Crisis (4 page)

Bannerman looked at the date on his desk diary
and remembered that in eight days time it would
be his thirty-eighth birthday. Thirty-eight and still
unmarried! he could hear his mother declare. He
had been up to see his parents at Christmas and had
suffered the annual accusations along these lines.
Luckily he had a sister Kate who had provided, with
the aid of her husband, two grandsons to take the
pressure off a little. ‘When are you and Stella going
to get together properly?’ his mother had wanted
to know.

Bannerman had countered by declaring, as he had
so often in the past, that he and Stella were just old
friends. It was true but then Stella was the only
woman he ever mentioned at home. Some five
years before there had been a romantic element to
their friendship but it had not come to anything and
had been abandoned in the cause of their continuing friendship. Occasional liaisons with members of the
nursing staff were usually short-lived and seldom mentioned at home for fear of maternal probings
worthy of the Spanish Inquisition.

Bannerman took a deep lungful of smoke and
rested his head on the back of his chair to wonder
why he had never married. He liked women and
they seemed to like him well enough. But there had
always come a point in relationships when he had
backed off, unable to make a final commitment. He
closed his eyes for a few seconds reflecting on the
irony of never being able to make clear decisions
about his own life when he made so many about
other people’s with no apparent trouble at all.

If he were to be honest with himself he would
have to admit that there had been a string of women
in his life with whom he had formed affectionate
relationships but nothing more. Stella had once
pointed out that there was a difference between
wanting someone and needing them. A woman
liked to feel needed. Was that it, he wondered. Was he so self-contained that he didn’t need anyone? An
island?

Bannerman stubbed out his cigarette and decided
that he had had enough of self-analysis for the
moment. He checked his schedule for the afternoon
and saw that he had a post-mortem to perform on a
patient who had died of a brain tumour. He had also
promised to be on call for any emergency analysis
that theatre required during a breast operation that was being carried out by John Thorn, a surgeon
colleague of Stella’s for whom she had particular
regard. ‘The lump is in an awkward place,’ Thorn
had said. ‘If I get it wrong the patient won’t have a second chance.’

The operation was due to begin at three-thirty. It
was five minutes to two. Bannerman decided that he
would start on the PM and leave a message that he
was to be called if any section analysis was required by the theatre team. He clipped his bleeper to his top
pocket and started out for the mortuary.

His prompt arrival at two o’clock took the mortu
ary attendant by surprise. The man was sitting at a
small wooden table in his office with a newspaper
in front of him. A sandwich with a bite taken out
of it lay on some greaseproof paper and a thermos
flask with its lid off stood beside it.

‘I was a bit late in getting off for my lunch,’
explained the man. ‘Doctor Leeman took longer than he thought this morning.’

‘Just when you’re ready,’ said Bannerman.

‘Who is it you’re doing Doctor?’ asked the man,
getting up from the table and wrapping the paper
round his half-eaten sandwich.

‘Thomas George Baines from ward eight; he died
on Sunday night.’

The attendant checked a wall chart which depicted
the refrigerated body vault. The names on it were
written in pencil so it could be used indefinitely with
the aid of a dirty eraser that lay on the table below.
‘Baines, number five,’ he said to himself.

Bannerman moved back to allow the attendant to
exit from the room and then followed him to the
body vault. This was located in a long, white-painted room, one side of which was entirely taken up with a
series of tall doors, each secured with a heavy metal
clasp. The doors were numbered from one to eight.
The attendant opened one and revealed three sliding
trays, one on top of the other. He checked a label
on the middle one and said, ‘Here we are, Thomas
Baines.’

The man pulled an adjustable trolley into position
and locked it in position before winding up the
platform to match the height of the middle cadaver.
With a practised tug he slid the body of Thomas
Baines out onto it and unlocked the trolley to
swing it round in a semi-circle before slamming
shut the door of the vault. ‘Table one all right?’
he asked.

‘Fine,’ said Bannerman.

The man manoeuvred the body on to the post-
mortem table and removed the shroud. He turned
on the cold water supply to the slab and water
started to gurgle down the gulleys. Bannerman
himself turned on the overhead light and switched on the extractor fans.

‘Do you want the air freshener on?’ asked the attendant.

Bannerman shook his head. ‘It’s a head job,’ he
said. Bannerman loathed the smells of pathology as
much as the next man but found the scent of the air
freshener almost as bad in terms of pervasiveness.
It would cling to him. There would be no need to
open up the chest cavity of Thomas Baines. The
examination would be confined to the head so he
would do without the air freshener.

‘Want me to open the skull?’ asked the attend
ant.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Bannerman. ‘Go finish your
sandwiches.’

‘Cheers Doc,’ said the man.

Bannerman donned a pair of Wellington boots which he selected from the row standing along the
back wall and took down one of the green, plastic
aprons from a clothes peg above. He fastened the ties behind him and snapped on a pair of surgical
gloves which he took from the box marked ‘Large’. Using a power tool he trephined around the skull of the corpse on the table, pausing at intervals to rinse
away the accumulating bone grit and allowing the
smell of burning to subside. When he had cut right
round, he lifted off the cap of Thomas Baines’ skull as
a complete unit and laid it beside the head. Changing
to surgical instruments he removed the brain and
placed it on a metal tray on an adjoining table.

Bannerman weighed the brain then examined it
visually from several angles. ‘Doesn’t take too much
to see what killed you my friend,’ he murmured. A
large tumour was protruding from the left side of
the excised brain. It was a livid red colour against the
greyness of the normal brain material. Bannerman
removed the tumour and placed it in a glass speci
men jar for removal to the lab. He placed the brain
back in the skull cavity and told the attendant that he was finished.

‘Right you are Doc,’ exclaimed the man. ‘I’ll put
his “hat” back on, eh?’ He broke into a cackle of
broken laughter.

Bannerman did not join in. Gallows humour was
not his thing. ‘You’ll do it respectfully,’ he said.

‘Of course Doctor,’ said the man, realising he had
made an error and wiping all trace of amusement
from his face.

Bannerman stripped off his gloves and threw them
into a plastic bin. Walking over to a large porcelain sink he levered on the taps with his elbows and took
pleasure in sluicing the liquid soap and warm water
over his hands and forearms. As he dried his hands he watched the attendant fitting the skull cap back
on to the body. The man was whistling quietly as
he did it, checking the fit on all sides as if he were
a plumber changing a tap washer.

Bannerman had to concede that the attendant had
achieved a far greater degree of ease with his job than
he himself had ever managed. There were still times
when he found himself vomiting in the bathroom
over certain aspects of his work. It didn’t happen
nearly as often as it once had but it still happened.
It was something he had never confessed to anyone,
not to Stella in their closest moments, not even to
his own father, also a doctor. He didn’t like to think
about it too much. The bleeper went off in his pocket
and stopped him thinking about it now.

‘
I’ll be right up,’ he said in response to the infor
mation that theatre had requested an urgent biopsy
examination. The door to the PM room shut with
a loud echo as he swung it closed behind him and
ran along the tiled corridor to the base of the stairs
leading up to the lab. The technicians had already
processed the tissue by the time he got there and
one of them was examining a slide of it under a Zeiss
binocular microscope.

‘What do you see, Charlie?’ asked Bannerman.

‘A toughie,’ said the technician.

‘Bad prep?’

‘Could be. Karen’s doing another one. It’ll be
ready in a couple of minutes.’

The man stood up to allow Bannerman to take
his place at the microscope. Bannerman altered the
distance between the eyepieces to compensate for
the fact that his eyes were slightly further apart
than the technician’s. He adjusted the fine focus
then manipulated the stage controls to permit a
stepwise examination of the slide without going
over the same area twice. ‘Shit,’ he said under his
breath.

‘You’ve found something?’ said the technician.

‘It looks bad,’ said Bannerman, moving the focus
control as if there was a perfect level that still eluded
him. Take a look, just there at eleven o’clock.’

The technician sat down again and said, ‘Yes, I see
it but it’s not as clear as …’ His voice tapered off as
he showed himself unwilling to commit himself to a
definite opinion.

A young woman came into the room and inter
rupted them. She said, ‘Theatre say they must know
right away.’

‘I’ll see if the other prep is ready,’ said the tech
nician who had been examining the slide. He came
back a moment later looking sheepish. ‘It’s going to
be another ten minutes I’m afraid. Something went
wrong.’

Bannerman looked at the embarrassed expression
on the technician’s face but did not pass comment.
He turned to the woman and said, ‘I’ll talk to
theatre.’ He got up and followed her through to
the main lab where he picked up the receiver. This
is Bannerman. Can you give us ten minutes?’

‘Negative,’ said the surgeon’s voice. ‘I have to know now.’

Bannerman closed his eyes for a moment and then
said, ‘It’s malignant.’

‘Understood,’ said the surgeon and the line went
dead.

There was a silence in the room which threatened
to overwhelm all of them. Bannerman broke it. He
said, ‘I’ll be in my office. Let me know when the
other prep is ready.’

Bannerman walked over to the window of his
office and lit a cigarette with fingers that trembled
slightly. There was little to see, save for a stone wall
barely seven feet from the window with rain water
running down it from a faulty gutter somewhere
above, but then he wasn’t really looking at the view.
There was too much going on in his head.