by Ken McClure
‘Want me to open the skull?’ asked the attendant.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Bannerman. ‘Go finish your sandwiches.’
‘Cheers Doc,’ said the man.
Bannerman donned a pair of Wellington boots which he selected from the row standing along the back wall and took down one of the green, plastic aprons from a clothes peg above. He fastened the ties behind him and snapped on a pair of surgical gloves which he took from the box marked ‘Large’. Using a power tool he trephined around the skull of the corpse on the table, pausing at intervals to rinse away the accumulating bone grit and allowing the smell of burning to subside. When he had cut right round, he lifted off the cap of Thomas Baines’ skull as a complete unit and laid it beside the head. Changing to surgical instruments he removed the brain and placed it on a metal tray on an adjoining table.
Bannerman weighed the brain then examined it visually from several angles. ‘Doesn’t take too much to see what killed you my friend,’ he murmured. A large tumour was protruding from the left side of the excised brain. It was a livid red colour against the greyness of the normal brain material. Bannerman removed the tumour and placed it in a glass specimen jar for removal to the lab. He placed the brain back in the skull cavity and told the attendant that he was finished.
‘Right you are Doc,’ exclaimed the man. ‘I’ll put his “hat” back on, eh?’ He broke into a cackle of broken laughter.
Bannerman did not join in. Gallows humour was not his thing. ‘You’ll do it respectfully,’ he said.
‘Of course Doctor,’ said the man, realising he had made an error and wiping all trace of amusement from his face.
Bannerman stripped off his gloves and threw them into a plastic bin. Walking over to a large porcelain sink he levered on the taps with his elbows and took pleasure in sluicing the liquid soap and warm water over his hands and forearms. As he dried his hands he watched the attendant fitting the skull cap back on to the body. The man was whistling quietly as he did it, checking the fit on all sides as if he were a plumber changing a tap washer.
Bannerman had to concede that the attendant had achieved a far greater degree of ease with his job than he himself had ever managed. There were still times when he found himself vomiting in the bathroom over certain aspects of his work. It didn’t happen nearly as often as it once had but it still happened. It was something he had never confessed to anyone, not to Stella in their closest moments, not even to his own father, also a doctor. He didn’t like to think about it too much. The bleeper went off in his pocket and stopped him thinking about it now.
‘I’ll be right up,’ he said in response to the information that theatre had requested an urgent biopsy examination. The door to the PM room shut with a loud echo as he swung it closed behind him and ran along the tiled corridor to the base of the stairs leading up to the lab. The technicians had already processed the tissue by the time he got there and one of them was examining a slide of it under a Zeiss binocular microscope.
‘What do you see, Charlie?’ asked Bannerman.
‘A toughie,’ said the technician.
‘Bad prep?’
‘Could be. Karen’s doing another one. It’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.’
The man stood up to allow Bannerman to take his place at the microscope. Bannerman altered the distance between the eyepieces to compensate for the fact that his eyes were slightly further apart than the technician’s. He adjusted the fine focus then manipulated the stage controls to permit a stepwise examination of the slide without going over the same area twice. ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.
‘You’ve found something?’ said the technician.
‘It looks bad,’ said Bannerman, moving the focus control as if there was a perfect level that still eluded him. Take a look, just there at eleven o’clock.’
The technician sat down again and said, ‘Yes, I see it but it’s not as clear as …’ His voice tapered off as he showed himself unwilling to commit himself to a definite opinion.
A young woman came into the room and interrupted them. She said, ‘Theatre say they must know right away.’
‘I’ll see if the other prep is ready,’ said the technician who had been examining the slide. He came back a moment later looking sheepish. ‘It’s going to be another ten minutes I’m afraid. Something went wrong.’
Bannerman looked at the embarrassed expression on the technician’s face but did not pass comment. He turned to the woman and said, ‘I’ll talk to theatre.’ He got up and followed her through to the main lab where he picked up the receiver. This is Bannerman. Can you give us ten minutes?’
‘Negative,’ said the surgeon’s voice. ‘I have to know now.’
Bannerman closed his eyes for a moment and then said, ‘It’s malignant.’
‘Understood,’ said the surgeon and the line went dead.
There was a silence in the room which threatened to overwhelm all of them. Bannerman broke it. He said, ‘I’ll be in my office. Let me know when the other prep is ready.’
Bannerman walked over to the window of his office and lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled slightly. There was little to see, save for a stone wall barely seven feet from the window with rain water running down it from a faulty gutter somewhere above, but then he wasn’t really looking at the view. There was too much going on in his head.
A light tapping came to the door and Bannerman said, ‘Come in.’
The prep’s ready.’
Bannerman nodded and walked over to the door where the technician held it open for him. As he passed through, the technician said quietly. ‘You were right. I had a look. It’s malignant.’
Bannerman paused in the doorway for a second and felt the tension melt from him. He took a couple of shallow breaths and said, ‘I didn’t imagine for a moment that it wasn’t, Charlie.’
‘Of course not,’ said the technician with the barest suggestion of a smile. For a moment they held each other’s gaze then the technician said, ‘The second prep is as clear as a bell … poor woman.’
TWO
Bannerman left the hospital at six-thirty. He noticed that Stella’s white Volkswagen Golf was still in the car-park as he edged his own Rover out of its sardine-like space at the end of the line reserved for ‘Medical Staff. He had hoped that the worst of the rush-hour traffic would be over but he still had to wait for nearly a minute at the gate before he could ease out into the slow moving line. He swore as he had to clear the windscreen yet again with his glove as condensate built up because of the rain. ‘Living in London is like living down a dark wet hole,’ he muttered, turning up the fan and switching on the rear screen demister.
The traffic came to a halt because of some unknown obstruction up ahead; it did nothing to improve his temper. He pushed a cassette of Vivaldi into the car’s tape player and tried to concentrate on the music rather than the frustration of city driving. The tapes had been Stella’s idea. Fed up with his bad temper at the wheel, she had embarked on a programme of ‘sound therapy’, insisting that he try out the soothing effect of various musical styles as an aid to relaxation.
So far the biggest success had been a tape of Gregorian chant, recorded by French monks in an alpine monastery. The sonorous tolling of bells and echoing prayer chants had induced a marked improvement in his driving demeanour with their constant allusion to human mortality. The ironic drawback was that Stella found the ecclesiastical aura in the car almost as irritating as his bad temper. She had insisted on him finding something else. It had been Mozart’s turn last week, which had only moderate success; now it was Vivaldi’s big chance with The Four Seasons.
The traffic started to move but again ground to a halt less than fifty yards further on. Bannerman slipped the gear stick into neutral and sighed in frustration. Winter wasn’t doing too well. It took a further thirty-five minutes to reach the turn off for his apartment block. A few twists and turns through quiet back streets and he was safely through the gates and into the haven of
Redholm Court.
As he got out and locked the car he suddenly remembered that he had yet to get some wine to take over to Stella’s. He toyed with getting it on his way there but decided that if he did that it would be warm. There was an off-licence a quarter of a mile down the road so he pulled up his collar and hurried along to it. He was back within fifteen minutes.
With the wine safely in the kitchen fridge Bannerman took off his coat and poured himself a large gin from a bottle which stood on a tray beside the window. He closed the curtains and switched on the television to catch what was left of the early evening news on Channel Four.
Bannerman lived on the third floor. It was a pleasant two-bedroomed flat rented at a price which included all services. He had stayed there for the last two years and had no intention of moving unless he had to. It was quiet, warm in winter and pleasant in summer because of the south-facing balcony and roof garden. The building itself was surrounded by private gardens which included several mature beech trees and a series of well-kept flower beds which the gardeners stocked according to the season. There was also a garage for his car although he seldom used it, preferring instead to leave it on the tarmac apron facing the row of lock-ups.
There was little in the way of furniture in the apartment, something which owed nothing to ‘minimalist’ fashion but much to Bannerman’s lack of interest in matters domestic. Most of what there was designed to hold books although even these pieces were insufficient to cope with his collection and several volumes lived permanently on the floor, something his cleaner was at pains to point out at frequent intervals. She maintained that it interfered with her ‘Hoover’.
Unknown to her, this fact gave Bannerman perverse pleasure. Anything that impeded the progress of that monstrous machine was to be applauded. He had an almost irrational loathing of the ‘Hoover’. It was a hated enemy, the ultimate symbol of domestic drudgery. On the odd occasion he found himself in the flat when the dreaded noise started up he would be into a track suit and off running round the grounds before the cleaner had finished saying, ‘I hope this won’t disturb you too much Doctor …’
Bannerman finished his drink, kicked off his shoes and padded off to the bathroom to shower. He noticed a message on the hall table and stopped to read it. It was from the cleaner and said that one of his shirts had gone missing in the laundry. She had ‘told them off about it and, ‘by the way’ he needed some more shirts anyway. Several were looking ‘weary’. Bannerman had to admit that that was fair criticism. He was probably one of the laundry company’s best customers.
As a medical student he had discovered that pathologists carried the smell of their profession about with them. Even on social occasions he had noticed the sweet tang of formaldehyde or some other tissue fixative clinging to their clothes. For this reason, when he became a pathologist himself, he decided that this must not be the case with him. To this end, he kept two separate sets of clothes, one for work and the other for social use. They were never allowed to mix. Each day when he came home he would strip off and shower before putting on fresh clothes and placing his working ones in the laundry basket, the All Baba basket as the cleaner called it. It was a nice allusion; he liked it. It was a ‘working’ shirt that had gone missing and it was his range of ‘working’ shirts that were looking decidedly faded. It was only Tuesday. He would put off dealing with the problem until the weekend.
Bannerman lingered longer than usual in the shower, letting the warm water cascade on the back of his neck and slacken off the tension there while he mulled over the events of the day. Uppermost in his mind was the decision he had been called upon to make on the breast biopsy. It had worked out well in the end but it had also given him more than a few bad moments. What worried him most was the fact that he had noticed a distinct tremor in his fingers while he waited for an improved prep to be made. He had had worrying moments before in his career, many, but he could not recall ever having seen his hands shake before.
When he stepped out of the shower he towelled himself down in front of the big mirror at the back of the sink and examined himself critically, something he rarely did. Perhaps the appraisal was inspired by earlier thoughts of his approaching birthday but he hadn’t really looked at himself in a long time. He leaned forward to examine his hair, thinning a bit, a state exaggerated by it being wet but undeniable nevertheless. He frizzed it at the front with his fingertips.
His clean-shaven face carried no spare flesh and his chin line was still firm — well, reasonably firm. Perhaps there was just the vaguest suggestion of a double chin there but it disappeared when he pushed his jaw out a little — so he did. His brown eyes, when examined closely with the aid of a finger pulling down the lower lid, seemed clear and bright and his teeth were straight and reasonably white. His upper body was well muscled, though softer than it had been some ten years ago, and the thickening round the middle he would ascribe to Christmas for the time being.
He had a slightly low centre of gravity which kept his height a couple of inches under six feet. His thighs were a bit too thick and muscular when they could have done with being a bit slimmer and longer, a fact which nevertheless had helped him in his rugby playing days. He had played for Glasgow University when he was a medical student there. ‘Frankly Bannerman,’ he thought, ‘you’re not going to be in demand as a romantic lead … but then,’ he reasoned, ‘you never were.’ He wrapped the towel round his waist and went through to the bedroom to dress.
The entry phone crackled into life and Stella Lansing’s voice said, ‘Come on up, Ian.’ The door relay clicked and released the lock without waiting for him to say anything.
‘It’s not Ian,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’m a multiple rapist and I’ve come to have my way with you.’ He climbed the stairs to Stella’s apartment, bottle in hand, and found the door ajar. He let himself in and closed it with enough noise to let Stella know he had arrived.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ came her voice from the kitchen. ‘I’m behind as usual. Help yourself to a drink.’
Bannerman ignored the suggestion and went straight to the kitchen where he came up behind Stella and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Hello.’
Stella half turned and said, ‘I think I’ve ruined the potatoes.’
‘Good,’ replied Bannerman. ‘I’m on a diet.’
‘Since when?’ asked Stella.
‘Since this morning.’
‘It’s not like you to care about things like that,’ said Stella.
Bannerman digested the comment in silence. It deserved some thought.
‘Why don’t you pour us both a drink,’ said Stella, intent on stirring something on the hob.
This time Bannerman did as he was bid. Stella joined him a few moments later, undoing her apron and throwing it casually away as she walked towards him. Bannerman smiled at the gesture. Stella did everything with grace and panache. He was reminded of a story he had once heard about Fred Astaire. It was said that he could walk across stage smoking a cigarette, throw it away, stub it out with his foot and all without breaking stride.
Stella smoothed her brown hair back from the sides of her head and straightened her dress before sitting down. Both gestures were unnecessary. Stella always liked to maintain that she was disorganized and ‘in a tizzy’ but it was seldom, if ever, true. If she had messed up the potatoes it must have been because God had decreed that they should be messed up.
Stella sat down beside him and smiled. ‘How was your day?’ she asked. She had a slightly round face which tempered perfectly her slim elegant figure, whereas sharper features would have made her appear forbidding. A pleasantly wide mouth broke into a smile and bestowed on her what Bannerman always thought of as an air of amused detachment. An enemy might have seen it as patronizing.
‘Fair to middling,’ he said. ‘How about you?’
‘No problems,’ said Stella. ‘Routine removal of ovarian cysts. What happened about John Thorn’s patient?’
‘I’m afraid the section was
malignant. What was the problem there, anyway?’
‘The patient had multiple breast lumps and John suspected from the X-rays that there was a deeper tumour which they couldn’t reach by needle biopsy beforehand. He wanted you on hand to examine it if they came across it during the op. Everyone trusts your opinion.’
Bannerman rubbed his forehead in a nervous gesture, then realized he was doing it and stopped.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Stella. She put her hand on his.
‘No, nothing,’ smiled Bannerman. ‘I’m just a bit tired that’s all.’
‘Poor Ian,’ said Stella.
The comment was affectionate but it made Bannerman feel guilty. He felt sure that Stella had more reason to feel tired than he.
‘I’ll just check the sauce,’ said Stella, getting up and disappearing into the kitchen. ‘You could open the wine.’
Bannerman opened the wine and removed the cork slowly from the end of the corkscrew. ‘Stella?’ he said.
‘What?’ came the reply from the kitchen.
‘Why do you think we’ve remained such good friends?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Stella, coming into the room holding a hot dish with two hands and protecting her fingers with a dish cloth. ‘Is it important?’
‘Maybe,’ said Bannerman.
‘Why,’ asked Stella, depositing the dish on the table and turning to face Bannerman. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Bannerman.
‘About what?’
‘Life.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bannerman.
‘Well, what can I say?’ said Stella with a grin.
‘Why haven’t you got married? Why haven’t I? Do you think it’s some defect in our characters?’
‘Personally speaking I’m quite happy as I am,’ said Stella. ‘Perhaps we don’t need the hassle. We both have demanding careers and busy lives. Maybe that’s enough?’