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Chapter 9 Doctor Russ had breakfasted an hour earlier, as Candy was waking up and rather before Jack did. He now stood in the darkened radiology suite of the base hospital, peering over the shoulder of his friend and former classmate Pravin Leitner, a mug of coffee in one hand.
“We’ll have to take everything from the body of the stomach to the first third of the jejunum,” Pravin said. “The head and uncinate process of the pancreas, too. But the superior messenteric artery is involved, also, and I don’t know what to do about that.”
“Vitton wrote about constructing a new celiac in last month’s Chirurgie,” Stephen said. “Perhaps we can do the same here.”
Pravin pursed his lips. “Yes,” he said, “I saw. But that was a much younger patient. Look at these calcifications. I fear it will crumble as soon as we touch it.”
“It’s a slow-moving cancer. Put in a Collins sleeve, with ports, and give it a week to set. Then, suture to the sleeve.”
“And the veins?”
“Veins are veins,” said Stephen with a dismissive wave of his free hand. “They all lead back to the liver. Worst-case scenario you put in a Jimenez tube leading to the portal vein.”
Pravin thought about this. “I am convinced,” he said at last. “Yes, I am convinced.” He stood and led Stephen into the hallway, stunningly bright after the darkness of the viewing rooms. He was about Stephen’s age, slightly overweight and under-height, with a shining pate that he shaved to mask a badly receded hairline, cafe-au-lait-colored skin, and deep green eyes. Like Stephen, he wore hospital scrubs. “I feel bad to have asked you down here for a surgery and then only have a Collins sleeve placement for you.”
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