The Cold Calling

III

Around two-thirty a.m., Sister Anderson, scenting smoke, slid quietly into the sluice room. The young Nigerian houseman, Jonathan, bounced off the wall like a scared squirrel, tossed his cigarette out of the window.

When he saw who it was, Jonathan looked no less intimidated. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry.’ His face no longer black but grey with fatigue in the white lights.

These kids. He’d have been hardly born when Sister Andy, red-haired then and vengeful, had first hunted down wee nurses and sprog docs who’d risked a ciggy in the sluice or the lavvies. Been a good while now since she last chewed the leg off a junior housie — no fun terrorizing some hollow-eyed kid at the end of a sixteen-hour shift. But reputations stuck.

‘Jonathan,’ Andy said wearily. ‘Daft sod y’are, wasnae likely to be the chairman of the bloody hospital trust this time of night. Here … have yourself a replacement.’

Jonathan looked surprised and then smiled tentatively, still unsure whether it was a trap. Getting the cigarette to his mouth, his hand shook, poor wean. Twenty-six years old, veteran of three weeks in A and E, two on the slaughterhouse shift.

‘Aw, come on, son.’ Andy flashed the ancient Zippo. ‘It happens. You did your best, no?’

‘Is that what I am supposed to keep telling myself every night for the next forty years?’

‘It’s what I’ve been saying to young guys like you the last thirty.’ Andy sighed. ‘Aye, you’re right, it’s a trite wee phrase.’

She lit up too, having a good idea what was coming next.

‘I honestly don’t think I am going to stick it,’ Jonathan said bleakly. ‘It’s like working in some sort of meat-processing plant. By midnight, one gets so one doesn’t want to go back out there.’

If she’d had twenty Silk Cut for every time an intern said that to her, she’d have gone down with nicotine poisoning years back. What the hell was she supposed to say? If she told him the truth of how bad it became, he’d just think she was stir-crazy. The truth was you grew to love it. The stink, the drips, the bedpans, the old guys who drooled — you loved it all and, when you took a holiday, your heart ached to get back.

This was how bad it became.

‘But I mean,’ Jonathan said, ‘does anyone ever surprise you? You know, by suddenly responding to treatment? Does that happen any more? And is anybody ever, ever grateful?’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you, doctor, you saved ma life.’ Andy assuming a geriatric quaver. ‘Stayed awake long enough to administer the right drugs in the right order. A credit to the hospital trust.’ She sighed. ‘Ah, Jonathan, in my own worst moments I figure if you manage to save a life you must’ve beaten the system, y’know?’

The same way you loved the whingeing patients and the underpaid nurses and the thirty-year-old doctors looking fifty, so you hated the suits, the admin guys, the caring, cut-glass quango ladies with their spectacles on gold chains and clipboards full of rationalization plans. It was all a business now and the last thing businesses were about was healing.

She became aware that Jonathan was looking down at her in some kind of awe.

‘Sister Andy! My God, it’s true, isn’t it? You really are leaving us.’

‘Where’ve you heard that?’ Knowing — dammit — that with the sharpness of her tone she was confirming it. Although it wasn’t certain, by no means.

‘Well, I … somebody said you accepted a retirement package. But someone else said it was just a vicious rumour and they’d never get you out … out …’

‘… alive? Never get me out of here alive? Bloody hell, Jonathan, I look that old and ruined?’

Jesus God, were the damn sprogs beginning to pity her? Maybe it was time to start dyeing the hair again. Bring back the old red. Fiery red and halfway down her back when she came down from Glasgow in sixty-five. Faded ginger seven years ago when she and Mick were divorced. Straggly grey now.

‘Well, you know, a lot of people nowadays are taking early retirement,’ Jonathan said, embarrassed. ‘To do the things they always promised themselves. Travel the world …’

‘Sod off,’ said Andy. ‘You’re just digging yourself in deeper.’

‘Sorry. Another job, then? It’ll go no further, I promise. It’s just that if even you are getting out-’

‘Look, son.’ Andy glared up, smoking no-hands, pushing the words out the side of the ciggie. ‘If anybody wants to know, I’m gonny marry a brilliant heart surgeon and fly out to his private clinic on Paradise Island, OK?’

‘Sorry. None of my business.’

‘Right,’ said Andy.

Paradise. Sure. Paradise stripped down to a stone and timbered village huddled under the Black Mountains, which were the lower vertebrae of the Welsh border. A paradise called St Mary’s. A grand wee place, in its way, a haven, a sanctuary …

… and the nearest general hospital twenty rugged miles away. A clean break, right enough. Jesus God, was she really going through with it this time? Big hospitals, most people found them soulless and scary, but they gave Andy just a fantastic buzz, the smell of piss and disinfectant invigorating all her senses like ozone. Her element. Was her element. In the days before the suits. Before healing got deprioritized.

‘OK,’ Andy said. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. But it goes no further, right?’

Jonathan placed his hand over his heart.

‘Only, I’ve been worried a while about the personal touch going out of health care. Like you said, a production line. I worry about the drug companies ruling the world, y’know?’

‘Don’t they?’

‘I’ve been studying alternative healing,’ Andy said. ‘Y’know what I mean?’

Jonathan’s eyes widened. ‘Mumbo jumbo?’

‘This is the question, Jonathan. Is it?’

‘Well now, Sister Andy, that is a very profound question.’

‘Glad you think so. I was a wee bit scared to mention witch doctors and such in case you took it as some kind of racist slur on the African health service. We’re all treading eggshells these days, son.’

Jonathan grinned. ‘It’s all turned around again. Now, witch doctors are part of a great cultural tradition. And sometimes … unlike us … they still come up with the odd miracle. But Sister Andy — pardon me if this is racist — one is not aware of a similar tradition here in the UK.’

‘Oh, it’s there, right enough. Just buried deeper. OK. Couple of years ago, before you came, I developed what was turning into chronic ulcerative colitis, y’know?’

‘Unpleasant.’

‘And inconvenient. You cannae do this job efficiently when you’re spending half the morning in and out of the lavvy. I was pretty desperate. Down to about eight stone. Eight Asacols a day. All I wanted was to sleep. Only it doesnae give you much sleep, the colitis. Your hair falls out, you develop big red lumps on your legs …’

Jonathan looked her up and down. ‘You seem fine now. Surgery?’

Andy shook her head. ‘Nor drugs. But it’s cured. Ask me how it happened, we’re talking serious mumbo-’

Jonathan’s bleeper went off.

Shutters slamming down on personal issues, Sister Andy took his cigarette and held open the plastic door for him, like the grizzled old guy in the war movies who pushes the paras out of the hatch.

‘Get your arse outa here, son,’ Andy said. ‘Never let the bastards see the fear, aye?’

‘Bugger!’ The paramedic sweating. ‘I think he’s bloody well arrested.’

The injured guy was still strapped to the stretcher, the red blanket wrenched back and the guy’s chest bared. Big Nurse Debbie Barnes running alongside reaching for the carotid pulse.

‘He’s right, Sister. Nothing.’

‘Oot the way, Debbie.’ Andy’s accent thickening the way it always did in crises. ‘Come on, son,’ she hissed at the patient, ‘we’re no havin’ this.’ Bringing her fist down like a hammer on his chest. ‘Let’s have him on the table, aye?’

‘Car or something,’ the ambulance driver said, helping Debbie attach the terminals. ‘Or mugged maybe. Didn’t just fall over, though he’s had a few. Hit and run, I reckon. Thrown over the bonnet, comes down on his head. Nothing below seems to be broken, but-’

‘Stuff the speculation,’ Andy said briskly. ‘No your problem, Michael. Defib. Come on, move it!’

Blood from left ear, left eye. Strong smell of whisky. Face … Jesus God, face familiar.

‘Monitor flat,’ Jonathan said, drab-voiced, as if it was a formality. ‘How long has he been-?’

‘No more than a minute,’ the driver said. ‘Still going OK in the van. Going strong. Must’ve stopped on the way in. Shock catching up.’

While the tube was going down, before the ambi-bag went on, Andy fitted a history to the face on the end of the neck brace, images clacking in like colour slides: young copper sitting on a stool drinking cocoa in the winter dawn, uniform flecked with snow and someone else’s vomit. Waiting for some assault victim to get patched up. Ten years ago? Twelve?

A dead flat line on the monitor. Andy holding his head as Jonathan got going with the paddles, everyone else standing back.

Come on, son.

More like fifteen years ago, maybe more. The wee nurses collecting like starlings, Andy shooing them away, but she could sympathize; he was a nice-looking boy was Bobby Maiden.

Young coppers: one of the first things they learned as probationers was where they could grab a hot cocoa on the cold nights. And a wee nurse for the night off.

Those days, Bobby looked too young to be out at night on his own. Made his cocoa last. Didn’t want to go back, you could tell, and always looked apprehensive. But, still, cute and bright some nights … and prey to Lizzie Turner. Clever, ambitious Lizzie. Not his type, but you never knew.

‘Come on, Bobby.’ Andy’s hands either side of his head, fingers down the cold, mud-and-blood-flecked face. Backing off as the paddle threw another seismic shudder into his chest.

‘We’re not getting anywhere, Sister.’

‘Go again, Jonathan.’

Lizzie Turner and, by then, Detective Constable Bobby Maiden. She’d missed the glittering wedding — somebody had to hold the fort. Down the pan now, anyway, Lizzie working in some BUPA clinic in Shrewsbury, they said, and living with one of the suits. A better cut of suit in a BUPA clinic.

‘Jesus God, Bobby.’ Andy closed her eyes, the big light over the table making a warm orange globe inside her eyelids, like the sun at dawn. Like the morning when Marcus and Mrs Willis took her to Black Knoll, told her how the sun had come down for the wee girl after the First World War, Marcus saying craftily that it sounded like a classic UFO encounter to him and Mrs Willis smacking him on the arm.

‘We’re wasting our time, Sister Andy,’ Jonathan said. ‘Three minutes gone? Three and a half?’

‘Keep going!’ Come on, Bobby, you cannae go out like this, son, covered in shit, stinking of whisky. This was the routine that never became routine; each time it knocked you back like the bolts jolting the person having his death invaded.

Another electric punch. The shudders going up both of Andy’s arms. It was a brutal business, but that was modern medicine: hit them with something mindless and powerful … drugs and violence, this was the modern manpower-saving Health Service — street-level stuff. Incredible she should be thinking like this, but Andy was remembering the laying-on of Mrs Willis’s hands later that morning back at the farmhouse and for nine more days, on a diet of greens and windfall apples and water from the well. This was when, after thirty years faithfully wedded to a hospital, something came through that turned into an itch.

‘Nothing.’ Jonathan’s voice as flat as the monitor. ‘He’s got to be over the vegetable threshold now anyway.’

‘No. Don’t stop, OK?’ Taking it personally, as always, but tonight it was all the more intense because maybe there wouldn’t be many more of them before Sister Andy dropped out to join the burgeoning ranks of the alternative healers, to dangle from the lunatic fringe, dispensing a laying-on of fragrant hands to well-heeled cranks who’d come to St Mary’s because it was prettier than a rundown spare-part warehouse like this place. And what was the alternative health sector, what was it really, but another small business leeching off the soft in the head?

Jesus God, which is right?

‘We’ve done all we can, Sister.’ Jonathan’s hands over Andy’s, trying to detach them from Bobby’s head. But the amber sun was rising behind her eyes and its heat rushing all the way down to her hands, to the tips of her fingers in the corpse’s blood-stiffened hair.

‘She’s upset, Doctor.’ Debbie Barnes sounding amazed at this, as if she was watching the Titanic going down.

Cold. The boy was long gone.

And the sun in her head turned suddenly black and she shuddered, head to foot.

‘No! ‘ Andy cried aloud, tears coming.

This was when the great roar went up.