Dead if You Don’t

52

Saturday 12 August

22.30–23.30

Gentian Llupa passed an hour, inconspicuously, at the rear of a crowded pub close to the Royal Sussex County Hospital. He sipped a Diet Coke, whilst watching a darts match that was in progress between a local team and one from Ipswich, the Thrasher Vipers, who all wore smart black-and-orange shirts. One member of this visiting team, heavily tattooed and sporting a Lincoln beard, was punishingly accurate. The Thrasher Vipers were indeed thrashing the local team, Llupa thought with a smile.

He left the pub and slipped out into the darkness. One thing he had learned as a medical student was that hospitals tended to be pretty chaotic places. Anyone could walk around the corridors and wards unchallenged. But even so, just to be safe, beneath his motorcycling leathers which were now folded and locked inside the motorbike’s pannier, he had put on blue surgical scrubs, a stethoscope round his neck and an ID tag bearing the name Dr Tojo Melville, which his boss, Mr Dervishi, had given him.

He strode down a long corridor that smelled of disinfectant and mashed potato, passing a hand sanitizer, a caged trolley, an empty wheelchair, a lift, toilets and a multicoloured sign naming the various wards on this floor. He passed a stack of empty blue and green plastic crates, two filled pink garbage bags, a row of noticeboards pinned with information leaflets, a yellow warning triangle stating CLEANING IN PROGRESS. A young, grief-stricken couple stood, hugging each other. An orderly walked past, from the opposite direction, giving him a cursory, respectful nod.

He reached the sign for Albourne Ward, Orthopaedic Unit, and stopped, peering in. Then, pulling his surgical hat low over his forehead, he approached the nursing station.

It was an open ward, comprising twenty-six beds, but to his right there were doors to four private rooms. Still no one took any notice of him. The nursing station was staffed by a pleasant-looking Asian man engaged on a phone call and two female nurses studying some paperwork. On the third door was the label STEPHEN SUCKLING.

As he hesitated outside, the door suddenly opened. A middle-aged woman, in jeans and a baggy blouse, blew the occupant a kiss and told him she would be back in the morning.

He turned his face away as she walked past him and waited until she had left the ward, then opened the door, walked in and closed it behind him.

The mechanical digger and crusher operator lay in the bed, both his legs held up by traction pulleys. He had been brought in earlier today, Llupa had been informed, with multiple fractures to the tibia and fibula in both legs, as well as fractures to his sacrum and coccyx. Much of his lower half was currently encased in plaster.

Llupa knew, from these injuries, he would not be walking again for many months and then for the rest of his life he was likely to have a severe limp. Well, he thought, that was one blessing. Stephen should be grateful to him for sparing him that suffering, no?

It was a small room, with pale-green walls and a wash basin with a soap dispenser. Above the bed was an Anglepoise lamp; there was a drip stand with two lines cannulated into the back of Suckling’s hand, two plastic chairs, a free-standing tray on which sat a glass, a jug of water and a box of tissues, and monitoring equipment with a display showing his blood pressure, 180 over 70 — High, thought Gentian — and his heart rate, 87 — Also high, he thought.

‘Hello!’ he said, breezily, to the patient. ‘How’s your day so far?’

Suckling looked at him groggily, heavily sedated. ‘Not that great, actually.’

‘Too bad. Mr Dervishi said to say hello, and how sorry he is about your accident.’

Suckling peered at the man in blue scrubs with the stethoscope dangling from his neck.

‘Mr Dervishi asked me to explain to you that this is not personal. It is simply that shit happens.’

‘Shlit shappens,’ Stephen Suckling echoed. He watched the doctor replacing one bag of fluid attached to a drip line, grateful for the care, grateful for the constant numbing of the agonizing pain he had been in before they brought him here.

Within seconds of the doctor leaving his room, he started feeling happy. Incredibly happy. Life was great.

He felt full of love. All his cares were drifting away. Everything was wonderful. Boy, would he and his wife have a celebration when he got out of here!

He was only dimly aware of a steady beep-beep-beep sound.

The monitor’s display was turned away from him so he could not see it.

The blood pressure reading began to drop, steadily and rapidly. Along with his heart rate: 62; 51; 47; 35; 22.

Somewhere out in the night, hazily, he heard the roar of a powerful motorcycle. And somewhere nearer he heard a steady beeping. It sounded like the warning from a lorry reversing.

A few minutes later, the heart rate on the monitor flat-lined.