Till Death Do Us Part

摘要

For nearly 12 hours, five neurosurgeons took turns grinding away with a high-speed drill. Millimeter by millimeter, they cut out a foot-long strip of bone that ran from the front to the back of the fused skulls. Finally, they pried the curved section away, wrapped it in wet gauze, and placed it gingerly on a sterile tray. Looking down at the pair of exposed brains, the doctors couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Only now would the real work of separating conjoined twins Ladan and Laleh Bijani start. For a few days this summer, the drama unfolding in Operating Theater 11 at Singapore's Raffles Hospital gripped the world. In the lobby six floors below, more than 60 journalists had transformed the 29-year-old Iranian women into celebrities. CNN was broadcasting hourly updates worldwide. In the US, network news shows were jockeying to book the surgeons for interviews. A crew from Good Morning America was on its way to Singapore.