by John Collee
Up at the Infirmary the sister met him in the short corridor between the doors to the main ward. She was a short, tidily kept woman with the crisp, austere features of an alabaster statuette. Her uniform was spotless. 'Hello' was all she said but her tone carried more implicit disapproval than Kingsley chose to accept from her.
'I've come to see my wife,' he said curtly.
'She's in a fair bit of pain.'
'So I gather, sister.'
The door swung shut behind him. Through the glass panel he caught sight, briefly, of the sister's face – a small pointed frown, then she was gone. He looked back down at his wife.
Sheila, grimacing, hauled herself into a sitting position.
'They say you want to delay the operation again.'
'That's right.'
She said nothing for a while. He sat on the edge of her bed and took her hand. She slipped it free. 'I'm going ahead with it.'
'Sheila . . .'
'I don't want to be kept like this any longer. I'm sick all the time. My hair's falling out. The longer you delay, the more pointless it seems. I feel like a prisoner on death row.'
'Just four more days.'
Sheila pulled herself up in bed. 'For Christ's sake, Alistair!'
The sister would have heard that. Kingsley pictured her tidy smugness.
Kingsley tugged at the blankets, tucked firmly under her mattress. He created a small vent, slipped his hand between the sheets. He found her thigh, touched and she squirmed away. He followed her, gripping her leg. Yes, he could feel it just above the knee, that same warmth. He focused on that area, rubbing, kneading the muscle. Sheila had relaxed, her eyes were on his face.
'What are you doing?'
Kingsley cleared his throat. 'Supposing I told you I could cure this . . . without an amputation, I mean.'
'You can't.'
'You remember those cases down at the Douglas Calder. Sandra Spears and all that. Remember all the stuff about a cure for cancer?'
'Yes.'
'It's true. I mean it worked then.'
'What worked then?'
'My touch,' he said. He tried to sound as matter-of-fact as possible but the pronouncement assumed a hollow melodrama of its own.
'You what?'
'I can heal by touch.'
'Alistair?' Sheila's eyes widened and filled with tears.
'Look, don't say anything, don't look at me like that. I'm not mad. I am not mad. There's this man. He's called Dhangi. He's a pathologist. He came to the hospital a long while back. I told you about him. He met me in the car park outside the Douglas Calder. All he wanted was a job in the mortuary. That's when it all started, the strange pathology reports. Dhangi said they were his doing. He said he'd conveyed some kind of healing touch on me. I didn't believe him. I thought he was completely cracked. Believe me, I did. I've tried not to believe in him. But now . . . now it seems I have to.'
'Don't be ridiculous. You don't have to.'
'Listen, Sheila. It works. Looking back the evidence is incontrovertible. Now I've found him again. It's going to be all right. It's all going to be all right. Don't cry.'
'How can you tell me not to cry? You spend weeks wandering around looking like a zombie, drinking, coming home late. You put me in hospital, then you take me out again, then I have to go in again. Now, right at the last moment, you expect me to call it off. And you come out with all this stuff . . . these stories . . . Hell, Alistair.' She touched his cheek.
'They're not stories.'
'Oh no?'
They sat opposite each other in the small, white room groping for that increasingly narrow isthmus of common ground.
'You're serious, aren't you?'
'Yes – yes I am.'
'See a psychiatrist.'
'I don't need a psychiatrist. You said I should have told you about Spears when all that happened. You're right. I should have. Maybe I don't share enough. So now I'm telling you about Dhangi. I don't expect you to believe it straight away. I just need a bit more time. For proof. Say five more days. You'll give me that, won't you?'
They contemplated each other in silence. 'Yes, I'll give you that,' she said at last, as if agreeing to give clothes to a jumble sale. He realized that their final point of contact, her faith in him, had, for the moment, vanished. There was no more to be said.
Kingsley drove home tortured by self-doubt. He slept fitfully and awoke the next morning drenched in sweat. Unable to concentrate on his work, he cut short the morning clinic in order to visit Sheila during the lunch hour.
He stopped at the top of Leith Walk and bought two-dozen pink roses from Rankin's. It struck him again as he climbed back into the car that shop assistants no longer treated him with the deference he had once commanded. Something made him accelerate as he approached the Infirmary. He left the car parked askew in the hospital car park and almost forgot Sheila's flowers in his haste. Inside the hospital he virtually ran up the staircase to the second floor.
The main surgical corridor stretched the length of the building. Kingsley hurried along it, swinging the flowers, now slowing to take breath, now breaking into a trot. On both sides of him there sped past the huge black boards which bore, in gold script, the names of those who had once donated money to the hospital. Kingsley turned into the ward.
As he passed the nursing office the small, pointed sister called out to him. Kingsley ignored her. He entered Sheila's room. It was empty. He almost collided with the sister on his way out. 'Where's my wife?' he demanded.
'Ah, Mr Kingsley.'
'Don't "Ah, Mr Kingsley" me. Where the hell is she?'
'She's gone to theatre. They'll be starting about now.'
'What the hell do you mean she's gone to theatre?'
'For the operation, Mr Kingsley.'
'She's not having a bloody operation. Which theatre?'
'Mr Kingsley. Do have a seat. Mr Cullen asked me to tell you that he and Mrs Kingsley had discussed the matter, feeling it better . . .'
'Which theatre?'
'Shall I ring them?' she asked coolly.
'Just stop being so damned pompous and tell me where they are.'
The alabaster reddened. 'Orthopaedics C,' she said. 'You're too late.'
The roses fell at her feet. Kingsley slammed through the swing doors, rushed into the lunch trolley and tore off down the corridor. He took the great spiral staircase three steps at a time, dodging nurses who climbed towards him, his leather soles skidding on the mosaic steps.
A red light outside the orthopaedic suite illuminated the sign: Sterile Corridor – No Entry. Kingsley left the swing doors thrashing behind him. He burst through the sterile changing area to emerge, panting, in a shiny corridor. Two of the theatres were empty. There was activity in a third. A voice called. 'Gown, Mr Kingsley!'
Sheila lay unconscious on the anaesthetic trolley. He didn't recognize the anaesthetist. A startled charge-nurse dropped a bottle of surgical spirit. It skidded, ringing around his feet.
'Switch that off,' he said.
'You can't,' the anaesthetist began, but Kingsley already had.
He turned the oxygen on full. Then pushed open the doors to the operating room.
'Tony,' he said.
Cullen looked up. He was standing in his long green gown, gloved hands folded, Christ-like across his chest.
'What are you doing here?' he asked.
'What the hell d'you think I'm doing here?'
Like figures in a room at Pompeii, the registrar, the anaesthetic assistant, the scrub nurse and the floor nurses stood, lignified, where he had interrupted them.
Cullen pulled down his mask and peeled off his gloves. 'Let's take a break for lunch.' He followed Kingsley out.
The anaesthetist was bending over Sheila. She was retching and moving her arms.
There was a single nurse in the rest room. She looked at Cullen's face and left quickly. When the door closed Kingsley turned on him.
'You were going to go on and amputate.'
'Sheila aske
d me to. She signed the consent form. It's her decision.'
'It was your bloody decision, Tony.'
'Yes, it was my decision too.'
Cullen stood before him, immobile as a crag.
'I only asked for five days, Tony.'
'Five days for what? Don't tell me you've unearthed some new cure.' Cullen snorted. 'So what is it? Injections, magic potions, prayer? Come on, man. You can't be serious. If I suspected for one minute that you had any chance of coming up with a viable alternative I'd give you all the time in the world. But I don't think you've got anything up your sleeve, nothing, and I don't want to see you continuing to torture yourself.'
'It's my wife.'
'She's my patient, Alistair.'
'Does that give you the right to disregard my opinion?'
Cullen was slowly unlacing his gown. 'I don't think your opinion is valid right at the moment, Alistair.'
'You think I'm going to pieces.'
'Not just me, Alistair. When was the last time you looked at yourself in a mirror?'
Kingsley ran a hand over his chin. He had not shaved that morning.
'Look,' Cullen continued, 'like I said before – if this happened to my wife I'd be up the wall. I wouldn't trust myself with the necessary clinical judgement. I'd leave it to a more objective practitioner. You remember Louther?'
Yes, he remembered Louther. Louther had been a vascular surgeon – a renowned expert, not just locally but internationally. His teaching seminars had always been crammed. When his wife developed swelling of the aorta he had insisted on repairing it himself. Through no fault of his own the graft broke down and she died post-operatively of massive internal haemorrhage. Louther had blamed himself. He retired from active work. Two months later he shot himself.
'Five more days,' said Kingsley.
'Last time it was four more weeks.'
'That's a decision, not a request.'
'What do you want me to do?'
'Just X-ray that leg in five days' time. If the cancer's still there you can amputate.'
'What do you mean, "If the cancer is still there?" Are you planning to treat her?'
'I already have.'
Cullen exhaled noisily. 'Don't crack, Alistair. You're one of the best.'
Then he left.
Chapter 16
Anthony Cullen folded his arms across his chest and pushed back on the hind legs of his chair. The bent wood creaked under his weight. A thin line of bright light transected his body, escaping from the viewing screen between the two Xrays he had clipped there. Sheila Kingsley's femur, one week before her aborted operation and four days after. Undeniably the appearance had changed. Where once had been the lobulated mass of cancer there was now nothing – a black hole, more regular in contour and already lined with a thin perimeter of opaque regenerative tissue. Anthony Cullen stuck both thumbs in his waistband and drummed the free digits on his bladder. For the third time he checked the name and date. Then he pushed back again, legs straight, grey chin pressed on his chest. After a while he switched off the viewing screen and crossed the corridor to Sheila Kingsley' s room.
'I've been looking at your X-rays.'
She had put some lipstick on. Perverse as it seemed, she looked better already. She had not required pethidine for three days now and her pupils had become large and bright again.
'Well . . . ?'
He sat diagonally on the edge of her bed.
'Strangely enough. Your cancer doesn't look so bad.'
'I feel better.'
Cullen propped himself on one arm. 'Listen, Sheila, all this hooha Alistair was coming out with about being able to treat you himself. It's all nonsense isn't it?'
She shrugged.
'He didn't give you any capsules, or pills or anything, no injections, no special drinks? Nothing which might have made you get better?'
'You mean I am?'
'That's the way it seems – despite all my predictions.'
A big smile tugged at her mouth. Cullen watched it grudgingly.
'Aren't you pleased too?' she asked him.
'Confused.'
'Do you feel cheated?'
'Cheated? God no. It's tremendous news. You don't think I was looking forward to cutting your leg off.'
'I don't know, were you? I mean I know it's awful and all that, but you enjoy it don't you. Having to do terrible things to people. That's all part of the thrill? No? Being bloody ruthless. If Alistair could treat all his patients without cutting he'd be desolate.'
He patted her leg. 'I can see your critical faculties are working. Maybe we should sedate you again.'
Back in the ward office he phoned down to Leith. He caught Kingsley in Barton ward at the beginning of a round. 'Alistair, I have an apology to make . . .'
'For God's sake, Tony, you've not . . .'
'Keep your hair on. I wouldn't dream of doing anything to Sheila now without your consent.'
There was a pause. 'I'm sorry,' said Kingsley quietly.
'Forget it.'
'It's just that . . .'
'All right, man,' said Cullen. 'The fact is I've just reviewed Sheila's X-rays. I don't know how to account for it, but today's film shows definite signs of remission.'
Another silence. Kingsley cleared his throat. On the other end of the phone, Cullen mistook the sound for ironic laughter.
'That's the first time I've heard you laugh in a long while.'
Kingsley spoke with difficulty. 'It's the first time I've had something to laugh about.'
'Care to share the joke?' Cullen asked.
'What?'
'Tell me how you explain this.'
Kingsley faltered. Incredibly he had not prepared himself for this kind of question. Perhaps he had never wholly believed until now. 'Actually,' he said, 'I’m as surprised as you are. I was . . . It was nothing. I was acting on a hunch . . . that she would respond to chemotherapy.'
'We almost always see a gradual response over the first three weeks. I'd already assumed this tumour was unresponsive to drugs.'
'So had I,' said Kingsley.
'You've got me wondering if maybe you slipped her the magic potion.'
'I thought you didn't believe in magic, Tony.'
'I didn't yesterday.'
Alone in Sister McReady's cramped nursing station, Kingsley inspected his own fingertips.
'Seriously, Alistair,' Cullen was saying, 'you've not . . . you've not intervened in any other way?'
'No.'
'I can't help wondering how you were so adamant we shouldn't operate . . .'
'I told you,' Kingsley said. 'It was just a hunch.' As a man who had hitherto shared Cullen's pragmatic approach to life, Kingsley was embarrassingly aware of the thinness of this excuse. Cullen ploughed through it.
'I was thinking about your research down there, poor old Mukesh's project. Had he come up with anything?'
'Nothing,' Kingsley insisted.
'Some analogue of that stuff – interferon. They had some early success with osteogenic sarcoma.'
'Listen Tony, there's nothing like that.'
'OK. Don't get steamed up. I'm just saying I'd want to be told.'
'Well I'm telling you,' said Kingsley. 'You don't think if I'd stumbled on some fantastic panacea I'd be keeping it to myself.'
'There might be a case for it,' said Cullen pointedly. He paused. 'You can appreciate my concern; I need to know what my patient's treatment is.'
'She's getting what you're giving her.'
'Nothing else?'
'Nothing. Believe me.'
'That's all I wanted to know,' said Cullen.
Kingsley hung up, then stood in the cramped office and looked out over the darkening car park, as he had stood fifteen years ago as a young consultant on his first visit to the ward; as he had stood many times since, discussing cases, phoning, arguing the toss with McReady. All the years of experience had done nothing to prepare him for what he now faced. He steadied himself momentarily against the filing cabinet,
rubbed his eyes, replaced his glasses, then stepped out of the nursing station.
As Kingsley rejoined the ward round, Jennings was instructing the houseman on the management of an intravenous feeding routine. It was Jennings's speciality; Kingsley therefore had nothing to add and his blank detachment went unnoticed. There now remained little doubt in his mind that he, Alistair Kingsley, was the only man in the world who could offer a cure for otherwise terminal cancer. As Cullen himself had suggested, there was a strong case for keeping this secret dark. And he had only guessed a fragment of the truth.
In the unseasonal heat of the ward Kingsley sweated. Sheila's recovery had immediately aroused Cullen's suspicions. It could not fail to ignite speculation elsewhere. For a moment Kingsley entertained the idea of phoning Cullen and asking him to suppress the report. But he realized now that he had already tested Tony Cullen's loyalty to breaking point. Besides, it was already too late to intervene – Sheila's films would already have been processed in the radiography department. From there the news of her apparent remission would have begun its malignant spread through the Infirmary. There was no way he could halt it.
'Mrs Grant,' said the houseman, 'for ligation of veins.'
'Hello, Mrs Grant,' said Jennings. Looking up he perceived that their consultant was still not completely with them. Jennings had admired, and still admired, his boss enormously but he was worried by Kingsley's recent demeanour. Over the past couple of months Jennings had begun to suspect that he had hitherto widely underestimated the stresses to which further promotion might expose him.
Anyway, if the old man wouldn't take a rest he could at least dream on his feet for a while.
Kingsley continued to study the floor. This gift, if gift it was, threw all his previous values into disarray. His justification for the long hours he worked had always been something to do with his uniqueness – the idea that his special skills carried with them a debt to society. But to what extent was he indebted? To the limit of his ability? Did then a limitless ability to cure imply a limitless obligation to society?
'Mr Kingsley.'
And for what rewards? As Kingsley saw it, the power to heal did not exalt its bearer. It reduced him to a mere executive, a technician, the vehicle of some greater, incomprehensible force.