Sky Blue

Mason Rourke was a jolly little boy of maybe three, full of bounce and sparkling fun. I used to pass his cot every time I went to Ward 25 to pre-med my patients for the next day’s surgery. The nurses were divided sharply into those who loved the child dearly and those who couldn’t stand the sight of him. Mace the Face, they called him, and his problem was Hurler’s Syndrome. Mason’s eyes were the colour of the northern sky, but protuberant and divergent, so that his face resembled a gargoyle’s, with a cleft palate and microscopic nasal passages for good measure. His fingers were fused like lobster-claws, and to complete the picture, a tuft of bright orange hair grew straight up from the apex of his pointed skull.

One day Mason’s name appeared on my list, so I went to chat to him and make friends, and write him up for the usual pre-med of a mild sedative and a suitably small dose of atropine. As I scribbled on his chart I glanced up at his crazy-looking eyes watching me, his figure outlined against a window through which the clear winter blue sky seemed to be laughing, “look at me, look at me!”

The surgeon, Mr. C, was one of those rather arrogant people who concentrate on their own skills but find it difficult to listen to any other point of view. He was reasonably good with his hands, though, which is always a start when it comes to surgery, although I would put judgement and clarity of thought quite far up the scale too. At the end of the procedure, Mason’s cleft palate was well repaired; maybe a bit too well, in fact, because the closure and tightening of his soft palate, in combination with his reduced nasal airway, was now making it hard for him to breathe.

“Naw, he’ll be fine”, was Mr. C’s response when I pointed out the problem, although not before I’d had to make him aware that in my opinion the cause of the difficulty wasn’t some anaesthetical deficiency.

Mace the Face wasn’t fine, though. He had to struggle to breathe, and for several months got repeated chest infections. And just as Mason couldn’t get over this obstruction to his upper airway, neither could anyone get Mr. C. to revise either his opinion or his surgery.

At three o’clock one morning I was called in to certify a death in the high dependency unit. A nurse took me through the dimly-lit ward, where a dozen ill children were sleeping, monitors blinking and bleeping quietly. She opened the door to the side-ward and turned on a light at the bed-head, to show the little humped figure of a child. Turning back the sheet, I saw the orange hair and gargoyle features of Mace the Face, his complexion no longer that of a healthy active child, but turned a deep blue, like the summer sky he would never see again.

Copyright © Donnie Ross 2010
This story first appeared in www.rammenas.com.nl