F Paul Wilson - Novel 02 (5 page)

 
          
Duncan
had become someone else's god.

 
          
"Morning,
Gin," said a voice behind her.

 
          
Over
her shoulder she saw
Duncan
's younger brother Oliver delivering a sterile tray of implants to the
OR. He smiled and waved as he passed.

 
          
If
Duncan
was a rack of baby-backs, Oliver was a
roast beef, rounder, heavier, with thinning hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses,
and a protective layer of fat. Also softer, gentler, far more easygoing than
his older brother. A sweetheart. He made sure all the women on the staff
received flowers on their birthday. And when Joanna's son got arrested for
joyriding, Oliver was there to bail him out. Everybody loved him.

 
          
Gin
rinsed, shook, and entered OR-1 just as Marie, the nurse anesthetist, said,
"He's out." Gin took in OR-1 as Marie tied her mask and Joanna helped
gown and glove her. Smaller than anything at Tulane, but the skill and
professionalism here could hold their own against any tertiary medical center.
Odorless, the laminar airflow kept it that way, and cold.
Duncan
liked to work under almost arctic
conditions.

 
          
She
approached the table where a middle-aged man, fiftyish or so, lay supine, his
face covered except for the lips, chin, and throat, which were prepped for
surgery. He looked something other than human with his skin stained yellow
brown from the Betadine and his chin and throat marked up with the lines Duncan
had drawn to guide his surgery.

 
          
Gin
had met him last week when she'd done his pre-op history and physical, Senator
Harold Vincent. Another member of the recently revived joint committee.

 
          
Like
Congressman Allard.

 
          
She
was struck by the coincidence, but only for a moment. Hell, half of
Washington
's officials or their wives had been
Duncan
's patients at one time or another since
he'd started in plastic surgery, and the other half probably were on the
waiting list. Not surprising, really.

 
          
His
technical skills were second to none and he saw to it that people who
considered themselves V.I.Ps were treated accordingly, they got absolute
discretion, and, thanks to his brother, he had exclusive use of an innovative
technique that halved the healing time greatly reduced.

 
          
"Ready
to begin, Gin?"
Duncan
said. "The senator is getting impatient. He's got a bunch of
lobbyists camped out in his office with pockets full of cash. We don't want to
keep them waiting, do we?" Joanna tittered behind her mask.

 
          
Duncan
made his first incision under the chin,
carefully following the natural lines of cleavage, then began the delicate task
of dissecting away and trimming off portions of the stretched muscle, the
platysma, that gave the senator's neck a sagging, aged look. Senatot Vincent had
a particularly large amount of excess tissue, giving him a Tom-turkey wattle
that fluttered when he spoke and flapped back and forth when he walked.

 
          
"Senator
Impatience here couldn't wait,"
Duncan
said as he worked. "An emergency, he
told me. Had to have it immediately. Any one care to guess what the emergency
is?"

           
"Has to be TV, " Marie
said from her spot at the top of the senator's head.

 
          
"Bingo.
Give that woman a cigar."

           
Marie didn't miss a beat, "Not
while the O2 is running, thank you."

 
          
"It's
the Joint Committee on Medical Ethics and Practice Guidelines, of course,"
Duncan
said.

 
          
Gin
stifled a groan. Here we go again. The joint committee was on
Duncan
's Permanently-Ticks-Me-Off list. He hated
it and everything it was set up to do. He could go on for hours. Today the
subject was a particularly uncomfortable one for Gin, what with no word from
Senator Marsden's office, and her pending interview with Congressman Allard
tomorrow.

 
          
"I've
seen Senator Vincent on TV plenty of times," Gin said, sponging the blood
that began pooling in the incision.

 
          
"Sure.
C-SPAN. But who besides you and I watches CSPAN? This boy has his eye on a much
larger audience. Suction. Daily sound and video bites for all the network news
shows, even looking for some live prime-time coverage. And our self-styled
Champion of the Working Person' wants to look pretty for the nation.
Clamp." Gin glanced at Joanna who rolled her dark eyes as she slapped the
handles of the clamp into
Duncan
's gloved palm. He's off to the races.

 
          
All
right, so
Duncan
had a few fixations. Everybody had one or
two.

 
          
His
just happened to be the Old-Boy network in the federal government and its
intrusion into the practice of medicine. But even from his ramblings you could
learn something.

 
          
"Some
champion," he continued. "Voted himself a thirty-one-thousand-dollar
pay raise during the recession, not to mention a government-issued Diners Club
Card. Hand me the curved hemostat. That's the one. Here he is, vocal supporter
of the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the
Occupational Health and Safety Act, and the National Labor Relations Act, as
he'll remind you at every opportunity. But what he doesn't say is that behind
closed doors he voted to keep the U. S. Senate exempt from all those acts.
Suction." He was silent as he made another incision.

 
          
Gin
continued to marvel at the grace and precision of his scalpel work.

 
          
He
made it look so easy.

 
          
Gin
knew it was anything but.

 
          
"But
I'm thankful I'm only his plastic surgeon. Can you imagine being his
proctologist?" He looked up and winked at her. "I mean, where to
begin?"

           
Marie guffawed.

 
          
"As
always, '
Duncan
said, "laws imposed to assure fair
play among the constituency do not apply to the kakistocracy.

 
          
Gin
didn't want to, but felt compelled to ask. "All right, I give up. What's
this kakistocracy you're always talking about? I can't find it in the
dictionary."

           
"You won't unless you use an
unabridged edition. The kakistocracy reflects the anomie of our times."

 
          
"Oh,
that helps a lot."

           
"It is rulership by the
worst." Perfect time to spring one of my own words for the day, Gin
thought.

 
          
'"I
guess then you might say that the members of the kakistocracy excel at casuistry."
She saw
Duncan
smile behind his mask.

           
"Very good!"

           
Marie turned to Joanna.
"Great. Now neither of them are speaking English."

           
Gin said, "I'm merely participating
in the lingua franca."

 
          
Two!
she thought. I got two of them in!
Duncan
's eyes sparkled as he turned to Marie and
Joanna. "Casuistry is the rationalization of matters of conscience, but I
wonder if we can presume that the Senator Vincents of the world even have a
conscience."

 
          
He
held out a gloved hand. "The implant, Gin. Time's a-wasting."

           
"Oh sure. Sorry." Joanna
uncovered the sterile tray, revealing the implants, tiny cylinders, soft,
shiny, and slightly curved, looking like sausages or hot dogs. Hot dogs for a
Barbie Doll. They came in all sizes. These on the tray were the mediums, twenty
millimeters long, maybe five millimeters in diameter, each filled with Oliver's
"secret sauce," an enzyme solution that promoted healing, reduced
edema, and retarded scar formation.

 
          
Here
was the real key to
Duncan
's phenomenal popularity. He had the best hands in the business, but
that was only part of his appeal.

 
          
These
implants did the rest, allowing his patients the fastest recovery time,
speeding them back into circulation to show off their new faces.

 
          
The
brainchild of
Duncan
's younger brother, the implants were a crystal-protein matrix
consisting of magnesium and albumin. Shortly after Gin came on staff, Oliver
had shown her serial magnetic-resonance images of the implants after surgery.
Each successive MRI showed a shrinking, shriveling membrane as the implant
released its enzyme contents into the subcutaneous tissues to reduce scarring
and post-operative edema. The final MRI a few weeks post-op showed nothing,
After the implant had done its work, the crystals dissolved and the body's
enzymes broke down the albumin to its component ammo acids, those were absorbed
along with the magnesium into the surrounding tissues and eventually into the
bloodstream, leaving no trace.

 
          
With
a probe, Gin nudged one of the implants onto the special narrow, oblong spoon
Duncan had custom-made after too many implants ruptured in the grip of an
ordinary forceps. She reached over and gently deposited it in the incision.
Duncan
used a probe to position the implant where he
wanted it, then signaled for another. When he had four of them placed deep in
the incision, he moved his field closer to the surface.

 
          
"He
looks younger already, ' Gin said.

 
          
Right,
Duncan
thought as he trimmed a wedge of platysma.
Just what I want to do, make this bastard look younger.

 
          
What
he really would have liked to do was restructure Vincent's features into a
configuration that reflected the man within. Not too hard with Vincent . . .
slant the eyes, tilt up the nose, spread the nostrils, flare the lips . . . and
find some way to make him say "I'm Senator Harold Hogg, potentate of the
pork barrel."

 
          
He
smiled under the mask. He'd had so many of Congress's Old Boys on the table, he
could have changed the face of American politics by now, literally.

 
          
I
could be Dr. Moreau in reverse. Instead of vivisecting animals into men, I'd
recast pols into the animals and reptiles they emulate. I could wear a mask and
skulk through the halls of the Capitol, Duncan Lathram, the anti-Moreau, demon
doctor of devolution, Phantom of the
Longworth
Building
, scourge of the Senate shuttle. A peal of
insane laughter now and I'll be ready for
Hollywood
.

 
          
He
sighed. Nothing so melodramatic for Senator Vincent. But
Duncan
did have definite plans for him.

 
          
Don't
worry, Senator. You'll get yours. Trust me.

 
          
As
he was placing the final implants he heard Gin's voice but didn't catch what
she said.