“Tongs, sir?” Radar squeaked, looking at the crate as if it contained live grenades.
“The salad tongs, Radar! Throw them here!”
Radar scrambled, digging past the ice cream scoops and unearthing a pair of heavy, spring-loaded, stainless steel salad tongs. They were designed for serving lettuce to brass at formal dinners, not for vascular surgery. He tossed them across the room. I caught them with my free hand.
“Potter! Get over here and take my spot. Press exactly here, do not let up even a fraction of an inch, or Miller goes from being a soldier to a memory.”
Colonel Potter didn’t hesitate. He stripped his gloves, re-gloved in five seconds flat, and shoved his hands into the bloody field, replacing my grip. He grunted as he applied his weight. “Got it. But I can’t hold this forever, Pierce. My arthritis is acting up.”
“Give me two minutes,” I said, stepping back from the table. I held the tongs up to the light. They were long, U-shaped, and had a natural spring tension. But the ends were wide and scalloped—perfect for grabbing tomatoes, terrible for a delicate, slippery artery. They would just crush the tissue and slip right off.
“You can’t use those in a surgical field!” Frank Burns shrieked, his voice hitting an octave usually reserved for frightened bats. “They aren’t regulation! They haven’t been approved by the Surgeon General! If he dies, it’s murder, Pierce!”
“Frank, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to perform an unapproved appendectomy on you with a cocktail fork,” I snarled, moving to a small metal side table. “Radar! Get me Zale from the motor pool. Tell him I need needle-nose pliers, a metal file, and whatever heavy-duty wire he has. Run!”
Radar vanished like a puff of smoke.
“Pierce, what’s the play?” Potter asked, his face strained, sweat pooling in his wrinkles. “He’s tachycardic. We are losing the window.”
“The tongs have the spring mechanism,” I explained rapidly, grabbing a heavy bone saw from a nearby tray and using its handle as a makeshift anvil. “But the jaws are too wide. I need to flatten the tips, narrow them down, and create a locking mechanism so it holds the artery shut without me squeezing it.”
Within seconds, Sergeant Zale burst into the O.R., smelling of motor oil and stale cigars, carrying a greasy toolbox. “Doc, what’s the emergency? A jeep throw a rod?”
“Better. Hand me the pliers and the file,” I demanded.
“Those ain’t sterile, Captain,” Zale pointed out, handing over the tools.
“Neither is the mud we’re standing in.” I grabbed the pliers and began viciously bending the wide, scalloped ends of the salad tongs inward, crushing the metal together until the tips were narrow and flat. The stainless steel fought back, but pure, unadulterated adrenaline gave my hands a manic strength.
Clank. Clank. Clank. The sound of me hammering the tongs against the table echoed over the sounds of surgery.
“Margaret!” I shouted, not looking up as I took the file and furiously ground down the jagged edges I had just created, smoothing the metal so it wouldn’t tear the artery walls. “Get a basin of alcohol. Pure, 100%. We don’t have time to autoclave this. We’re doing a field dip.”
“It’s a massive infection risk, Hawkeye!” Margaret warned, though she was already pouring a bottle of clear surgical spirit into a metal basin.
“Dying of exsanguination is a 100% mortality risk, Major. I’ll take my chances with the germs.”
I examined my handiwork. The tongs now had narrow, flat, smooth tips. But they still needed to lock. A hemostat has a ratchet near the finger rings to hold it closed. My tongs had nothing. If I let go, the spring would snap them open.
“Wire, Zale. Give me wire.”
Zale handed me a spool of thin, flexible copper wire used for spark plugs. I wrapped it tightly around the base of the tongs, leaving two long tails.
“Done. Margaret, baptize it.”
I tossed the mangled, wire-wrapped salad tongs into the basin of alcohol. Margaret sloshed it around, then lifted it out with sterile forceps, the alcohol rapidly evaporating under the harsh heat of the surgical lamps.
I scrubbed my hands furiously in a basin of iodine water, threw on a fresh pair of gloves, and stepped back up to table two.
“Alright, Potter. On three, you slowly release pressure. I’m going in.”
“God help us all,” Potter muttered. “One. Two. Three.”
Potter eased his hands back. Immediately, a geyser of bright red arterial blood shot into the air, splashing across the front of my gown. The sheer force of a human heart pumping against a torn hose.
I dove in with the modified tongs. I found the slippery, pulsing vessel blindly in the pool of red, guided only by touch and years of muscle memory. I clamped the flat tips of the tongs down hard on the artery, just above the tear.
The geyser stopped instantly.
A collective breath was released in the O.R.
“It’s holding,” Potter said, his eyes wide.
“It’s holding because I’m squeezing it,” I grunted, my hand trembling from the effort of keeping the heavy spring closed. “But I can’t suture the graft while I’m holding this thing shut. Margaret, the wire tails! Tie them together! Tight! Wrap them around the arms of the tongs so they can’t spring open.”
Margaret’s gloved fingers moved with lightning speed, twisting the copper wire tightly around the metal arms, locking the tongs in a closed position.
“Okay. Letting go,” I announced. I slowly removed my hand from the tongs.
The heavy, ridiculous-looking hunk of mess-tent cutlery sat buried in the patient’s thigh, the copper wire straining against the spring.
We waited. One second. Two seconds. Five seconds.
No blood. The artery remained clamped. The field was dry.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Potter whispered. “A regular Thomas Edison.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” I said, grabbing a needle holder and fine silk suture. “We still have to piece this kid’s plumbing back together. And this copper wire wasn’t built for tension.”
Suddenly, a sharp TINK echoed in the quiet space.
We all stared down at the wound. One of the copper wire tails had snapped under the pressure of the tongs’ spring. The metal arms shifted outward by a millimeter. A thin ribbon of blood began to seep from the artery tear.
“The wire’s giving way!” Margaret yelled. “It’s going to spring open!”
“Hold it!” Frank screamed, backing away from the table. “I told you! It’s a disaster!”
I lunged to grab the tongs, but my hands were slick with blood and iodine. My grip slipped, and the tongs lurched open another fraction of an inch. The thin ribbon of blood turned into a steady, terrifying stream.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
