The day before the procedure a well groomed man entered the hospital and asked to see the surgeons who were dealing with the child, he didn`t introduce himself to the receptionist, he just stood there waiting with an air of superiority a lowly receptionist was beneath his notice usually.

Mr Graves the head surgeon arrived at reception and met with the man who said he wanted to meet with the surgical team at once, he introduced himself as Mr Wells FRCH. Dr Graves knew full well that Mr Wells was a well respected and first class surgeon who dealt mainly with Royal Household and Nobility, and was also a snob.

Mr Graves had a top class team in the hospital having trained his surgeons up to his requirements and wasn`t having anyone including God himself upsetting his people. The two surgeons retired to an empty office and talked for a while. Graves knew the reputation of Wells and vice versa, here were two giants in their fields of medicine facing each other down and neither was going to give way.

Wells said "I understand you have a child here who has been severely injured in a bombing "

Graves replied "Yes, he`s been here for some weeks and is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances"

"Of course, considering the primitive surroundings " said Wells

" I beg your pardon" replied Graves,his face looking like thunder "We may not have all the fancy equipment you are used to but my teams and I do very well thank you very much"

The Hospital wasn`t a private facility but a National Health Hospital, which when built five years ago was state of the art, they were lacking in more recent Technological Advances but they still did excellent work.

" Anyway I require to see the medical notes on this patient so I can decide the best way to go with the childs treatment" stated Wells

" Who are you to walk in here and make demands" thunderered Graves "This is my hospital primitive or not" he continued

Wells opened his briefcase and extracted an envelope "So remiss of me, I do apologise" he said as he handed the envelope over to Graves.

Graves looked at the envelope and saw the Royal Seal, on opening the envelope he found a Royal request to give assistance to Wells signed by the Princess Royal herself.

The two men looked at each other across the table, both knowing that errors in judging the other, they both knew of each others surgical reputations and Wells instantly knew that Graves was in the same league in an operating room as he was even if he did mix with the general Riff Raff. Graves on the other hand knew that Wells had the ear of the Queen herself as well as the Primeminister.They continued to glare at each other for a few more minutes and Wells got up left the room and closed the door behind him.

A couple of seconds later there was a knock at door and Grave bid the knocker to enter, Wells re-entered the roomand thrusting out a hand introduced himself to Graves.

"I think we got off on the wrong footing " Wells simply stated " I`m not here to take over your case but to assist and apologise for my earlier attitude"

Graves being a more down to earth type of person accepted the apology and rang for Tea, coffee and his secretary to be sent to the office.

While they were waiting the two men chatted away quite amicably, both of them had over the years developed several new procedures in the field of surgery and were unusually young for top flight surgeons, Graves was a jovial Scotsman whose father and mother had been mill workers, Wells on the other hand had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with a long line of doctors and surgeons in his background.

The refreshments arrived along with tray of snack foods, Graves asked Rosalin his secretary to get his surgical and medical teams together for an afternoon meeting in the conference room.

Graves extracted his copy of the childs medical notes from his safe and handed them to Wells, who quickly read through them, Wells noted the horrific injuries and was amazed the child was still alive at all, a fact he stated to Graves. He was very impressed when he saw the surgery that had been performed including an unknown procedure to repair the Pelvic Girldle.

After the notes were finished with and were safely locked away again, Graves took Wells to see the patient.