What Goes Around Comes Around - A Finish the Story Entry for Week #31

       Below is my entry for @F3nix's Finish the Story Contest - Week #31 which is now hosted by the benevolent @Bananafish. New challenges begin every Wednesday and everyone is welcome to add their creative spin to the story! Join us for great fun, terrific prizes and awesome fiction!

_{Image via Wikimedia}

What Goes Around Comes Around

story beginning by @f3nix

Barnard Hall, in the heart of the west wing of the medical school, the Asclepius sancta sanctorum. The light of the sunset dripped from the dusty double-glazed windows and mixed with the cedar scent of the wooden stalls, arranged in steep theatre. A visitor who had passed the heavy double door would have undoubtedly caught the note of animal musk mixing with the wood essence. Smell of anxiety. Smell of hunted prey. Smell of university student exhausted during a long, endless session of exams.

"I strongly advise you to think carefully about your next words," Prof. Angelus said to the student.

Spread over several rows, set in the narrow space between the back and the table top, the remaining students were crossed by the icy scalpel blade of that voice.

"Here we are," Luke thought in a flash of conscious resignation.

It was the sixth time he had to repeat that exam: after five fails in a row his whole life have been interrupted and swallowed up in that black hole. By now he knew every detail of "At Heart of Cardiology", the three volumes treatise written by Prof. Angelus, a widely recognised eminence of cardiology.

For an eternal moment his thoughts dissociated from the scene and flew to that day three years earlier when, at the head of a handful of fifteen other students, Luke had decided to protest the decisions of the seventy-year-old professor.
"Do you mind if I ask you.. do you really intend to graduate in this university?" A stunned secretary had told him at some point, after the insistent protests of the student committee showed no sign of blurring.

And at what levels could the power of an old ordinary professor, close to retirement, ever come? The answer did not wait and, just two months later, Prof. Angelus was acclaimed by the unanimous council as dean of the faculty. Luke was instantly fire-branded and he would never graduate from that university.

"Well?" The assistant, the professor's guard dog, broke the silence.

"The... the... commissurotomy can only be performed if the flaps are not calcified and the subvalvular apparatus is preserved. With a left anterior thoracotomy, the chest is accessed through the resection space of rib 5. Once the pericardium is opened through the left auricle, a diverter is introduced into the mitral ostium which, opening, forces the valvular flaps to separate the merged commissures." Luke answered almost without breathing, tense like a Vietcong in his tunnel paved of sleepless study nights.

The professor's nose had disgusting bright red veins, Luke did not know if he was breathing - or alive at all. He looked down at the white, protruding knuckles of his left hand, clinging to the arm of his chair, and waited for his fate.

"Twenty-six, do you accept?". A note of irony in that electric scalpel voice.
"Yes. Sorry, I'll take the transcripts." Luke stumbled into his bag, looking through the notebooks for the grade transcripts. He had not even brought the booklet with him since there was so little hope of passing the exam.

The professor absent-mindedly drew a twenty-four and a signature in cuneiform spelling.

The cold light of the Pentaled surgical light-head outlined the instruments neatly aligned as efficient soldiers ready to execute his orders. It was almost pleasant to the watchful eyes of Dr. Luke Richards, a promising cardio-surgeon and head of the famous Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, London.

"Doctor, we have verified that a serious heart attack is going on. The frequency is 207 bpm. We administered 50 mg of protamine sulfate, the patient did not react. Furthermore, his wife informed us of a complication deriving from senile cardiac amyloidosis."

"A very normal case that could be safely entrusted to the Mako-bot" Dr. Richards determined instantly by glancing quickly at the operating table, automated and managed by the hospital central A.I.
He snorted slightly. Evidently the patient had enough influence not only to obtain a human operation, but also to have the Chief Cardiac Surgeon out of bed at three o'clock in the night.

"Who do we have here, doctor?"

"This is a certain Prof. Daniel Angelus".

       That name summoned a flood of memories. Frigid waves of anger, dammed by time, surged to the forefront of Luke's mind. The situation made him want to laugh. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at the surgical drape. How dare he request me? It would serve the ugly nosed bastard right if I refused to perform the operation. Dr. Richards thought. He would be well within his right to say no on account of having a personal connection.

       Time was ticking away. Every second matters for a patient suffering a heart attack. A patient... The man lying on the table was simply that, another patient. He wasn't going to say no.

       Luke composed himself and said with a wry tone, "We have a celebrity with us today, people."

       A couple of titters sounded from the team. Someone switched on the radio. Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" filled the room. Ignoring a sudden urge to itch his nose, Luke made the first incision.

       Angelus being as old as Methuselah wasn't much of a concern in and of itself. A bypass or a left ventricular assist device would be able to stabilize him. It was the severity of the progression of his amyloidosis that could present a challenge.

       ...only if the flaps are not calcified and the subvalvular apparatus is preserved, he had answered while focusing on the Professor's red veined nose. The memory worsened the urge to scratch, which he ignored.

       The music played on as Professor Angelus was connected to "the pump", a machine that would circulate the his blood around the heart. Luke zoomed in with the surgical camera, taking in the extent of the damage. It wasn't pretty or promising. The left auricle was done for, the disease taking it's inevitable toll on the tissue.

       "Dammit...", Luke muttered as the urge to scratch his nose became overpowering. With his eyes still focused on the valves, his right hand picked up a hemostat. A quick hard scrub relieved the maddening itch. The hand was back in action before the instrument hit the floor with a tiny plink.

       It was during his assessment for viability of a LVAD for Angelus that the system vitals' sensors began clamoring. The Professor's body was shutting down. Luke's team jumped into protocol, doing what they could to stabilize the doctor, to no avail.

       Four and a half hours after being admitted to the Royal Brompton Hospital, Professor Daniel Angelus died from heart failure.

       Later that morning, Dr. Luke Richards sat alone in his office. Absently, he scratched his nose, disappointed that the Professor had managed to fail him one last time.

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