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Dr Novo and the Hair Transplant
  

Little did Dr. Novo know, but the emergency hair transplant had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Mistakes had been made, and corners had been cut: that had been known from the get go. But no one had truly expected what came next.

"Dr. Novo really is a gifted surgeon," says Nurse Sally Hallwit. "He's the best in his field. If you knew how many men and women he had saved, you wouldn't think of him as the monster you think he is now. He's a saint."

The trouble began late Tuesday night during the happy hour at a small local bar known as The Plug. "Dr. Novo had come in with his latest patient, like he does after every successful operation," says Plug bar-tender Dale O'Connor, "Dr. Novo takes great care of his patients. Or at least he did.

"But that night, it was different."

After drinking a customary pint of the pub's fine brew, Dr. Novo retreated to the rest room, where he preceded to unwind after his day of work.

This meant his patient, Patrick Kelly, was left alone at the bar.

"I didn't see him there at first," says local bar fly Michael Morgan, "But after a while I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye. And then after that of course, it was impossible not to miss him."

Patrick Kelly, feeling energized from his surgery, had got up to dance on the dance floor. Only then, under the bright throbbing light of the disco ball, and the violent thrashing of his dancing, did the people around him notice the terrible mistake that had been made.

"Unless you yourself are also a surgeon, it would be difficult to fully understand the peculiarities involved in such an extreme case of hair transplantation," says fellow surgeon Dale Winkerspoon. "I have since looked over the notes from Mr Kelly's emergency operation, and can only agree that Dr Novos accident was an accident that nearly any hair surgeon could have made in those circumstances."

Battersea Hospital chairwoman Andrea Hopkins agrees: "I'm not sure the public knows the circumstances of this transplant operation. Please allow me to fill you in:

"From what I understand, Kelly's operation is what is known as a complete hair and scalp replantation. Kelly's first scalp had been lost during a car crash on October 28th, and it was only later that a replacement scalp could be found. The process for attaching the donated scalp is complicated. The remains of the previous scalp must be removed, and the skull cleaned. The donor scalp is then sown onto the recipients head."

And this is where disaster struck in the case of Dr. Novo.

After drinking heavily that morning, Dr. Novo arrived at the operation only to attach Patrick Kelly's donor hair onto his skull upside down.

"Gin always was Dr. Novo's weakness," Says Novo's faithful wife Jenny.

Yet, the new hair piece could still have passed as acceptable, albeit unusual looking, had Dr. Novo remembered to actually sow it onto Kelly's head.

Unfortunately, due to the number of pain killers Dr. Novo had consumed prior to the operation, he had succeeded in merely sowing his own surgical gloves together.

"It was funny at the time, the doctor holding his gloves up all sowed together, waving them around," say's nurse Anita Willards. "But I guess it's not so funny now."

And truly, this story is not so funny now. After seeing the bloodied mop of hair fly from the head of Kelly, party goers and dancers alike panicked and fled the night club, crushing the hairless man to a painful and unnecessary death below their stampeding feet.

And what of Dr. Novo, is he to be considered a victim of circumstance, or a victim of his own addition to drugs and alcohol?

We may never know.

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