by Valerie Laws
Erica was thinking of Rohan, Kingston’s surgeon colleague, and his remark about not being in the Golf Club. Suppose Kingston was keeping someone he knew out for racist or sexist reasons.... maybe even Erica’s dinner date....
‘Yeah, right! I think they all kid themselves about that side of it. It just stops them feeling guilty for spending so much time hacking about in sand pits if they can call it ‘work’. Anyway, Kingston had nothing to do with membership. There’s a bloke to do all that, I’m sure. Membership secretary or something. I think he was the one got whacked on the head. Dad was complaining he has his own special parking place, I mean, sad, or what!’
This could be checked, but it sounded as if it would be a cold trail. After all, Rohan was just as successful as Kingston, without the privilege of playing golf. Or seemed to be, to an outsider. But did Rohan miss out on lucrative private medicine opportunities because he was excluded from the camaraderie of the nineteenth hole?
‘Oh, well, better get going.’
She was a bit dressed up for the restaurant really, but she hadn’t worn a dress in what seemed like ages and she felt like it.
She walked down through streets of shops closed for the night, except for fast food places. The sandals broke her stride annoyingly, so she changed back into trainers for the walk. They went well with a short skirt or dress and she felt a lot better swinging confidently along. Amazing what a difference shoes make to a woman’s walk. She was used to high heels for clubbing, her feet were often more covered than the rest of her even in winter, but she often ended up going home barefoot with her shoes in her hand like so many drunken Geordie lasses.
She got down to the sea front, where clusters of lads in short sleeved shirts, mostly Newcastle United black and white stripes, and girls wearing a great deal less, were going in to the various winebars past dinner-jacketed bouncers, though it was early yet for the masses of drinkers. Tonight she went through a gap in the railings and down a concrete slope to a dark little row of buildings tucked under the promenade, a couple of metres above the sand. It was dark, and the sea was glossy like tar, edged with white froth like toothpaste spit. Tiny lights glinted far out where fishing boats hunted shoals of elusive silver fish in the bitter cold of the unforgiving North Sea.
She was ten minutes early. Being there first might make her look too eager, but sod it. She was chronically early like all control freaks, allowing for a list of ‘what ifs’ that didn’t happen. But they might! She leaned on the railing and changed her shoes again.
Light spilled out of the restaurant and she went in to the warmth, taking a blast of cold sea air with her. Jamie waved from a small round table at the back. He had out-punctualled her. She felt a flicker of annoyance at this, despite being already prepared to be more annoyed if he turned out to be late.
He was wearing a striped blue and white shirt and black jeans from Urban Outfitters.
‘You’re early.’ She sat down, unable to keep an accusing note out of her voice. ‘It shakes my faith in human nature.’
‘I’ve never been here before, so I wanted to leave plenty of time in case I got lost or...’
‘...or got mugged or fainted or was kidnapped by aliens ...that ‘s just what I do.’
‘What would you like to eat? What do they do well here?’
‘Everything. Shall we have some wine, or are you driving?’
‘Wine would be great. I don’t have a car at the moment. I live in at the hospital, and I don’t get much of a life outside it at the moment.’
They studied the chalked list of specials.
‘I’m wondering about the veggie burritos. They’re wonderful, but it might be fun to try the aubergine and apricot tagine....’
‘You’re a vegetarian?’ he said. ‘Then I’ll eat veggie too. You won’t want to sit and watch me eating meat.’
Although this was a point to him, she immediately felt guilty.
‘Don’t deprive yourself on my account.’
‘I don’t each much meat anyway, and I like veggie food. Would you eat meat if you were really hungry?’
His dark eyes challenged her. She looked right back.
‘If I were really hungry, and I am, I would eat you.’
When they were facing a barrage of food, and trying to find space for the wine glasses and bottle by putting salt and pepper on the floor, she remarked, ‘You haven’t been here before then? Where do you usually go?’
‘Anywhere near the hospital. I’m very much concentrating on work right now. I had a great time as a student, and I’m going to have a great time when I’m established as a doctor, but now, I hardly get any sleep, let alone time to go out. Still, I should go out more. I’ve sort of got into the habit of erm, not.’
‘I’ve heard you’re very conscientious.’
‘Heard? Who have you been talking to?’
‘Patients. I was visiting Mrs O’Rourke and she and the other lady were singing your praises. They think you’re a wonderful doctor.’
‘I try to be,’ he sighed. ‘It’s not easy, what with...’
His words trailed away.
‘It must be difficult working in a strict hierarchy like the hospital. I imagine Kingston gave you all a hard time - rather an autocratic man, he seemed to me.’
Jamie ran his finger round and round his wine glass rim, looking down into the ruby depths.
‘That’s what you want to talk to me about, isn’t it. Kingston, for the newspaper.’
‘Well, sort of. It’s as much an excuse as anything. I’ve talked to a lot of people, but you’re the only one I’ve taken out to dinner. All work and no play... You don’t need to worry, Jamie. Though I know you’ve no reason to trust me.’
‘My family come from Hong Kong, my mother is English but she lived there too. Both my parents are doctors. It’s all I want to do, and I want to do it well. But being good at the job isn’t enough. I have to fit in, get good references, good reports, refrain from rocking any boats or blowing any whistles. Sometimes it burns me, but it’s the system, and I’m stuck with it for now. I’ll do things my own way when I’ve finished training. That’s what I tell myself anyway. Even though Kingston’s dead, the hospital wouldn’t like me to criticise him in any way. It’s all about closing ranks.’
He sounded bitter. She decided to change the subject for now.
‘Do you have any interest in traditional Chinese medicine?’ Too late she realised it sounded crass, even verging on racist. She was thinking of the nails, and the possible reference to acupuncture needles, but that would sound even worse if she explained. He bristled a bit.
‘Not really. There’s no reason why I should, any more than I should assume you morris dance.’
‘OK, sorry, I only asked. I do work in alternative medicine. And you should see me leaping about with my bells on, waving a daffodil.’
He laughed. ‘I’d like to see that. ‘
‘I asked you because I would like to do an article on Chinese medicine for the paper some time.’
She told him more about her homeopathic practice.
‘Well I have doubts about most alternative therapies,’ he said. ‘I’d rather see some scientific proof. Hasn’t Simon Singh pretty well destroyed homeopathy? They can’t find anything detectable in the massively diluted remedies...’
‘Well I don’t want Simon destroying my evening as well. But do you believe in gravity?’
‘Erm yes.’
‘Well we know it exists because we see and measure its effects. And we can predict the effect it will have. Einstein’s general relativity... well suffice to say, mass seems to warp space-time. But we still don’t know what gravity is or exactly how it works. You can analyse space between two masses, earth and sun, and you won’t find anything which might be gravity. How can it act over huge distances, instantly, when there’s nothing detectable there?’
‘Physics isn’t my thing. But I’m willing to believe in gravity.’
‘It’s my thing. Part of my degr
ee. So homeopathy has been ‘proved’, in the old sense of tested, on people over years. We see its effects.’
‘Placebo effect...’
‘The effects match particular remedies. Those are very diluted, so maybe we just can’t yet measure what’s there or it’s some other mechanism working. It works on babies and animals too, so it’s not all placebo. Not that there’s anything wrong with placebos. Fool the body into healing itself, hell yes, I’ll take that any day of the week. Look, people pay for alternative treatment because conventional medicine, which is free, has let them down. Left them with side effects worse than the illness. Refused them drugs on the grounds of cost, when the drug companies seem to be allowed to set the prices. Refused to believe they are ill in the first place. Aspirin’s made from willow. Digitalis from foxgloves for heart failure. We’re all on the same side or should be. Sorry to be lecturing, I went through a lot of this with an ex-lover. He’s been getting in my hair lately so it’s all coming back.’
Jamie topped up her glass. ‘Well I’ve had my revenge for you mentioning Chinese medicine! You look great when you’re defending something. Now I’ve made you suffer, let me state for the record, I’m not into Chinese medicine any more than herbalism or homeopathy. If someone of whatever ethnic background or belief system smashes their leg they need an orthopaedic surgeon, don’t they?’
‘Absolutely. But when you put someone’s bones back in position, it’s their own body that heals them, and how well it does that is down to the vital energy that body has. That’s where alternative therapies can help however they work.’
‘Maybe so.’ He was careful.
She wasn’t. ‘Surgeons like Kingston act like mechanics, applying procedures and techniques, forgetting there’s a person involved,’ she ploughed on, seeing his face tighten as the hospital line to be toed unreeled before his well trained, or washed, brain. ‘I know you are different, I’ve heard how you care about the patients, and their pain relief, and how you treat them with respect.’ His face relaxed a bit but he looked conflicted. She’d just praised him for something his superior had been trying to humiliate out of him. The new ways of empathy hadn’t reached everybody.
‘Well that’s nice of them, and you, to say, but a doctor has to remain detached to some extent...’
‘But the caring, the empathy, that’s all part of the healing process, surely. Recent studies have confirmed that old detached scientist, doctors without feelings, model is flawed as well as undesirable. People have to heal themselves, whatever treatment they get, and that is inhibited when they feel scared or threatened or insecure.’ She thought of Laura Gibson and her non-united tibia fracture.
‘I’ve always thought so,’ he said, suddenly choosing which side to jump to. Probably glad to speak his heresy in a safe environment. If a journalist, even one on her level, could be called safe. ‘Not that it’s an approach which gets me respect in the system.’
Erica remembered the way the nurses had used his first name rather than title and surname. The way their obvious liking for him was tempered by a sort of fond contempt.
Seeing him suddenly opening up, Erica took a risk. ‘So why would Kingston give you all that racist abuse about acupuncture and tiger bones if you have nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine?’
‘How do you know all that?’ He was suddenly alarmed. ‘Seems like you’ve been checking up on me.’
‘Relax. It’s nothing sinister. Patients and visitors observe staff as much as staff observe them. The staff seem to forget the bodies in the beds are actually conscious human beings as well as pulses and blood counts. We have eyes and ears just like you, and Rohan, and Kingston, and the nursing staff. So you see, I could write about you if I wanted to without having the pleasure of dining with you first. I won’t though. I’ve no wish to spoil things for you in your chosen profession, and your chance to rise through the ranks of golf-playing consultants, for the sake of a piece about a dead man. Who seems to have been a bit of a racist among other things.’
‘I don’t think he was racist. I think he looked down equally on everyone and he used any ammunition to get at someone when they’d displeased him, to put them in their place. He made it clear he didn’t like me. We had different attitudes to patients and to medicine. I once – once - questioned his judgement on the grounds of patient well-being. Very tentatively, just a question, but it was enough. He had it in for me from then on. He could have done a lot of damage to my career.’
Erica didn’t like the sound of this. Did he realise he was giving himself a motive for murder? She looked at his hand lying on the table, fingers curled round the stem of his glass. Slender fingers which could feel a bone was broken, and feel the pain it was causing too. Slender but strong. He was a man devoted to healing, but doctors had killed before, inevitably being christened Dr Death by the press. Look at Harold Shipman.
‘Kingston couldn’t take having his authority questioned, could he?’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps he was afraid of it.’
‘I think so, yes,’ said Jamie thoughtfully. ‘I might as well tell you. But it’s not for printing. It was just a matter of opinion... he might well have been right.
‘There was a patient, an old woman who had bilaterial tibia fractures and he fitted Ilizarov frames on both legs - she was ninety nine years old. I questioned the wisdom of doing the operation at all.’
‘But surely it had to be done?’
‘Not necessarily. She could have just had the fractures reduced, superficially healed and made painless. She wouldn’t have been able to walk, but then she couldn’t much anyway before the accident. An operation is traumatic for an old person. The anaesthetic is risky, and sometimes it makes them seem senile afterwards for a few days. The shock does that. Then there was the recovery from the op. Physiotherapy, and rehab. They tried to get her walking again. She went through a lot. She found it agony trying to walk or even stand with those wires in with all the swelling and bruising, and the injuries. She’d also had head injuries by the way. The body’s reluctant to heal at her age. She dreaded the physio coming round. Kingson got her family to encourage her to stand up, told her she’d have to walk to be allowed home. She was desperate to be home, and safe, among her own surroundings. But she just couldn’t walk, or stand the pain. Nobody understood what it was like for her. The family accepted whatever they were told. They wanted to believe she could get better. She said to me, ‘That physio, doctor, it’s the cruellest thing.’
‘The other patients couldn’t sleep for a few nights after her operation. She was talking to herself all night, reciting poems she’d learned at junior school. Bits of Shakespeare, Wordsworth... She got MRSA in the sites where the wires went in. And the bones didn’t heal anyway. They kept adjusting the frame, but it was no good. When she eventually left hospital, she went to a care home, and she never walked again anyway. By then she was pretty much institutionalised, she’d been in so long. All that pain she went through at the end of a long life. All that blackmail about going home if she just walked. I can tell you all this because she’s dead now.’
‘Kingston said at the time that the very old deserved the same care as anyone else.’
‘And it’s true. But in each individual case, the treatment doesn’t have to be the same, just equally good. Sometimes that might mean doing nothing, just making someone comfortable and helping them adjust. Anyway I just wasn’t sure. It would be a difficult decision. I’d hate to have had to make it. And I know I will have to make those kinds of decisions. But the temptation is to do what you can because you can, regardless if it’s the best thing for that person.’
‘To get headlines, and status.’ What she’d learned of Kingston didn’t fit with a commitment to grey power.
‘Maybe, or maybe just because you want to use your skill. But she was never given a real choice, it was never explained to her; her mind was sharp enough. At least at the beginning. But I still don’t know if he was wrong or right. I just asked whether it was the right
thing to do, and that was it. I was condemned from then on.’
He took a mouthful of wine and she watched it go down his throat.
‘Will things be easier for you now he’s dead?’ she asked bluntly.
‘Maybe, maybe not. I wasn’t the only one he got at. There was a bloke, a mate of mine - anyway it depends who comes in Kingston’s place - they might be worse! It’s caused a lot of talk among the staff, the murder that is. Sent a shock wave through them. People don’t kill doctors! They usually seem to be complaining a doctor killed their loved one. There’s been some publicity recently about a heart surgeon up in the city.’
Clearly Jamie was wary of giving away any of his mates’ stories and who could blame him.
‘Oh yes I think I saw something about that, all this Kingston stuff sent it out of my head.’
‘Bereaved family accusing him of killing their child. Not just putting in a complaint but making sure they get publicity. They’re angry, grieving. It’s natural they want someone to blame... makes me glad I’m not in that field, where people die more often than they do of broken legs. From what I’ve read he did all he could, and more. Surgeons seem to have the power of life and death but we’re not miracle workers. But Kingston’s murder... the nails... the stuff of nightmares. We’re so used to thinking of ourselves operating on people, it’s a nasty feeling to think one of them wants to operate on one of us. Just hope it doesn’t catch on.’
‘I can’t help hoping I’ll turn up some useful information while I’m digging around for this article.’
‘You should be careful. You might dig up something very unpleasant, and dangerous.’
Was that a warning? Erica shivered slightly. Someone had just come in with a blast of cold air. She had some more wine.
When they took away the remains of the main course, which was still enough to feed a family, she suggested they go outside and look at the sea before deciding whether to have dessert. There was no-one else out there, although above them the road teemed with winebar crawlers, taxis cruising among them like sharks.
They leaned on the cold metal rail, its paint blistered by salt, and looked at the dark sea, always beautiful, always deadly, creaming in under them.