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Updated: May 24, 2025
It seemed as though someone else were doing the surgery, directing his hands step by step in the critical work that had to be done. Dal placed the connections to the heart-lung machine perfectly, and moved with new swiftness and confidence as the great blood vessels were clamped off and the damaged heart removed.
They're keeping a patient alive with a heart-lung machine right now, and they can't finish the job. It looks like it might be bad." The Moruan who escorted them across the city to the hospital was a huge shaggy creature who left no question of the evolutionary line of his people.
And then the heart-lung machine fell silent again, and the carefully applied nodal stimulator flicked on and off, and slowly, at first hesitantly, then firmly and vigorously, the new heart began its endless pumping chore. The Black Doctor's blood pressure moved up to a healthy level and stabilized; the gray flesh of his face slowly became suffused with healthy pink.
Jack prepared the anaesthetics, checked and rechecked the complex heart-lung machine which could artificially support circulation and respiration at the time that the damaged heart was separated from its great vessels.
"We have a prosthetic heart in condition for use, don't we?" "Of course." "Good. Get it ready now." It seemed as though someone else were talking. "You'll have to be first assistant, Tiger. We'll get him onto the heart-lung machine, and if we don't have help available by then, we'll have to try to complete the transplant. Jack, you'll give anaesthesia, and it will be a tricky job.
Try to use local blocks as much as you can, and have the heart-lung machine ready well in advance. We'll only have a few seconds to make the shift. Now let's get moving." Tiger stared at him. "Are you sure that you want to do this?" "I never wanted anything less in my life," Dal said fervently. "But do you think he can survive until a Hospital Ship arrives?" "No."
He did not even invite Dal to observe. Ten minutes later he rose from the control table and threw the switch to stop the heart-lung machine. The patient took a gasping breath on his own, then another and another. The Four-star Surgeon stripped off his gown and gloves with a flourish. "It will be all right," he said to the Moruan physician. "An excellent job, Doctor, excellent!" he said.
Already he was clinging to life by a fragile thread; the additional shock of the surgery, of the anaesthesia and the necessary conversion to the heart-lung machine while the delicate tissues of the new heart were fitted and sutured into place vessel by vessel was more than any patient could be expected to survive.
Dal had to climb up on a platform just to see the operating field; the faithful wheeze of the heart-lung machine that was sustaining the creature continued in Dal's ears as he examined the work already done, first with the naked eye, then scanning the operative field with the crude microscopic eyepiece. "How long has he been anaesthetized?" he asked the shaggy operating surgeon.
With many species, alcohol vapor was more effective and less toxic than other anaesthetic gases. "And you have a heart-lung machine?" "The finest available, on lease from Hospital Earth." All the way through the city Dal continued the questioning, and by the time they reached the hospital he had an idea of the task that was facing him.
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