Lovely! An edge-to-edge take with that graft Slowly the cap of skin
extended -up across the nape of his neck and over his scalp. The
meshing of the skin grafts gave them a patterned effect, regular as the
scales of a fish, and the new grafts were hard-looking and raised. We
can move the pedicel up now. 'This afternoon's theatre, doctor? 'Yes,
please, sister. David came to know that they operated every Thursday in
the burns unit. He came to dread the Thursday morning rounds when the
consultant and his staff crowded around his cot and touched and prodded
and discussed the restructuring of his flesh with an impersonal candour
that chilled him.
They freed the fat sausage of flesh from his belly and it dangled from
his arm like some grotesque white leech, seeming to have a life of its
own, drawing blood and sustenance from its grip upon his forearm.
They lifted his arm and strapped it across his chest, and the raw end of
the pedicel they split and stitched to his jaw and to the stump of his
nose.
It's taken very nicely. We will begin shaping it this afternoon. We'll
have him at the head of the theatre list.
Will you see to that please, sister? With the living flesh that they
had stolen from his belly they fashioned a crude lump of a nose, taut,
narrow lips and a new covering for his jawbone.
The oedema has settled. This afternoon I will go for the bone-graft on
the jaw.
They opened his chest and split his fourth rib laterally, robbing it of
a long sliver of bone and they grafted this to the damaged jaw-bone,
then they spread the flesh of the pedicel over it and stitched it all
into place.
On Thursdays it was the knife and the stink of anaesthetic, and for the
days in between it was the ache and pain of abused and healing flesh.
They fined down the new nose, piercing it with nostrils, they finished
the reconstruction of his eyelids.
They laid the last grafts behind his ears, they cut a double zigzag
incision around the base of his jaw where the contracting scar tissue
was trying to draw his chin down on to his chest. The new lips took
firm hold on the existing muscles and David gained control of them so he
could form his words again and speak clearly.
The last area of raw flesh was closed beneath the patchwork of skin
grafts, flesh grafts and stitches. David was no longer a high-infection
risk and he was moved from a sterile environment. Once again he saw
human faces, not merely eyes peering over white surgical masks. The
faces were friendly, cheerful faces. Men and women proud of their
achievement in saving him from death and refreshing his ravaged head.
You'll be allowed visitors now, and I expect you'll welcome that, said
the consultant. He was a distinguished-looking young surgeon who had
left a highly paid post at a Swiss Clinic to head this burns and plastic
surgery unit.
I don't think I will be having any visitors, David had lost contact with
the reality of the outside world during the nine months in the burns
unit.
