She stripped away the dressing to expose the weeping hole in Saul’s side, then folded up the wound ring and inserted it into the gash, before opening it out to leave a neat round hole into his body, out of which oozed black, jelly-like blood. Next she swung over the microsurgery unit and positioned its slow-worm head in the mouth of the wound. The head pushed its way in, tentatively exploring inside the patient’s body, suction pipes slurping as they cleared out yet more congealing blood or leaking fluids, while sensors mapped out the internal damage to its screen, for her inspection.
The knife had penetrated his side, slicing straight through his liver and pancreas, and, just missing the splenic artery, had twisted upwards and into the lobe of one lung. The comprehensive damage ended only a couple of centimetres from his heart, but, even so, the lesser vena cava had been nicked. Starting with that vein, Hannah began repairing the damage, working the microsurgery head gradually back out, cauterizing and gluing on its way. Most of this repair work could be left to automatic programming now the damage was mapped into the machine’s processor, but she did pause it a couple of times to inspect the situation more closely. This was all wrong, she soon realized. Some of the damage within Saul had already begun to heal up, and checking his bloodwork, she found it flooded with unassigned stem cells and other elements she just did not recognize. And she felt renewed awe of the man he had once been.
The work continued until the slow-worm head slipped obscenely out of the wound carrying the wound ring with it. Micro-manipulators then drew it closed, the astringent smell of wound glue arose, then a brief sound like that of a fingernail being run along the teeth of a comb as the surgical head stitched in a neat row of staples just to make doubly sure.
‘I’m done now,’ said Hannah.
‘That was quick,’ remarked Braddock.
‘Left untended, a normal person would probably have died quickly,’ she explained fatly as she folded the microsurgery head back down into its sterilizer. ‘He was already beginning to heal up.’
‘Heal up?’ Braddock echoed, puzzled.
‘His predecessor’s nano-viral fix.’
‘Nano-viral fix?’ asked Braddock. ‘Predecessor?’
‘It’s a long story,’ she replied.
‘Right,’ Braddock snarled, obviously annoyed. ‘So what happens now?’
‘You think I know?’ Hannah spat back.
She shifted the microsurgery unit away from the gurney, then headed over to the drug dispensary. There she tapped her requirements into a touch screen, and waited while it buzzed and hummed to itself. Shortly a drawer emerged, holding three loaded syringes: one containing a counter-agent for his anaesthetic, the second a mix of sugars, anti-shocks, viral and bacterial applications, the third a wide-spectrum stimulant package. She injected just the counter-agent and waited.