Comeback by Dick Francis Page A

his actions only in peripheral vision.
    Supplied with instruments by Scott, he worked steadily, attaching clamps, clipping, removing tissue, swabbing, stitching, making occasional noises in his throat but otherwise not talking. Time passed. Eventually he took two clamps off and watched the results unwaveringly.
    “Monitor?”
    “Steady.”
    He murmured to himself and finally looked up. “All right. The obstruction’s excised and the gut repaired. No leaks.” He seemed to be fighting down hope he couldn’t help. “Ready to close up.”
    I glanced at the great length of huge intestine looped over Scott’s arm and couldn’t see how on earth they were going to stuff it all back into the body cavity.
    As if reading my mind Ken said, “We’ll empty the colon.” Scott nodded. Ken asked me to fetch an open trash can that stood against one wall and to position it near him beside the table. Next he wanted me to slot a tray into the table, rather like tray tables in airplanes. A colon tray, he said.
    He nodded his thanks. “You’re a nonsterile area,” he said almost cheerfully. “Go back to the screen, will you?”
    He straightened the colon until part of it was on the tray and over the trash can, then swiftly made a slit, and he and Scott began systematically to squeeze out all of the contents.
    This time it did smell, but only like a stable yard, quite fresh and normal. For some reason I found myself wanting to laugh: the process was so incredibly prosaic and the can so incredibly full.
    “Monitor,” Ken said severely.
    “Steady.”
    Scott washed the now empty, flabby and lighter tubing with fluid, and Ken, in a fresh gown and gloves, stitched up the slit he’d made in it; then, carefully folding it into zigzags, he returned the large gut to its rightful position inside. He did a quick, half-audible checklist on the abdomen, almost like a pilot coming in to land and, still with deftness and care, fastened the incision together in three layers, first the linea alba with strong separately knotted stitches, then the subcutaneous tissue with a long single thread, finally closing the skin with a row of small steel staples, three to an inch. Even the stapler came separately packed, sterile and throwaway, made mostly of white plastic, handy and light.
    After the briefest of pauses, when he’d finished, Ken pulled his mask down and gave me a look of shaky triumph.
    “She’s made it so far,” he said. “Scott, gas off.”
    Scott, who had put a lid on his odorous trash can and rolled it away, had also been round to the ventilator to turn off the halothane.
    “Blood pressure?” Ken asked.
    “No change,” I said.
    “Ventilator off,” Scott said. “Disconnect the catheter?”
    Ken nodded. “She’s got a strong heart. Write down the time,” he said to me, and I looked at my watch and added the time to my notes.
    “Ninety-one minutes from incision to finish,” I said.
    Ken smiled with the professional satisfaction of star work well done, the doubts and shakes in abeyance. He light-heartedly peeled off the green sterile cloths from the mare’s round body and threw them into a trash can.
    He and Scott unclipped the mare’s legs from the bed-posts. Then the hoist, with Scott supporting her head, lifted her up off the table. In reverse order she rolled along the rails and through the sliding door into the padded room, where Ken brought over an extra panel of padding and placed it on the floor. The hoist lowered the mare onto that until she lay on her side comfortably, her legs relaxing into their normal position.
    Scott removed the padded cuffs from her legs and put a rope halter on her head, leading the rope through a ring on top of the half-wall so that someone standing behind the wall could partly control her movements and stop her staggering about too much.
    “She’ll take twenty minutes or so to wake up slowly,” Ken said. “Maybe in half an hour she’ll be on her feet, but she’ll be woozy for a good