Chameleon

in use. Two powerful lamps above it augmented the strip lighting on the ceiling and an instrument trolley serviced the needs of the pathologist who was working alone. He looked up from the table and said, 'You must be Jamieson. They told me you might come along. I'm Vogel.'

Jamieson estimated that Vogel was in his late fifties, grey haired and bespectacled and with a moustache that drooped at the corners. His gown was tied tightly enough to emphasise the size of his paunch and his sleeves were rolled up far enough to reveal powerful arms with thick wrists. His left one carried a large, stainless steel wrist watch.

Jamieson joined Vogel at the table and saw that the pathologist had already opened up the body of Sally Jenkins. He was removing some of her internal organs. 'Look at that,' said Vogel, holding up a handful of tissue which Jamieson could not recognise out of context. 'What a mess.'

'Was it a Pseudomonas infection?' asked Jamieson.

'No doubt about it. You can smell it.'

Jamieson saw that Vogel was serious and moved closer still until he noticed the same smell of new-mown grass that had come from the culture dish in the lab. 'So you can' he said.

'Just look at the damage here,' said Vogel. He held up the diseased tissue and invited Jamieson to examine it. Jamieson was reluctant to add to the already overpowering assault on his senses of sight and smell. He had never liked pathology. He nodded and looked down at the marble white face lying on the table as Vogel sluiced some of the mess down the drain channels with the aid of a hand held hose which he removed from a holster at the head of the table. She seemed so young.

'There are half a dozen infections I can tell by smell,' said Vogel. 'Pseudomonas is one of the easiest.'

'You've come across it a lot then?' asked Jamieson.

'Thirty years ago and before I became a pathologist, I worked in a burns unit. Pseudomonas was the scourge of burns cases at the time. Once it got into the wounds there was practically nothing we could do. A lot of people died in a lot of pain because of this damned organism. Nowadays we have the drugs to deal with it. We don't often see something like this.'

Jamieson looked at Vogel but then looked away sharply for fear of revealing in his eyes what he felt about the pathologist's expression. He was thinking that already in Vogel's mind, Sally Jenkins had become 'something like this'. He cautioned himself not to be too critical of his colleague because in a way, Vogel was right. The figure on the table was just another cadaver, another medical problem to be solved and reported on but for him Sally Jenkins was still a patient and her death at such an age was an absolute tragedy.

'The degree of tissue invasion in this particular case is quite remarkable,' continued Vogel. 'To have caused so much internal damage in such a short time is phenomenal. Look at that.'

Jamieson followed the line of Vogel's knife and saw the festering, deformed tissue that had been a healthy uterus only two days before.

'We'll get this to the lab,' said Vogel. 'But there is no doubt in my mind. The Pseudomonas killed her.'

Jamieson left to return to the residency and this time he did not object to the strength of the wind. It would aerate his clothing. He always felt unclean after being in pathology for he knew that the smell of formaldehyde and the hideous odours from the exposed cadavers could cling tenaciously to clothes. He remembered that a long time ago a local cinema back home had started to use the same air freshener as was used in the hospital mortuary. He had stopped going to see films after that. The heavy scent had made him see something quite different on the screen from everyone else.

Jamieson took a warm relaxing bath and then made himself some coffee using the electric kettle that was provided in his room and a sachet of the instant sort he had bought down in the town. He planned to have an early night because tomorrow he would be back in theatre for the first time since the accident. He would not be doing anything other than observe but just being there was going to mean a lot.

As he lay in bed, he thought back to his accident and relived it. On that morning he had been driving in the outside lane of the M6 when a van coming in the opposite direction had swung violently to the right after a tyre had blown. It had mounted the central reservation and flipped over on to its side to tumble right into the path of his own car. There was nothing he could have done. He had careered headlong into it.

Immediately after the impact Jamieson was unconscious but when he did come round he started to remember little details about the moments leading up to the collision. Not all at once because, at first, his mind had been a total blank but gradually and usually when he was least expecting it, latent memory would restore to him a jigsaw piece of the event.

One evening, he suddenly found that he could remember the face of the van driver. It could only have been seconds before his own car had ploughed into the overturned vehicle and the vision could only have occupied the merest fraction of a second at the time but Jamieson could remember seeing fear on the man's face.

The vanman's passenger, a boy in his teens had only time enough to register surprise before death overtook him. The bumper of Jamieson's car had caught him in the midriff and crushed him against the rear stanchion of the cab. His arms and legs were flung out as if he were executing a difficult vault in a school gymnasium. This was another memory that could only have occupied the merest fraction of time but it had been stored in his subconscious as an indelible part of the record of that awful day. These particular visions returned to haunt him regularly.

Knowing that he had to be in scrub by ten, Jamieson got into the Microbiology lab dead on nine to check that his nasal swab was clear of potential pathogens and also to see if the Pseudomonas cultures he had inoculated on the previous day had grown. He was satisfied on both counts and Moira Lippman told him that she would be happy to prepare the biochemical reagents for the tests he wanted to do while he was in theatre. It was an offer that Jamieson was glad to accept but once again he reminded Moira that he did not want to interfere with her routine lab work.

'No problem,' smiled the girl. 'I can fit it in. Besides,' she added, 'I have a vested interest in seeing an end to this infection.'

'Tell me,' said Jamieson.

'My sister in law is due to come into Kerr Memorial next week for an op.'

'I see,' said Jamieson.

The nurses in the scrub area for the Gynaecology theatre had to make special arrangements for Jamieson. The bandages on his hands could not be removed to permit washing so they added more sterile dressings to them and sealed them inside sterile inspection gloves. They sealed the cuffs with sterile tape. One of them helped him adjust his mask to sit more comfortably over his face and he was ready to enter theatre.

'Good morning,' said Jamieson as he entered.

Thelwell, watching the preparation of the patient looked up at him but did not reply. Phillip Morton, who had been detailed to assist, said Good morning as did the theatre sister.

A nurse asked, 'Music sir?'

'Mozart I think,’ replied Thelwell. 'Unless anyone objects?'

No one objected. Heaven help them if they had, thought Jamieson.

The strains of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik began to fill the theatre affording it the ambience of an aircraft during boarding.

Phillip Morton supervised a junior houseman in the final preparation of the area where the first incision would be made. The green sheets were re-adjusted to display only the operating site and Morton said, 'Ready here sir.'

Thelwell looked to the anaesthetist and said, 'Well Dr Singh. Is she sleeping comfortably?'

'Like a baby sir,' replied the Indian.

Thelwell began with a preamble for the benefit of the junior houseman and two medical students who had been permitted to attend. A nurse turned down the music a little and Thelwell spoke to punctuating beeps from the monitor.

'Mrs Edelman is twenty nine years old. She is the wife of a German engineer who is based here in Britain with the car company he works for.'

'BMW,' said Phillip Morton but Thelwell just frowned and continued. 'Mrs Edelman has one child, a boy of three years but a later pregnancy was miscarried at eighteen weeks. She had a second miscarriage last year, again at around eighteen weeks and she and her husband decided not to try again. A few weeks ago she developed severe pain in her lower stomach and was referred to us by her GP. The scans we did show a sizable growth on her