The Professor

by Michele deBes

Assignment: Design and build a website for Professor David Surrey.

Professor David Surrey was the worlds leading microsurgeon. A short balding man with an impish grin he had a commanding presence with his sharp blue eyes and steady soft voice. When I shook his hand I had the queasy sensation he was testing my fingers, like he knew the real thing when he felt it. His introductory monologue about his career was a list of firsts.

The first doctor to reattach a severed finger, well severed anything. He was working in a London hospital in his youth, the finger arrived, the girl a short time later. He commandeered a theatre and sowed the little pinky back on. He became world famous overnight and lost his job for not following hospital procedure. (I suspect any excuse would have done for the long suffering hospital board).

Since then he was the first to reattached any limb people carelessly separated from their person. Each operation was denounced by the medical and ethical community alike as doomed to failure, and each one was a success. He and his happily reunited patients won their place in the history books.

In his later years his romance with the media reached a new height when he pioneered the first vasectomy reversal and captured the imagination of every man in the first wave to have the snip.

The accolades became a blur, along with his many inventions from surgical implements to an ergonomic pen. I was used to clients wanting to show off their stupendous qualifications while maintaining a human look and feel.

“You know your sitting in the chair I designed” he said and I flinched back into wakefulness.

That was when he brought out the photos. He had a little smile on his face as he spread the glossy 10x8’s across the table.

If he wanted to shock me he needed to try harder than that. My biggest client back in my video days had been a medical company. I once had the important assignment of creating pus for a drug ad. Ever had an argument with add execs over the colour of pus? Not pretty. Some clean surgical procedures seemed tame after that. His smile didn’t waver as he spread the next set.

“Vasectomy reversal, its my bread and butter procedure. I don’t know how gory photos can be on the web. Perhaps you could advise me here.”

I when into graphic mode and could admire the rich reds and gleaming silver with hints of artery blue. Having a mother who’d had more operations than cups of tea gave me a certain confidence to ask informed questions about the finer details.

His disappointment was evident by the time he got to the transplant photos, but I could feel a certain respect in his manner.

His most recent success was attaching a hand from a cadaver to a living person. I got to see the photos of the green garbed professor with his team around a cadaver they were practising on. They had to get special permission from the French government to have some practice swapping hands on bodies. Needless to say, that story didn’t go on the website. I thought it would have made a good ‘Monty Python’ inspired game on his site but didn’t suggest it. Again, everyone said the operation would never work, and of course it did. Unfortunately the recipient was a dubious character and as the professor confided to me. “He only wanted another hand so he could wank with both.” The guy was a womaniser, a drunk, a fraud, and the professor had a soft spot for him. The professor, as I was discovering, was prone to naughty spells.

On one of my visits to his office he asked me to sit in on one of his patient consultations so I could get a feel for his business. I walked in to meet a young exec couple and was introduced as a colleague. The professor asked if it was OK if I sit in on the consultation to which they were surprised but eager to please.

The professor whipped out his larger than life penis model and began demonstrating the procedure for a Vasectomy Reversal. I just had to sit there and nod wisely in what I imagined was a medical way, as they went into the most explicit details of their relationship. I felt so sorry for them and would gladly have disappeared into the background but the professor kept including me in the conversation. He put on a great show with naughty but appropriate humour to ease over the embarrassment and get them talking. He has large pale freckly hands with big blunt fingers, not what you’d expect of a surgeon, but he uses them to great effect. Every gesture is rock solid, there is no shaking in the fingers as he played with the plasticine parts on the model. I got to hold the instruments as they were passed around by his steady hands. The couple were mesmerised by his hands especially the guy. He was good looking in his expensive suit, on to his second marriage, had no trouble talking about his member and I suspected it was his favourite topic. His younger wife answered enthusiastically and at length when called upon for input. It seemed like a perfect couple and I really started to feel for them and their dreams of starting a new family. The professor laid all their fears to rest, Australia after all has the best baby success rate in the world. And why? Because the professor pioneered the procedure , because his clinic is the best and Australian as well as international doctors come to train there.

There is nothing like knowing one is in the hands of the best that puts people at ease and they were relaxed and happy by the time the consultation was over. That was not enough for old David.

As they were saying their goodbyes he mentioned casually that I was a web designer, building his website.

Their jaws dropped. I just cringed and smiled apologetically. So the genius has a twisted sense of humour.

I thought to offer them a live web cam deal but thought better of it. I had no claims to genius to back up my sense of humour.

I have been updating his website for years and putting up with being talked to like a scrub nurse. It’s the sheer interest value of his content and the bizarre nature of the man that keeps me waiting for his updates. But when he showed me the porn photos he’d received from other imminent yet aging surgeons, on the pretext that he wanted to know how to attach pictures to his email, I felt I had given him all the leeway a man of his genius deserved and made it clear I was not going there with him. That didn’t phase him. He was obviously used to being put in his place by hospital matrons.

He promised to send me photos of his latest triumph, two hand transplant from deceased donor. The recipient, you’d like to know, is doing much better than the other guy. He turned up to all his post op therapy sessions, and sober.

“A happy man indeed.” the professor assured me.