or otherwise helping with the operation. There was no one to sponge the sweat from her forehead; hence the strip of toweling. She was not going to go through all the work of sterilizing patient and surface only to have it all ruined by sweat dropping into the open incision and contaminating the site.

She nodded at O'Reilly, who put the ether mask aside and sprayed carbolic over the incision and her hands. He would do this all through the operation, for as long as there was an open wound. The clamor of 'Heads!' continued; she continued to ignore it.

'I can't believe it!' drawled a loud and obnoxiously familiar voice. 'She's not taking the uterus!'

Maya kept herself from jerking around to stare at Simon Parkening in anger and disbelief only by a supreme act of will. That same will kept her hands steady as derisive shouts arose from other lungs. The voices were uniformly unfamiliar; so that was why the theater was so full! Parkening had packed it with his own cronies with the purpose of disturbing the operation!

'Steady, Doctor,' came O'Reilly's low voice, as a bleat of 'Stupid cow!' was aimed at her from the tiers above. 'This is aimed at me, not at you.'

'I will be damned,' she replied through gritted teeth, 'if I let a pack of piddling puppies interfere with my work!'

But of course it was going to interfere, if only by disturbing her helpers. Twice Maya had to raise her voice to be heard by her dressers over the boos, hisses, and catcalls coming down from above. Her hands started to shake, and she had to stop to steady herself as her impotent anger overwhelmed her own control.

'Now you see why females should never be surgeons!' Simon mocked. 'Sentimental! She's going to kill her patient with sentiment over a fetus! By God, they shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine at all! They haven't the nerve for it! Just look at the puny little incision she's made! Is she afraid of a little blood?'

A burst of laughter followed.

'Not that it would make any difference, one Irish bitch more or less in the world to pour out litters of whelps every year,' Simon continued with an air of casual glee. 'They breed like flies anyway.'

Maya actually heard O'Reilly's teeth grinding.

'Steady, Doctor,' she told him.

But that last comment seemed to have gone a bit far, even for Parkening's friends. The catcalls died down, and there was an uneasy note to the muttering. 'I say—' someone objected weakly. 'Out of order, old man.'

Maya had her hands full—literally. She was trying to locate the appendix by feel, through an incision too small for the pregnant uterus to bulge through. There were whispers of 'What's she doing?' that she ignored completely, deciding at last to trust to instinct— and a little magic. She willed the thing to come into her fingers, concentrating a trickle of power into her hands, thinking of the diseased organ as an enemy that was trying to escape her. It's there, somewhere . . . hot, diseased . . . like the polluted soil outside my house.

She sensed it now, a swollen malevolence lurking beneath her fingers. Concentrating all her will on it, the hecklers and the theater receded to a mere whisper of annoyance in the background, inconsequential as the buzzing of a fly on a windowpane. She used her anger as power, poured it into her questing fingers. Into my hands, damn you.

Then, suddenly, she got a tip of her finger on it. It felt so hot it seemed to burn her hand, but she twisted her fingers after it, caught it, and slid it carefully into view in the center of the incision.