‘The reason this particular patient is so irate about the loss of his promised bed on the last occasion is because he believes that beds are being unfairly allocated,’ he said smoothly. ‘He tells me —’ and he glanced down at the open notebook on his knee. ‘He was in a local pub the evening of the day he was supposed to be admitted and heard several of the young nursing staff talking. And because they spoke loudly he couldn’t help overhearing the conversation and discovered that there was admitted that day he was turned away a man who was to have a sex-change operation.’
There was a little silence and then Levy said carefully, ‘You say this man overheard this in a pub?’
‘Yes,’ Oliver said and held the microphone as invitingly as ever towards him.
‘My dear Mr Merrall, you can hardly expect me to comment on information from such a source!’ Levy said and his face showed no signs of the fast thinking that was going on behind it. ‘I am frankly appalled that such conversations about our patients should occur in public, and steps will be taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but —’
‘So you’re refusing to comment simply because the source of the information doesn’t please you?’ Oliver cut in.
‘Not at all!’ Levy said and smiled at him. ‘I have more sense than that, Mr Merrall. No, I need time to check on this story. I need to find out what the reason was for the withdrawal of an offer of a bed to this gentleman and also what other patients were admitted that day. By all means come and talk to me again, once I’ve managed to get the facts. But there is no point in mere surmise, is there? It’s facts you want — you and your listeners. So come back later and you shall have them.’
And he folded his arms and nodded politely at Merrall and said no more, and Oliver, experienced as he was, admitted defeat and switched off the Uher.
There was a short silence and then Levy said explosively, ‘Damn it all! Will we never teach these wretched children not to talk so much in public?’
‘Are you saying it’s true then?’ Oliver reached for the Uher, but Levy shook his head. ‘Switch on again and I say not another word,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m not. I’m not saying it isn’t, however. This sort of talk generally is pretty accurate, damn it all. Why shouldn’t it be? The nurses are at the bedside. They know what’s going on better than anyone.’
‘Wouldn’t you know if there was a sex-change operation going on here?’ Oliver asked. ‘I can’t believe you do that many.’
‘No, not many,’ Levy said and smiled again.
‘So? Is there such a patient in at the moment?’
‘There may be — but even if there were, what relevance would it have to your Mr Scribner?’ Levy said. ‘We’ve several hundred patients in here. Probably we had twenty or thirty admissions the day he was told his bed wasn’t available. Am I to throw out all the other admissions in order to accommodate him?’
‘But if it’s true and there was an admission for a sex-change operation,’ Oliver said doggedly, ‘that patient would be in the Genito-Urinary Unit, wouldn’t he? He’d hardly be in the Gynae ward. At least not at the first stage of the operation. Later, maybe — and Mr Scribner was to be admitted to Genito-Urinary —’
There was another little silence and then Levy said carefully, ‘Something tells me you haven’t discussed this matter with Kate.’
Oliver lifted his brows at him. ‘Of course not.’
‘Why “of course”?’
‘Because the last thing I want to do is cause her any — look, I’m doing this story because I feel I must. Mr Scribner’s letter to me was a very moving document. It’s my damned bad luck that not only is the hospital involved one where a friend of mine works, but the same ward is involved. That being so the less I talk to Kate the better.’
‘Mr Merrall, did Mr Scribner tell you who his consultant was?’
‘Keith Le Queux.’
‘Have you spoken to him yet?’
‘Er, no. I wanted to be sure I had all the other facts clear first —’
‘It’s just as well. I take it you are assuming that if this so-called sex-change operation was admitted — and I make no statements either way at this point, you understand — you are assuming that he would be admitted to GU under Mr Le Queux’s care?’
‘Well, of course,’ Oliver said. ‘Scribner is certain that he lost his bed to this other case. So, it must be … His voice trailed away and Levy watched with interest as the pupils of Oliver’s eyes suddenly enlarged as the possibilities slotted into place inside his mind. On my God,’ Oliver said.
‘Well, yes,’ Levy said almost apologetically. ‘I think a little praying might be in order for you, Mr Merrall. If you value your friendship with Kate. Because you are quite right in your new realisation. I will now tell you that such a patient was admitted and is having treatment here. Under the care of Kate Sayers. So now what are you going to do?’
‘You can’t do nothing to stop me,’ Ida said sullenly. ‘And anyway, it’s none of your business.’ And she moved a little closer to Prue.
‘Of course it is,’ Sister said briskly. ‘I never heard any such nonsense in all my life, telling me what happens to my patients is none of my business!’
‘Well, what am I doing that’s so wrong?’ Ida said. ‘I just said as I’d promised Prue here I’d give her a bit of help, that’s all. There’s no harm in that, is there? It’s not like I got a lot to do. Miss Buckland, she said go out for another month till she can try next time, and all I want to do is keep myself occupied. You heard what Miss Buckland said about not getting obsessive. Well, if I go and help Prue with her babies and all then I won’t get obsessive, will I?’
‘Is this what you want, Mrs Roberts?’ Sister Morgan bent over to peer into Prue’s pale face. She was sitting on the old blue chair in the day room, her knees held together carefully and her bag of things beside her, her head down so that her hair covered her face, and it was difficult to see her at all clearly. ‘Mrs Roberts?’
‘What?’ Prue looked up now and stared at Sister. Her pallor had greatly improved; there was some normality about her now, but all the same her eyes seemed strained and there were lines there that didn’t belong on so young a face. She looked closer to thirty-five than twenty-five, Sister Morgan thought and threw an urgent glance at her watch. It was almost time for Miss Buckland’s round and she really didn’t have time to waste this way.
‘Look, let me get someone up from the Social Services department to talk to you,’ she began, but both women jumped on that.
‘No,’ they chorused, and Sister Morgan looked from one to the other, nonplussed.
‘Well, I suppose it’s out of my hands,’ she said at length, and pulled her cuffs down over her wristwatch. ‘If you’re determined, Mrs Malone, then that’s an end of it, I suppose. As long as Mrs Roberts really wants you to go home with her —’
‘Yes,’ Prue said drearily and didn’t look at Ida. ‘Yes, it’s what I want. She’ll be a good help to me. The Social are bringing the kids back this afternoon and I’ll need a bit of help.’
‘Well, if you need any further advice, call your health visitor, you understand? And they’ll be sending a social worker down from the Town Hall to see you, I dare say. Now, have you got your appointment card for antenatal clinic? Good, make sure you keep it, now. After all that’s happened you’ll need a lot of watching. And er —’ She moved a little closer to Prue and with a deft turn of one shoulder managed to exclude Ida Malone from their conversation. ‘If you get — um — worried again, don’t go doing anything silly. You understand me? You’re all of twenty weeks and you can’t go fiddling about. You’re all right this time, but you’ve had a nasty go. It isn’t the answer, believe me. If it was, you can be sure Miss Buckland — I mean, she’s a very caring doctor and never refuses unless — well, anyway, no nonsense now, you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Prue said dully and after one last look at her Sister Morgan went hurrying away down the ward in a whisper of nylon uniform and a slap of
rubber-soled shoes.
‘She knows what you’re up to, and she’s going to stop it,’ Prue said after a moment and shot a sharp little look at Ida. But Ida was staring at her with her eyes wide and glittering and showing no anxiety at all.
‘Not she,’ she said confidently. ‘She’s just going through the motions, like what they have to. She’ll forget all about you the minute you walks out the door. That’s what they do here, get all excited about you while you’re in, but after you’re outside it’s a case of poof, that’s the patient that was, who gives a damn any more? None of ’em. Your notes’ll go back down to that record office and they’ll send the cards and the records through to the antenatal and no one’ll ever give a damn if you don’t show up. It’ll be a case of thank God we can go to lunch early, one patient less. Never you think otherwise, ducky. They don’t care.’
‘They do,’ Prue said with sudden passion. ‘They’ve always been ever so good here, they have. They’ll notice if I don’t keep my appointment, you see if they don’t. They’ll get in touch.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Ida jeered. ‘They’ll get that there clerk to send a special card they got printed about “You missed your appointment, please make another” and that’ll be that. No one’ll notice if you don’t make a new appointment. They’ll reckon you’ve moved away, that’s all, and bob’s your uncle.’
‘I’d rather have the baby here,’ Prue said after another long moment. ‘I had the others here. It was all right, it was.’
‘It’ll be better in this other place. Small it is, and real nice. Private.’ And Ida nodded once or twice, full of satisfaction. ‘Real nice, a private place. You’ll have a good time there.’
‘They won’t let you take the baby away afterwards, anyway,’ Prue said with sudden malice. ‘None of these hospitals ever do.’
‘I told ’em you was my sister when I booked you in,’ Ida said. ‘Did it on the phone I did, all right and proper. They took the booking, no trouble at all. I always had it in my mind I’d go there myself if I had a baby natural, only I never — well, anyway they took the booking when I said you was my sister. So they’ll be no trouble. You just go in in twenty weeks or so, you have the baby and then I’ll take you both home, like. Only you can go home and me and the baby you won’t know nothing about. Least said, soonest mended.’
‘You’re mad,’ Prue said and stared at her again. ‘Do you know that? Stark ravin’ mad.’
‘Don’t you be so full of your bleedin’ self!’ Ida said and there was so much venom in her voice that Prue shrank back into her chair. ‘I got an idea that’ll save your bacon and all you can say is I’m mad? There’s bloody gratitude. I’m spending all this money on you — that coat you got on, didn’t I get it fetched in for you? Didn’t I? Don’t you go saying I’m mad.’
‘I mean you can’t just take a baby what isn’t yours and say it is,’ Prue said, sulky now. ‘That’s what I meant.’
‘And what’ll happen if I don’t? Do you want it?’
Prue closed her eyes and tried to think. She saw in the yellow tinted glow behind her lids the long passageway in the flat, with the pram crowded to one side and the clothes horse with the nappies on it at the far end, and then saw the bedroom with the two cots in it and the clutter of the sitting room with Danny’s bits and toys everywhere and Gary shouting at her because of the mess, and thought of the way she felt whenever the baby cried and felt the tears slide out of the yellowness to wet her face.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I do,’ Ida said. ‘I know you. You don’t want this baby, not really. You got two and they’re all you can deal with. This one you wanted to get rid of. You still do, don’t you?’
Still the tears slid down Prue’s face as she sat there feeling the great cold lump in her belly and hating it, and thinking of Gary in the sand somewhere. And hated him and could say nothing.
‘So, why shouldn’t I help you, eh? I’m glad to. I want to. It’d be a blessing to you and I want to give it you, that sort of blessing, and I want the baby and it’s all so sensible. Don’t you tell me I’m mad. It’s the only way to do it. And it’s what we’re going to do.’
She looked up to see the porter coming towards the day room pushing an empty wheelchair. ‘There,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s here. Time to go then. Come on, Prue. You’ll see. I’ll get you home and sort things out for you in no time. You’ll see. It’ll be the best thing you ever did.’
Suba looked up from the nurses’ station as the wheelchair went by and said quickly, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Roberts. I hope everything goes well for you.’ And never thought to say goodbye to Mrs Malone as well. But Mrs Malone was like that, she thought as the two women disappeared out of the swinging double doors. It isn’t till afterwards you think of what you ought to say to her. And she bent her head again to Mrs Walton’s notes, trying to read all she had to read before she went off duty. She had a lot to remember for the meeting tonight.
If she went of course, she reminded herself, then. If she went.
Chapter Eighteen
‘I’m not sure, you know,’ Jimmy Rhoda said judiciously. ‘Not sure at all.’
‘Why not? It’s true, every word of it.’
‘Oh, I dare say it’s true enough,’ Jimmy smiled sweetly. ‘Here, can I smoke in here? Of course I don’t disbelieve you. It isn’t that.’
‘Then what is it? And it’s better you don’t smoke. Sister gets shirty enough when the patients do, let alone the visitors. And quite right too. Your body shouldn’t get attacked with smoke and all that. Ought to treat your body like a temple, really. Be careful what you put in it —’
‘Yes,’ Jimmy said after a moment, and shoved his cigarettes back into his pocket, keeping his head bent while he did so, to stop his face being seen, knowing the expression that was on it. Body a temple? Jesus Christ! Wait till he took this little lot back to the office. They’d laugh for a week.
‘So, what is it then? Why can’t you —’
‘It’s not your story, you understand,’ Jimmy said, and after a moment and with a very obvious gallantry leaned forwards and patted the long-fingered hand with its blood-red nails. ‘It’s not that I doubt. And it’s very interesting as well as true. No, the problem is the money —’
‘Oh?’ Kim stared at him. ‘What about the money? Isn’t it worth it? Aren’t I worth it?’
‘I’m sure you are,’ Jimmy said heartily. ‘Anyone would think so. The thing is, though, will my editor? She’s a hard woman —’ And he shook his head dubiously. ‘A very hard woman.’
‘A woman ought to understand,’ Kim said. ‘Oughtn’t she?’
‘Well, I dare say she would,’ Jimmy allowed. ‘But she has to watch the budget. And you’re asking for a lot of money, you see. I can allow — on my own you understand, without going to the editor — I can go to a thousand —’
‘A thousand?’ Kim almost squealed it. ‘It’s worth a bloody sight more’n that —’
‘I dare say it is, to you.’ Jimmy was all sympathy. ‘But the fact of the matter is my editor —’
‘Then forget it. I’ll go to someone else.’
‘Not as easy as that.’ Jimmy sounded really regretful. ‘I mean you’ve told me now, haven’t you? It’s like, public. I can do the story from the other end, as it were. Come to the people here, say I’ve heard on the grapevine about this operation, want to do an article anyway, and then you’d get nothing —’
Kim’s eyes brimmed in their usual ready fashion as she stared at him. ‘You wouldn’t,’ she said, and her voice cracked a little. ‘I mean, it’s all I’ve got now. I told you. I’ve been sacked and I can’t get another job that pays. A business of my own, it’s the only way — and if you don’t pay me and just do it anyway I might as well cut my throat and be done with it, because I’ve got to have money to start a business, haven’t I? Without it I’m as good as dead.’
Jimmy shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘Are you sure I can’t smoke in here? No? Well — look, I’ll
do the best I can. If I can stretch it to, say, fifteen hundred, will that help?’
‘I’d hoped for at least five thousand,’ Kim said.
He shook his head firmly. ‘Out of the question.’
‘If I had three I could maybe do something. Start in my living room. But I’ll need some machines, and someone to do some of the sewing. I’m a designer, not a seamstress. And then there’s the pressing and the investment in fabric and trimmings and the packaging and then I’ve got to go out and sell it and you can’t do that by bus, can you? I’d hoped for at least five thousand to cover all that. But if I had three —’
‘Well, look, I’ll put my own job on the line,’ Jimmy said, sounding handsome. ‘I’ll make it two. Two thousand quid. You can’t say fairer, can you? That ought to be a beginning. But you won’t get more anywhere. If you get anything.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Kim said. ‘You really have got me by the short and curlies, haven’t you?’ And then she giggled. ‘Not that I’ve got much of those left, mind you —’ And Jimmy laughed too, trying not to show his jubilation at getting the story so cheaply. And pulled his notebook from his pocket and settled down to some real work.
Sian had been thoroughly annoyed when she’d been sent to clean the dialysis machine after they took Jenny off it. That was an orderly’s job, and she said as much with some vigour when the staff nurse told her to do it.
‘Really?’ the staff nurse had said sharply. ‘Is that so? Well, if we had an orderly, maybe we could send her to do it. And if there hadn’t been that fuss over getting the Union involved over Mrs Aspinall making such a stupid ass of herself with that breakfast, maybe we could have got another orderly in her place. As it is, the Union refused and so we’re short-handed with orderlies which means as usual that the nursing staff have to step into the breach. You. You’re the ward junior, so you get the job.’
Clinical Judgements Page 20