The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (18 page)

‘Patients. I was visiting Mrs O’Rourke and she and
the other lady were singing your praises. They think you’re a wonderful doctor.’

‘I try to be,’ he sighed. ‘It’s not easy, what
with...’

His words trailed away.

‘It must be difficult working in a strict
hierarchy like the hospital. I imagine Kingston gave you all a hard time -
rather an autocratic man, he seemed to me.’

Jamie ran his finger round and round his wine glass
rim, looking down into the ruby depths.

‘That’s what you want to talk to me about, isn’t
it. Kingston, for the newspaper.’

‘Well, sort of. It’s as much an excuse as
anything. I’ve talked to a lot of people, but you’re the only one I’ve taken
out to dinner. All work and no play... You don’t need to worry, Jamie. Though I
know you’ve no reason to trust me.’

‘My family come from Hong Kong, my mother is
English but she lived there too. Both my parents are doctors. It’s all I want
to do, and I want to do it well. But being good at the job isn’t enough. I have
to fit in, get good references, good reports, refrain from rocking any boats or
blowing any whistles. Sometimes it burns me, but it’s the system, and I’m stuck
with it for now. I’ll do things my own way when I’ve finished training. That’s
what I tell myself anyway. Even though Kingston’s dead, the hospital wouldn’t
like me to criticise him in any way. It’s all about closing ranks.’

He sounded bitter. She decided to change the
subject for now.

‘Do you have any interest in traditional Chinese
medicine?’ Too late she realised it sounded crass, even verging on racist. She
was thinking of the nails, and the possible reference to acupuncture needles,
but that would sound even worse if she explained. He bristled a bit.

‘Not really. There’s no reason why I should, any
more than I should assume you morris dance.’

‘OK, sorry, I only asked. I do work in alternative
medicine. And you should see me leaping about with my bells on, waving a
daffodil.’

He laughed. ‘I’d like to see that. ‘

‘I asked you because I would like to do an article
on Chinese medicine for the paper some time.’

She told him more about her homeopathic practice.

‘Well I have doubts about most alternative
therapies,’ he said. ‘I’d rather see some scientific proof. Hasn’t Simon Singh
pretty well destroyed homeopathy? They can’t find anything detectable in the
massively diluted remedies...’

‘Well I don’t want Simon destroying my evening as
well. But do you believe in gravity?’

‘Erm yes.’

‘Well we know it exists because we see and measure
its effects. And we can predict the effect it will have. Einstein’s general
relativity... well suffice to say, mass seems to warp space-time. But we still
don’t know what gravity is or exactly how it works. You can analyse space
between two masses, earth and sun, and you won’t find anything which might be
gravity. How can it act over huge distances, instantly, when there’s nothing detectable
there?’

‘Physics isn’t my thing. But I’m willing to
believe in gravity.’

‘It’s my thing. Part of my degree. So homeopathy
has been ‘proved’, in the old sense of tested, on people over years. We see its
effects.’

‘Placebo effect...’

‘The effects match particular remedies. Those are
very diluted, so maybe we just can’t yet measure what’s there or it’s some
other mechanism working. It works on babies and animals too, so it’s not all
placebo. Not that there’s anything wrong with placebos. Fool the body into
healing itself, hell yes, I’ll take that any day of the week. Look, people pay
for alternative treatment because conventional medicine, which is free, has let
them down. Left them with side effects worse than the illness. Refused them
drugs on the grounds of cost, when the drug companies seem to be allowed to set
the prices. Refused to believe they are ill in the first place. Aspirin’s made from
willow. Digitalis from foxgloves for heart failure. We’re all on the same side
or should be. Sorry to be lecturing, I went through a lot of this with an
ex-lover. He’s been getting in my hair lately so it’s all coming back.’

Jamie topped up her glass. ‘Well I’ve had my
revenge for you mentioning Chinese medicine! You look great when you’re
defending something. Now I’ve made you suffer, let me state for the record, I’m
not into Chinese medicine any more than herbalism or homeopathy. If someone of
whatever ethnic background or belief system smashes their leg they need an
orthopaedic surgeon, don’t they?’

‘Absolutely. But when you put someone’s bones back
in position, it’s their own body that heals them, and how well it does that is
down to the vital energy that body has. That’s where alternative therapies can
help however they work.’

‘Maybe so.’ He was careful.

She wasn’t. ‘Surgeons like Kingston act like
mechanics, applying procedures and techniques, forgetting there’s a person
involved,’ she ploughed on, seeing his face tighten as the hospital line to be
toed unreeled before his well trained, or washed, brain. ‘I know you are
different, I’ve heard how you care about the patients, and their pain relief,
and how you treat them with respect.’ His face relaxed a bit but he looked
conflicted. She’d just praised him for something his superior had been trying
to humiliate out of him. The new ways of empathy hadn’t reached everybody.

‘Well that’s nice of them, and you, to say, but a
doctor has to remain detached to some extent...’

‘But the caring, the empathy, that’s all part of
the healing process, surely. Recent studies have confirmed that old detached
scientist, doctors without feelings, model is flawed as well as undesirable.
People have to heal themselves, whatever treatment they get, and that is
inhibited when they feel scared or threatened or insecure.’ She thought of
Laura Gibson and her non-united tibia fracture.

‘I’ve always thought so,’ he said, suddenly
choosing which side to jump to. Probably glad to speak his heresy in a safe
environment. If a journalist, even one on her level, could be called safe. ‘Not
that it’s an approach which gets me respect in the system.’

Erica remembered the way the nurses had used his
first name rather than title and surname. The way their obvious liking for him
was tempered by a sort of fond contempt.

Seeing him suddenly opening up, Erica took a risk.
‘So why would Kingston give you all that racist abuse about acupuncture and
tiger bones if you have nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine?’

‘How do you know all that?’ He was suddenly
alarmed. ‘Seems like you’ve been checking up on me.’

‘Relax. It’s nothing sinister. Patients and
visitors observe staff as much as staff observe them. The staff seem to forget
the bodies in the beds are actually conscious human beings as well as pulses
and blood counts. We have eyes and ears just like you, and Rohan, and Kingston,
and the nursing staff. So you see, I could write about you if I wanted to
without having the pleasure of dining with you first. I won’t though. I’ve no
wish to spoil things for you in your chosen profession, and your chance to rise
through the ranks of golf-playing consultants, for the sake of a piece about a
dead man. Who seems to have been a bit of a racist among other things.’

‘I don’t think he was racist. I think he looked
down equally on everyone and he used any ammunition to get at someone when they’d
displeased him, to put them in their place. He made it clear he didn’t like me.
We had different attitudes to patients and to medicine. I once – once -
questioned his judgement on the grounds of patient well-being. Very
tentatively, just a question, but it was enough. He had it in for me from then
on. He could have done a lot of damage to my career.’

Erica didn’t like the sound of this. Did he
realise he was giving himself a motive for murder? She looked at his hand lying
on the table, fingers curled round the stem of his glass. Slender fingers which
could feel a bone was broken, and feel the pain it was causing too. Slender but
strong. He was a man devoted to healing, but doctors had killed before,
inevitably being christened Dr Death by the press. Look at Harold Shipman.

‘Kingston couldn’t take having his authority
questioned, could he?’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps he was afraid of it.’

‘I think so, yes,’ said Jamie thoughtfully. ‘I
might as well tell you. But it’s not for printing. It was just a matter of
opinion... he might well have been right.

‘There was a patient, an old woman who had
bilaterial tibia fractures and he fitted Ilizarov frames on both legs - she was
ninety nine years old. I questioned the wisdom of doing the operation at all.’

‘But surely it had to be done?’

‘Not necessarily. She could have just had the
fractures reduced, superficially healed and made painless. She wouldn’t have
been able to walk, but then she couldn’t much anyway before the accident. An
operation is traumatic for an old person. The anaesthetic is risky, and sometimes
it makes them seem senile afterwards for a few days. The shock does that. Then
there was the recovery from the op. Physiotherapy, and rehab. They tried to get
her walking again. She went through a lot. She found it agony trying to walk or
even stand with those wires in with all the swelling and bruising, and the
injuries. She’d also had head injuries by the way. The body’s reluctant to heal
at her age. She dreaded the physio coming round. Kingson got her family to
encourage her to stand up, told her she’d have to walk to be allowed home. She
was desperate to be home, and safe, among her own surroundings. But she just
couldn’t walk, or stand the pain. Nobody understood what it was like for her.
The family accepted whatever they were told. They wanted to believe she could
get better. She said to me, ‘That physio, doctor, it’s the cruellest thing.’

‘The other patients couldn’t sleep for a few
nights after her operation. She was talking to herself all night, reciting
poems she’d learned at junior school. Bits of Shakespeare, Wordsworth... She
got MRSA in the sites where the wires went in. And the bones didn’t heal
anyway. They kept adjusting the frame, but it was no good. When she eventually
left hospital, she went to a care home, and she never walked again anyway. By
then she was pretty much institutionalised, she’d been in so long. All that
pain she went through at the end of a long life. All that blackmail about going
home if she just walked. I can tell you all this because she’s dead now.’

‘Kingston said at the time that the very old
deserved the same care as anyone else.’

‘And it’s true. But in each individual case, the
treatment doesn’t have to be the same, just equally good. Sometimes that might
mean doing nothing, just making someone comfortable and helping them adjust.
Anyway I just wasn’t sure. It would be a difficult decision. I’d hate to have
had to make it. And I know I will have to make those kinds of decisions. But
the temptation is to do what you can because you can, regardless if it’s the
best thing for that person.’

‘To get headlines, and status.’ What she’d learned
of Kingston didn’t fit with a commitment to grey power.

‘Maybe, or maybe just because you want to use your
skill. But she was never given a real choice, it was never explained to her;
her mind was sharp enough. At least at the beginning. But I still don’t know if
he was wrong or right. I just asked whether it was the right thing to do, and
that was it. I was condemned from then on.’

He took a mouthful of wine and she watched it go down
his throat.

‘Will things be easier for you now he’s dead?’ she
asked bluntly.

‘Maybe, maybe not. I wasn’t the only one he got
at. There was a bloke, a mate of mine - anyway it depends who comes in
Kingston’s place - they might be worse! It’s caused a lot of talk among the
staff, the murder that is. Sent a shock wave through them. People don’t kill
doctors! They usually seem to be complaining a doctor killed their loved one.
There’s been some publicity recently about a heart surgeon up in the city.’

Clearly Jamie was wary of giving away any of his
mates’ stories and who could blame him.

‘Oh yes I think I saw something about that, all
this Kingston stuff sent it out of my head.’

‘Bereaved family accusing him of killing their
child. Not just putting in a complaint but making sure they get publicity. They’re
angry, grieving. It’s natural they want someone to blame... makes me glad I’m
not in that field, where people die more often than they do of broken legs.
From what I’ve read he did all he could, and more. Surgeons seem to have the
power of life and death but we’re not miracle workers. But Kingston’s murder...
the nails... the stuff of nightmares. We’re so used to thinking of ourselves operating
on people, it’s a nasty feeling to think one of them wants to operate on one of
us. Just hope it doesn’t catch on.’

‘I can’t help hoping I’ll turn up some useful
information while I’m digging around for this article.’

‘You should be careful. You might dig up something
very unpleasant, and dangerous.’

Was that a warning? Erica shivered slightly.
Someone had just come in with a blast of cold air. She had some more wine.

When they took away the remains of the main
course, which was still enough to feed a family, she suggested they go outside
and look at the sea before deciding whether to have dessert. There was no-one
else out there, although above them the road teemed with winebar crawlers,
taxis cruising among them like sharks.

They leaned on the cold metal rail, its paint
blistered by salt, and looked at the dark sea, always beautiful, always deadly,
creaming in under them.

He put his arm around her. She couldn’t help
flinching, and he moved his arm away instantly.

‘Sorry, moving too fast?’

‘No, it’s just, I hurt my arm.’

‘Do you want me to look at it?’