Stronger Than Death

by Manda Scott

  ‘Of course you didn’t. How could you?’ Her hands moved to cover her face and then dropped away. ‘I came so close to telling you so often—after Eric, when Claire came in to the Unit, after each time we talked about her … and, God, Kells, she was so like Beth. Fifteen years and nothing has changed. Nothing. I spent ten years working the hard way and made not a blind bit of difference. I had a promise to keep. I had to do something to make them stop. There was nothing else left I could do.’ She brought her eyes back to mine, wide open and asking questions. ‘Do you really think in my place you would have done any different?’

  I don’t know. Even now I don’t know. But then I didn’t have to know because her head was up like a hound at the horn and her gaze twisted round to the far side of the ledge, and there, coming in along the line where the sea meets the sky, was the bluebottle throb of the helicopter.

  ‘Oh, God …’

  ‘Dee, no.’ Instinct, unthinking instinct. She moved and I moved before her and suddenly I was there again standing with my back two paces away from the drop and Dee Fitzpatrick, athlete, was leaving the blocks on her final sprint for the line. I spread my hands wide and shouted again, louder this time, so she would hear. ‘Dee, no. Not now …’

  She stopped like a dog run to the end of its chain, head up, eyes wide, panting. ‘Please, Kellen.’ No masks now, no games. A voice stripped bare of everything but a desperate, urgent need. ‘You let Claire go. Will you not do the same for me?’

  ‘Claire had nothing to live for.’

  ‘And I do? What? MacDonald? You can’t do that, Kellen … please … they’ll not bother with a key. You know that. They’ll just weld the door shut and walk away. I won’t live like that.’

  ‘And if I let you go now, they’ll do the same for Lee.’ And she also will not live like that.

  ‘No. Listen. I never meant for her to get the blame. I didn’t know her name was on the pad. How could I … ?’ The words tumbled out, running into each other, no gaps between. ‘There are letters, I wrote letters. In the top drawer of my desk, in our room, unopened, post-marked. The copies are with Doug, sealed in his safe. All except Joey’s have dates from before the body was found. They have the details, things no one else could have known: the colour of the mug that broke at Hillary Murdoch’s, the dose of amphetamine in Martin Coutts. But I didn’t …’ Her gaze flicked round to the rock and back. ‘There’s not one yet for Randolph Duncan. I hadn’t the time.’

  And now, again, she has no time because the helicopter is here sooner than either of us thought and I am still blocking the way, still with my arms outstretched as the winches whine and the lads with the crew cuts and helmets sail down with their stretcher and they look at us oddly and ask for help and shrug when they don’t get it and still I stand in her way while they strap Lee, arms and legs and neck brace, to the rigid aluminium and send her up the long fall into hell.

  ‘Please …’

  ‘No.’

  There is one now beside us, a copper-haired lad, watching, smiling still, wide and friendly and understanding nothing. ‘Come on, ladies, we’ll get you in the harness, it’s not as bad as you think. One more time and we’ll get you a badge …’ He shouts it over the banshee howl of the blades, the wind of it driving all three of us nearer the edge, and I shake my head and fumble in my pocket and pull out the car keys she gave me and press them into her hand and I nod my head at the lad and tell him that there will only be one of us going up. ‘She’ll take the car.’ I scream it at him, losing all of it in the noise, and then turn and signal to her to go out along the ledge and up to the cliff-top and I make a mime of driving away and slowly, finally, I see the understanding grow into her eyes. She holds the keys and looks at me, gaping questions like a mackerel, and I put my mouth to her ear even as the lad is doing his best to fit the harness and I scream at her: ‘Take the car. Go home. Go home. Just let me know sometime where you are …’ and then I am gone, floating upwards into hell, and she is left there on the ledge, staring up at me and then back out at the blue air beyond the ledge and I have no way of knowing which one she will take.

  The helicopter ride was better than the last one if only because the body on the stretcher wasn’t dead. I got them to radio ahead to the hospital with details of the injuries and of who it was and then I sat beside her as they raised the veins for the catheters and ran in the blood and the plasma expanders and watched as the death’s-mask grey of her skin warmed to simply white and the pulse running under my fingers became something more than a knotted thread. We came down sooner than the last time, talked in by air-traffic controllers with the police breathing heavily down their microphones, and this time it was a different reception, a different welcoming committee, in broad daylight and more of them: white coats and blue uniforms mixed, with blood bags and oxygen and warrants for immediate arrest. MacDonald was there at the back of them, a stranger with predator’s eyes.

  ‘Can she talk?’

  ‘In your dreams, maybe.’

  ‘Where’s Dee Fitzpatrick?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  She was wrong. It was her liver, not her spleen, that was leaking. I have seen the scans and the X-rays and the blood count before and after, and I can tell you, without doubt, that if we hadn’t given her blood in the helicopter, she would have been dead before we ever hit the roof. As it was, they moved her straight down to theatre, called the team in from stand-by and, within an hour of our leaving the ledge, a young, anonymous surgeon had finished resecting half of one lobe of her liver. Another followed on and spent three times as long screwing a nine-hole compression plate to her leg. Astonishingly, insanely, Jessica Duncan was the anaesthetist for both. She stopped to speak to me in the corridors as they moved the trolley between the theatres. ‘She’s not losing any more blood. There’s no peritonitis. It’s up to her now. If she has the will, we’ll have her ready by the time they want her for the trial.’

  ‘She didn’t do it, Jessica. She didn’t kill Joey.’

  ‘Forget it, Kellen. She’s a patient. It doesn’t matter what she’s done.’

  Later. A long while later. It is dark, and very peaceful. Muted electronics keep pace with time: ripples of repeating patterns in amber, in green, in blue, each in their own way marking the slow climb back to the light. She lies on the bed, a silent, pliable doll. Wires and drip lines and feeding tubes hold her in this world where otherwise she might be gone. The room already smells of not-quite-death. Once before, for someone else, I sat in a ward like this, my hand on another hand, fingers on another pulse. I was less angry, then. And there was no guard on the door. Here, they change the guard at four-hourly intervals, another way to mark the time. They stand with eyes fixed on the horizontal, carefully intrusive, watching and noting and knowing nothing. They mark who comes to visit, note it down in the book: the nurses who hover, a steady presence, in the background; Jessica, who spent the first half of the night coming in at ten-minute intervals to check the progress of recovery, filled the syringe pump with morphine, set the rate and checked the print-out from the monitors; Nina, whose memories of this hospital are not good but who still came in and sat for an hour or two after work; Sandy, who swapped places and stayed longer. Once, later than that, MacDonald. He walked in to the bedside on silent feet and stood for a good five minutes, watching, as if he could read her truth in the smoothed-out planes of her face, in the scrawling lines of the ECG. In a while, when she didn’t wake, when she didn’t open her eyes and roll over and tell him everything, he left. He said nothing to me. The officer on the door took note of his departure and of the fact that I stayed.

  I took more note of the ones who didn’t come: Mike Bailey, Colin Storey-Pugh, Dee Fitzpatrick. He thinks I lied to him, but in this, if nothing else, I have told the truth. Dee Fitzpatrick has gone and I have absolutely no idea where she is.

  I should sleep. The new-shift nurse, busily attentive, has been in twice since midnight to remind me that I should sleep. She is right and there is a be
d here, in the corner, of the kind they bring for parents to sleep beside their children, but I have tried it once and I have failed to sleep. I am long beyond the need for sleep. I am floating in free fall. The floor and the walls and the ceiling of the world that I knew have disintegrated and all that is left is the vacuum of hollow space. I could sit like this forever and not know that time has passed.

  They changed the guard at four o’clock. Another bland, faceless stare. I excused myself, more for the feel of seeing a different line in the notebook than for any real need to leave the room, and visited the ladies. From there, with no malice aforethought, I followed the stairs down five flights to the ground floor. Here, A&E is active, as nowhere else in a hospital is active at this time in the morning. I passed stretchers and cubicles and plastic chairs laden with the throw-outs of the pubs and the aftermaths of domestic violence and the occasional, real accidental emergency.

  Outside, the night was warm, the path to the Unit clear and well-lit. No lights, no candles shone in any window. I let myself in the side entrance and followed the floor-level night lights to my office, to our office. The sense of her filled the corners: abrasive, volatile, hidden, flashing her wild, discordant smile. I opened the top drawer to her desk and found the stack of letters. The top four were laser printed, formal, addressed to Dr D. Fitzpatrick and marked on the top left hand corner with initials: E.D., J.A.D., M.D.C., H.S.M. There were two others, the envelopes handwritten. The first was addressed to Nicco Gallianno, slim, lightweight, two pages at the most. The second, brown, A4 and bulky, was for me.

  I took it back to my desk. The computer sat as I had left it, the screen saver accelerating forever into an infinity of unknown stars. It took a long time, staring at the stars, to find the courage to open the envelope and tip out the contents. It could have been worse. Inside was the clinical record of Elizabeth Gail Morgan, deceased: fourteen pages of handwritten detail, from the days before all the records were kept on disc in the server in the basement. The early pages were in Eric’s writing, the later ones by Lee. In between a handful of others, unknown. At the end, after all the others, was a sentence from Randolph Duncan: Terminal asphyxia: presumptive bronchial mass. Awaiting autopsy results.

  Beneath the notes there was a letter, also handwritten, from Dee to me:

  Dear Kellen,

  If you are reading this, then by now it is over. Seven people are dead and two of them, maybe three, you loved. For that I am sorry. I am not sorry for them, the dead are beyond sorrow, but I am sorry for you—for Eric first and, more, for Lee. If there was another way, for her, I would have taken it but I am too far gone now to go back. With each one, not to go on would make the deaths of the past all the more pointless. For what difference it makes (and for both of us, I think, it makes all the difference) it will have been quick. She knows. I am almost certain that she knows. Somewhere, somehow, she will have left you word. It shouldn’t take you long to find it.

  I nearly stopped then. It took a long time, staring through the blinding haze that covered the stars, to go on.

  Beyond that, you need to know about Eric; Jessica needs to know about Joey. There will be people who need to know about Martin Coutts and Hillary Murdoch and Professor Duncan, although I wouldn’t rush to hand out details of those last two, they were a sight less pretty than the rest. At any rate, I’ve left a set of letters which have all the details you need. If nothing else, they will clear Lee’s name. Do with them what you will.

  Not much else, I don’t think. We are so close now to the end and I am finding it difficult to think straight. I have left a letter for Nicco Gallianno. It may not make the difference, but it will make him think. Please take it down. I have left you also Beth’s case record. You will have found it by now. The others are filed under her name in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. Twenty-four of them, more or less the same. Read them and try to understand, if not condone, the reasons why. Then if you care about any of this, do what you can to make sure that it gets to the people who matter, the ones who can make a difference. There may be a chance now for change. Take it. For Lee, for Eric, for me.

  She signed it With love, DF.

  I sat for longer afterwards, staring into space. I closed the drawer on the other letters, slid Beth Morgan’s case notes back into their space in the filing cabinet and took the letter back up to the ward. Stewart MacDonald was sitting by the bedside, waiting.

  ‘Is she awake?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Dr Duncan seems to think it won’t be long.’

  ‘She thought that four hours ago.’ I sat on the other side of the bed and ran my eye along the monitors. None of them had changed.

  ‘We found her bike,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the cliff-top. They took the search dogs in an hour ago.’ His eyes were on the envelope in my hand. ‘There’s no sign yet of Dr Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘No. There won’t be.’ I handed him the letter. ‘Read this. I’ve just found it in my room.’

  He read it once and then again. ‘This is from Dee?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s saying she killed them all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me and said nothing. The paper tapped lightly on his teeth. ‘You expect me to believe this?’

  Christ, I am tired of this. ‘You can believe what the hell you like. There’s a bunch of letters there in the drawer, just like she says. I didn’t open them. They could be empty envelopes for all I know, but if I were you, I’d have a look before I dismissed it for not fitting my favourite theory.’

  ‘Aye. Maybe you would.’ He handed me back my letter. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In my room in the Unit. Second floor, 219. Ask one of the nurses, they’ll show you the way. The door’s not locked.’

  ‘Right.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’

  There is a ripple on the monitors. Nothing special, nothing so marked that the one on the door would notice. An eyelid flickers, opens and shuts. A new pattern comes to the breathing: a series of long, shaken sighs. She has had her morphine. Not enough to kill her but enough to dull the pain in her leg, her liver, her ribs. The button is by the bed and she can press for more if she wants it. A hand reaches out, passes the button and comes on. Fingers fold round mine.

  ‘Kellen?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Where’s Dee?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Oh God, I am so very angry. I can feel the heat of it, pushing through and the desperate, urgent need to take her by the shoulders and shake her, shake out some answers, some feelings, some sense. She knows. I am almost certain that she knows.

  You should trust her.

  And what if she doesn’t trust me?

  ‘How long have you known, Lee? How long have you been sitting on this?’

  She opened her eyes, struggled to find mine and hold them, shook her head once, very slowly. ‘Only today … yesterday? Sarah called … she’s out of hospital. She phoned the flat … the day before we climbed … spoke to Dee … She was there with Eric. Dee never said she was there. Only one reason not to say …’

  The whisper fell to nothing. Her eyes stayed on mine, holding focus through the mixing planes of pain and morphine.

  ‘And you knew nothing before that? Honestly?’

  ‘Honestly.’ A twitch of a grin, cut off when it failed. ‘The voice … knew I’d heard the voice, somewhere … sometime. Didn’t remember when … till the ledge. Stupid. Should have thought sooner …’

  The guard stirred at the door. He walked the full length of the corridor and still we heard the radio crackle.

  ‘Calling reinforcements?’

  ‘Calling MacDonald.’

  Her eyes dulled, recoiled. A brief, unconscious spasm shook the bed. ‘No.’ A breath of a whisper. A denial, a rejection, a withdrawing from consciousness. Her head turned on the pillow, more emphatic than her voice. The rhythmi
c wave of the arterial pressure line faltered. The nurse, always there on the periphery, moved closer.

  Trust.

  ‘Lee, listen.’ I laid the page on the exposed skin of her arm. ‘This is a letter from Dee. She’s written it all down, everything that she did.’ There was no change in her eyes. She was frowning, trying to hold on to the sense of what was coming. I tried again, more slowly. ‘She’s called him off. She wrote a letter for each of them, posted before they ever found the bodies. Doug’s got copies. It’s proof. Legal proof. It’ll stand up in court.’

  She said nothing. Felt nothing. No release from the fear.

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So let up. She’s called him off. He’s down there now, reading everything. By the time he comes up, you’ll be clear. He’s got all the details he needs to prove it wasn’t you.’

  ‘Can’t have. Not … Duncan.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not Randolph Duncan … no letter for him.’ Her eyes were wide; the effort to speak corded the veins at her neck.

  I put my hand on her arm. ‘It’s all right, she told me on the cliff. She didn’t have time to write the letter.’

  ‘Not the point … Couldn’t write it. She … didn’t do it.’

  ‘She said she did.’

  ‘No …’

  She tried to move on the bed and stopped, biting her lip as the pain flooding over from her ribs, from the hand’s-length scar beneath her diaphragm, from her leg, left her breathing long, shaking gasps through her teeth.

  I picked up the button, held it where she could see. ‘Do you need some more morphine?’

  ‘No.’ It was the first word with a sound to it. Stark and violent. Too much of both. The monitors stabbed jagged lines across the screens. Jessica joined the nurse, both of them standing an arm’s reach from the bed. The black eyes closed as she fought for control of her breathing. When they opened, they focussed somewhere in the shadows behind me.

  Oh, God, he walks so very softly. I turned and felt his hand on my shoulder, turning me back. ‘Don’t stop now, Dr Adams.’ The Judas tone, gently encouraging. ‘You said, “She didn’t do it.” How would you know that?’