Wilt in Nowhere

Chapter 26

But by the time she arrived at the hospital the next morning, Inspector Flint had gone to get a cup of coffee and Wilt was still apparently unconscious. In fact Wilt was considering what the doctor had said.

‘He may have amnesia and have no memory of what happened to him.’ Or words to that effect. Wilt was now definitely in favour of having amnesia. He’d had no intention of making a statement. He’d had an awful night, much of it spent listening to a man on a heart monitor by the door dying. At one o’clock the Night Sister had come to the ward and Wilt had heard her whisper to the Ward Nurse that they’d have to do something about the man because he was coupling and wouldn’t last till morning if they didn’t iron the problem out. Listening to the sounds of the monitor Wilt could hear what she meant. The beeps were most irregular and as the night wore on they got worse, until just before dawn they petered out altogether and he could hear the poor old fellow’s bed being wheeled out into the corridor. For a moment he thought of looking over to see what was going on but there was no point. It would only be morbid curiosity to see the corpse being carted off to the morgue.

Instead he lay sadly pondering on the mystery of life and death and wondering if there was anything in the ‘near-death experience’ and people who had seen the light at the end of the tunnel and a bearded old gentleman, God or someone, who led them into a beautiful garden before deciding they weren’t to die after all. Either that or they hung around the ceiling of the operating theatre looking down at their own bodies and listening to what the surgeons had to say. Wilt couldn’t see why they bothered. There must be something more interesting to do on the ‘other side’. The notion that it was fascinating to eavesdrop on surgeons who’d just cocked up one’s operation suggested the ‘other side’ didn’t have much to offer in the way of interest. Not that Wilt had much confidence in the existence of the ‘other side’. He’d read somewhere that surgeons had gone to the trouble of writing words on top of the theatre lampshade that could only be seen by people and flies on the ceiling to check if the ‘near-death’ patients could really have been up there. None of those who had come back had ever been able to quote what was written there. That was proof enough for Wilt. Besides, he’d read somewhere else that the ‘near-death’ experience could be induced by increasing carbon dioxide content in the brain. On the whole Wilt remained sceptical. Death might be a great adventure, as someone had once put it, but Wilt wasn’t keen on it all the same. He was still wondering where the blighter by the door had got to, and whether he was chatting with some other newly dear departed or simply lying in the mortuary cooling gently and getting rigor mortis, when the Night Sister came round again. She was a tall and well-scrubbed woman who evidently liked her patients to be asleep.

‘Why are you still awake?’ she demanded.

Wilt looked at her bleakly and wondered if she always slept well. ‘It’s that poor bloke by the door,’ he said finally.

‘The poor bloke by the door? What on earth are you talking about? He’s not making any noise.’

‘I know that,’ said Wilt, staring at her pathetically. ‘I know he’s not making any noise. Poor sod can’t, can he? He’s shuffled.’

‘Shuffled?’ said the Sister, looking at him curiously. ‘What do you mean, he’s shuffled?’

Wilt stared at her more pathetically still. ‘Shuffled off this mortal coil,’ he said.

‘Shuffled off this mortal coil? What are you babbling about?’

Wilt took his time. Obviously the Sister didn’t know her Shakespeare.

‘Pegged it, for goodness’ sake. Kicked the bucket. Dropped off the perch. Handed in his dinner pail. Crossed that bourn from which no traveller returns. Died.’

The Sister looked at him as though he really had gone mad. Gone mad or was delirious.

‘Don’t be so stupid. There’s nothing the matter with him. It’s the heart monitor that’s gone wrong.’

And with a remark about ’some people’ she passed on down the ward. Wilt peered in the direction of the door and was slightly aggrieved to see the man was still there sleeping peacefully. After what seemed ages he went to sleep himself. He was woken two hours later and presently a doctor examined him.

‘What drugs were you on?’ he asked.

Wilt stared at him blankly. ‘I’ve never taken any drugs in my life,’ he muttered.

The doctor looked at his notes. ‘That’s not what it says here. You were clearly on something during the night according to Sister Brownsel. Oh well, we’ll soon find out with a blood test.’

Wilt said nothing. He was going back to suffering from amnesia and since he really couldn’t remember what had happened to him he wouldn’t be bluffing. All the same he was still worried. He had to find out what had been going on.

Eva arrived at the hospital accompanied by Mavis Mottram. Not that she liked Mavis but at least she was a dominant personality and would stand no nonsense from anyone. To begin with Mavis lived up to her hopes.

‘Name,’ she snapped at the girl at the reception desk and took out a small notebook. ‘Name and address.’

‘What do you want it for?’

‘To report you to the Administrator for deliberately directing Mrs Wilt here to Psychiatry when you knew perfectly well where her husband was.’

The girl looked wildly around. Anything to get away from this gorgon.

Mavis went on. ‘I happen to be a member of the council,’ she said, omitting to mention that it was only the parish council, not the county council, ‘and what’s more I happen to know Dr Roche very well indeed.’

The receptionist went white. Dr Roche was the top physician and a very important man. She could see she was in danger of losing her job. ‘Mr Wilt hadn’t been logged in,’ she muttered.

‘And whose fault was that? Yours, of course,’ said Mavis with a snarl and wrote something in her notebook. ‘Now then, where is Mr Wilt?’

The receptionist checked the register and phoned someone. ‘There’s a woman here–’

‘Lady, if you don’t mind,’ hissed Mavis.

Behind her Eva marvelled at Mavis Mottram’s authority. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she said. ‘When I try it never works.’

‘It’s simply a question of breeding. My family can trace its lineage back to William the Conqueror.’

‘Fancy that. And your father was a plumber too,’ said Eva, unable to keep a note of scepticism out of her voice.

‘And a very good one too. What was your father?’

‘My daddy died when I was young,’ said Eva mournfully.

‘Quite. Barmen frequently do. Of drink.’

‘He didn’t. He died of pancreatitis.’

‘And how do you get pancreatitis? By drinking whisky and gin by the gallon. In other words by becoming an alcoholic.’

Before the spat could turn into a full-scale row the receptionist intervened. ‘Mr Wilt has been moved to Geriatrics 5,’ she told them. ‘You’ll find it on the second floor. There’s a lift just along the passage.’

‘There had better be,’ said Mavis and they set off. Five minutes later Mavis had another altercation, this time with a very formidable Sister who refused them entry on the grounds that it wasn’t Visiting Hours. Even Mavis Mottram’s insistence that Mrs Wilt was Mr Wilt’s wife and entitled to see him at any time didn’t have any effect. In the end they had to sit in the Waiting Room for two hours.