She let out a huge sigh of relief that they had a surgical drill. "And I don't suppose you have a magnifying headset?"
"Cabinet by the crash cart," V said. "Lower drawer. Left side. You want me to scrub in?"
"Yup." She went over and found the set. "We have X-ray capability?"
"No."
"Shit." She put her hands on her hips. "Whatever. I'll go in blind."
As she put the headset on, V. got up and went to work on his hands and forearms over the sink in the far corner. When he was done she took his place, then they gloved up.
She came back to Phury, meeting him in his good eye. "This is probably going to hurt even with the local and some morphine. You'll probably pass out, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later."
She went for a syringe and felt the familiar sense of power come to her as she set about fixing what needed to be repaired—
"Wait," he said. "No drugs."
"What?"
"Just do it." There was a gruesome anticipation in his eye, one that was not right on so many levels. He wanted to be hurt.
She narrowed her stare. And wondered if he had let this happen to himself.
"Sorry." Jane pierced the rubber seal of the lidocaine vial with the needle. As she drew out what she needed she said, "There is no way in hell I'm going in without you numbed up. You feel strongly to the contrary, find yourself another surgeon."
She put the little glass bottle down on a steel rolling tray and leaned over his face, syringe up in the air. "So what's it going to be? Me and this knockout sauce or… gee, no one?"
That yellow stare flared with anger, like she'd cheated him out of something.
But then the kinglike guy spoke up. "Phury, don't be an ass. This is your vision we're talking about. Shut up and let her do her job."
The yellow eye closed. "Fine," the guy muttered.
It was about two hours later that Vishous decided he was in trouble. Big trouble. As he stared at the rows of neat little black stitches in Phury's face, he was overwhelmed to the point of silence.#p#分页标题#e#
Yeah. He was in mega trouble.
Jane Whitcomb, M.D., was a master surgeon. An absolute artist. Her hands were elegant instruments, her eyes sharp as the scalpel she used, her focus as fierce and all-consuming as that of a warrior in battle. At times she'd worked with a blurring speed, and at others she'd slowed down until it seemed like she wasn't moving at all: Phury's orbital bone had been broken in a number of places, and Jane had put him back together step by step, removing chips that were white as oyster shells, drilling into the cranium and running wire between fragments, putting a small screw in his cheek.
V could tell she wasn't completely happy with the end result by the hard look on her face as she'd closed. And when he'd asked her what the problem was, she'd told him that she would have preferred to put a plate in Phury's cheek, but as they didn't have that kind of kit handy, she was just going to hope the bone knit fast.
From start to finish she'd been totally in control. To the point where it had turned him on, which was both absurd and shameful. It was just that he'd never met a female—a woman—like her before. She'd just cared for his brother superbly, with skill V himself couldn't hope to match.
Oh, God… He was in such fucking trouble here.
"How's his blood pressure?" she asked.
"Steady," he replied. Phury had passed out about ten minutes in, though his breathing had remained strong and so had his BP.
As Jane wiped off the area around the eye and cheekbone and started to pack it with gauze, Wrath cleared his throat at the doorway. "What about his vision?"
"We won't know until he tells us," Jane said. "I have no way of ascertaining whether his optic nerve has been damaged or whether there was any retinal or cornea damage. If any of that has happened, he's going to have to go to another facility to get it repaired, and not just because of the limited resources here. I'm not an eye surgeon, and I wouldn't even attempt that kind of operation."
The king pushed his sunglasses up a little higher on his straight nose. Like he was thinking of his weak eyes and hoping Phury didn't have to deal with that kind of problem.
After Jane covered the side of Phury's face with gauze, she ran a length of bandage around his head like a turban, then put the instruments she'd used in the autoclave. To keep from watching her obsessively, V got busy throwing out the used syringes, pads, and needles along with the disposable tube from the suction draw.
Jane snapped off her surgical gloves. "Let's talk infection. How susceptible is your kind?"
"Not very." V lowered himself back into his chair. He hated to admit it, but he was tired. If she hadn't made him take a load off, he'd be totally dead on his feet by now. "Our immune systems are very strong."