George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (11 page)

Behind her the door opened. She turned happily and then caught her breath in surprise. Not at the sight of him — Zack Zacharius had every right to be there — but at the way seeing him made her belly lurch a little. She was delighted and she showed it, producing a wide and glittering smile.

‘That’s better!’ he said. ‘Last time we met you treated me with total disdain. How nice to see a welcome on your face. What are you doing here? You aren’t usually hanging around this squalid joint.’

‘I was looking for company,’ she said, embarrassed because her voice wasn’t fully under her control. ‘I was — I don’t usually
mind spending an evening alone but tonight I thought — So I came over to see who was around and what was up.’

‘Well, I’m around but there’s nothing much up,’ he said. ‘Everyone who isn’t working late on a Friday is off about their own affairs unless they’ve flaked out like that poor child over there.’ He lifted his chin at the girl on the sofa, who hadn’t stirred. ‘My God, but I’m glad to be through that stage of being part of the lowest form of hospital life!’

‘Me too.’ George looked at the girl briefly and then back at him. ‘Though it had its fun side too.’

‘Like what?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, there was some time off. Time to wander off to the local and have a drink and a gabfest and —’ She stopped, suddenly shy. In those old days, she remembered perfectly well, that was the form a date took when you went out with one of the other members of the medical staff. You sat in the pub and gossiped and then slid back either to your or their room and necked like fury until the phone or a bleeper would ring and drag you back to the real world.

He seemed to be aware of what she was thinking because his mouth quirked a little and she thought, nice. Then looked away.

‘We’ll do just that. Give me a moment to get rid of this.’ He was shrugging out of his white coat, and she put out a hand to stop him.

‘Oh, listen. I wasn’t asking for a — I mean, if you have work to do —’

‘I’ve done it. Enough for tonight, anyway. And I only came over here for the same reason you did. I needed a bit of company. A chance to come down.’

She was startled and looked it and he laughed. ‘It’s all right. I don’t mean I’ve been using interesting substances! Just that my adrenaline’s running high and I’m in no mood to go quietly off to my room and read myself to sleep. I need someone to talk to, and how lucky can I get? I find you in the same frame of mind. And there’s something I wanted to talk
to you about, anyway. So it’s sort of meant. If we were superstitious we’d say the stars were on our side. Shall we go?’

He linked his arm into hers and she had no choice but to follow. Anyway, she wanted to. This was precisely the sort of thing she needed tonight, she told herself; someone to make her laugh, someone to take her mind off her troubles and someone to show Gus she wasn’t his property and he could get off her train any time he chose. With which somewhat incoherent and thoroughly childish thought she abandoned herself to Zack and his company at the pub across the road from the hospital.

It was a new one, part of a chain that went in for silly names. This one had been a perfectly respectable ‘Red Lion’ when she’d first come to Old East; now it had been taken over and tarted up with lots of green paint and tiles and brass and renamed ‘The Fish and Bicycle’ with a suitably arch painting on a board hanging outside to underline the joke. It wasn’t a very good joke, they agreed, but the beer was excellent, and the coffee was even better, being hot, strong — almost as strong as A & E’s — and lavish in quantity.

‘I hope you’re not worrying over this business with your technician and her mishaps,’ he said abruptly as they waited for their order of a pint of ale for him and a half-pint for her. (She didn’t really like it, but wanted to show some sort of solidarity with him in such a basic matter of tastes.)

‘Um — well…’ she began carefully and he leaned forwards and took one hand in his.

‘I thought you might be. I hear the chatter that runs round the place as clearly as the next man. It’s all shit, of course. I can’t imagine you ever doing anything so crass as sending a person poisoned chocolates.’

‘I think that’s kind of you,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘You don’t say what I might be capable of, mind you.’

‘Oh, something much more sophisticated,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to get rid of someone I’ve no doubt you’d find a way
to do it that would be most efficient. Elegant, even. You’re like that, aren’t you? Elegant.’

She looked at him, her lower lip between her teeth. ‘I think you’re coming on to me,’ she said after a pause. ‘And I think I’d better tell you that I’m kinda spoken for.’

He looked around with elaborate interest. ‘Oh? Where is he, then?’

She laughed. ‘Not here, you fool.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘At home.’

‘It can’t be much of a speaking-for if he lets you out on your own on a Friday evening when you don’t have to work next day. You don’t, do you? I thought not’ — as she shook her head — ‘especially when you look so good. You do, you know. Your hair, all piled up like that. And those crazy big glasses. Really cute.’

‘You
are
coming on to me!’

‘God, it’s good to talk to someone who understands me! English women say you’re chatting them up. It’s not as sexy as our version, is it?’

‘Well, I’m not up for grabs,’ she said firmly, but not entirely believing it, and he laughed.

‘So, we’ll settle for the way it is right now, hmm? Great.’ The beer had arrived. ‘Let’s drink to friendship, if nothing more. At present.’ He clinked his tankard on her glass and smiled into her eyes and she knew he was daring her to go further. And knew also that she was very tempted. Gus had been so very piggish tonight, after all.

‘So,’ she said hastily. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘What was — Oh, yes.’ He put down his tankard and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in an unselfconscious gesture she found endearing. ‘You remember that bash they had for old Prof. Hunnisett?’

‘Sure.’

‘And the way the old man — who was it? The Chairman.’

‘Sir Jonathan.’

‘Yeah, him. He explained that unless we got some more projects on board, and more important ones at that, we hadn’t a hope of getting a good replacement for the old Prof, and the Institute of Research would slide down the tubes.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Yeah, well, it was true. We’ve been talking about it for weeks now — those of us doing research, and there aren’t as many as there might be.’

‘Who?’ she said. ‘Do I know them?’

‘Oh, you’ll have seen them about, I guess. There’s Frances Llewellyn. She’s looking at the brain and chemical changes in women at the menarche and the menopause, post natal and all that — it’s a study of depression in women, really. She’s a real right-on sister, that one, have you noticed? Wears trousers all the time and never has her hair done.’

‘I wear trousers,’ George said. ‘And I’m as feminist as the next woman. So don’t —’

‘Oh, she isn’t so much a feminist as anti-mannist. There’s a hell of a difference,’ Zack said blithely, then hurried on. ‘Anyway, her research is well on, but it’s soft, you know? No outcomes there that’ll actually change anything. I mean, there won’t be any therapies, new drugs that’ll do the business.’

‘Is that the only sort of research the Institute’s interested in? The sort that brings in new drugs?’

‘It has to be,’ he said candidly. ‘Unless we come up with projects that offer something to the big pharmaceuticals on account of there may be a nice new money spinner in it, like a histamine two receptor — a Zantac — or a great new antidepressant that doubles as a weight-loss inducer, like Prozac, they’re just not interested. So Frances is a non-starter. She’s made it clear she’s not into filling women with hormones to see their effects, but in doing constant very fine assays of their own hormones. Mike Klein isn’t so bad. He’s looking at the patterns of addiction to assorted substances in adolescents. He might be able to identify a causative enzyme, he
reckons. I think it’s pie in the sky, but it’s an attractive one because if it is an enzyme, then he could come up with an antagonist, right? So there could be a drug there. But really it’s mine that’s the best.’

He looked at her sideways and then said a touch shyly, ‘I’m not putting you on, you know. This is a real assessment. It’s not just mine, either. The Prof, says the same. It’s not only motor-neurone disease, you see. If I get what I’m after I should have the key to all the neurological degenerative diseases — the demyelinating ones — brain as well as nerves. Like MS and Parkinson’s.’ He hesitated. ‘And Alzheimer’s.’

There was a little silence and then she said a touch sardonically. ‘That could be really valuable to the pill-makers, I imagine.’

‘As they used to say, “Baby, you blubbered a bibful”.’ He was elated suddenly. ‘The thing is, I’ve come at the problem from the other side. Most of the research homes in on individual conditions. Me, I’m looking at symptoms. Sometimes the same ones affect people with quite different diagnoses. Like, their loss of sensation and of motor ability in MS and to a degree in Parkinson’s, and —’

‘Not in Alzheimer’s though. They …’ She swallowed. ‘They lose intellect, don’t they? I should know. It’s happened to my mother.’

He put out a hand. ‘I’m sorry. But the work I’m doing
could
apply to Alzheimer’s if we can show it really is due to nerve-cell demyelination and neurone degeneration. And if I can find a way to reverse that degeneration — if I can find a drug … I mean, dammit, that’s what the antibiotics were about. They acted against all the bacteria so they could be used for a myriad conditions. Now it’s different, of course, with resistant strains, only that doesn’t look likely to happen if it’s nerve damage you’re dealing with. If I can find the right drug, or drugs, that could be used for a huge range of illness — not just one drug for one condition … Do you see?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, that’s the thing I’m working on. And the Prof, wants to have a demonstration organized to show them how I’m doing with patients and all, invite one really big name, the top people from a couple of the multi-national drug firms, as well as the people at the top of the profession … You see, George? I had to talk to someone about it, didn’t I? I can’t talk to Frances or Mike because they’ll get uptight, not to say screaming crazy jealous. Maybe they’d try to scupper us! And I can’t talk to the other clinicians because they don’t see it my way. I don’t have an easy time with the consultants here. They guard their useful patients from me like I was the devil after buying their souls, or about to make their skins into lampshades. But I’ve got to get a few more patients and well — I’m hopeful.’ Again he reached out and touched her hand. ‘I like talking to you about it. I’d like to talk more. I reckon you’re the only guy here I can be comfortable with.’

‘Well,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said.’

‘Hell, no, I mean it. And I wanted to ask you if you’d help me when it comes to the presentation. I have to get a whole raft of stuff together, and I just can’t make it on my own. I need someone with a bit of pathology in their make-up to see me through. So I wondered …’

She leaned back in her chair and laughed with real amusement. He watched her, pleased with her reaction at first, but then a little puzzled.

‘Look, if I’m putting too much on to you,’ he began, but she shook her head.

‘I’m sorry to laugh,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you so much as at me. No, I won’t explain. So, you need someone to help you with your presentation? Why not? When is it to be ready?’

‘Next week,’ he said eagerly. ‘I have patients to sort out, records and charts to make up, a bit of computer modelling to organize…’

‘I’m on,’ she said. ‘Why not? I might as well’ And you can
take that, Gus, she thought with a flash of malice, and wrap it round your patronizing neck. See if I care. ‘How about starting on Tuesday evening? I’ve plenty of time to spare then.’

When she got home she found a message from Gus on her answerphone. ‘Sorry, doll,’ he said and he sounded it. ‘I guess I should have been a bit more sensitive, but you know how it is with me. I mean to do it right and then I go and come over all macho. So, sorry, sorry, sorry. Call me when you get in and I’ll come right over. If you’ll have me. I like the toothbrush I’ve got in your bathroom better than the one I’ve got in my own.’ He managed to sound very plaintive.

But she didn’t call him. Let him sweat, she thought with a flash of anger. It won’t do him any harm. He wasn’t just macho. He was downright patronizing.

It wasn’t until she was standing under the shower enjoying the sensation of the water running over her face that she admitted the truth to herself. She didn’t really want Gus to know how late she had got in. To have called him at past one a.m. would have been an admission that she’d been out very late indeed, would have begged a question from him regarding why and where; and she was damned if she was prepared to tell him that.

Although, as she pointed out to herself with some stern-ness as at last she stepped out of the shower and began to rub her hair dry, there was no reason why she shouldn’t. The evening had been a very pleasant and most proper one. They’d gone for their drink, she and Zack — though she’d
deliberately tried to chose a different pub from the Fish and Bicycle when he asked her where she’d like to go — and talked at great length about his research (well, he had; she’d mostly listened and asked questions) and then, discovering they were hungry, had gone in search of supper. George had thought a little guiltily of the expensive and uneaten sole which Gus had provided, but shrugged away her shame at such extravagance and settled with Zack on a small Tandoori restaurant in Cable Street where they ate, they both agreed, far more onion bhajis and lamb korma than they should have done, and went on talking until both were amazed at how late it was.

‘I’ll come to your office on Tuesday, then, and show you the stuff I’m proposing to use at my presentation?’ he had said eagerly. ‘And then you can tell me if you think I’ve got it right.’