Wilt in Nowhere (13 page)

When Wilt opened his eyes again Flint was still in the chair beside the bed. The
Inspector had shut his own eyes when the old man in the next bed spat his dentures out for
the fifth time and accompanied them with such a quantity of blood that some of it had
landed on his trousers. After that he had ceased to be a grotty old man of eighty-one and
was a decidedly dead one. Wilt had heard Flint say ‘Fuck’ and various unpleasant noises
going on but had kept his eyes firmly shut, only opening them in time to see Flint turn and
look at him curiously.

‘Feeling better, Henry?’ Flint asked.

Wilt didn’t reply. The police waiting to take a statement from him weren’t at all to his
liking. And in any case Wilt had no idea what had happened to him or what he might have done.
It seemed best to have amnesia. Besides, he wasn’t feeling any better. If anything
Flint’s presence made him feel decidedly worse. But before the Inspector could make any
more inquiries a doctor came up to the bed. This time it was Flint who was questioned.

‘What are you doing here?’ the doctor asked rather nastily, evidently disliking the
presence of a police officer in the ward almost as much as Wilt did. Flint wasn’t
enjoying being there either.

‘Waiting to take a statement from this patient,’ he said, indicating Wilt.

‘Well, you’re not likely to get one out of him today. He’s suffering from severe
concussion and probably amnesia. He may not remember anything. That’s a frequent
consequence of a severe blow to the head and subsequent concussion.’

‘And how long does one have to wait before he gets his memory back?’

‘Depends. I’ve known some cases where there’s been no return at all. That’s rare, of
course, but it does occasionally happen. Frankly, there’s no saying but in this case I
should think he’ll get some memories back in a day or two.’

Wilt listened to the exchange and made it a day or three. He had to find out what he had
done first.

Eva returned to 45 Oakhurst Avenue in a state of total exhaustion. The flight had been
awful, a drunk had had to be tied down for hitting another passenger and the plane had
been diverted to Manchester because of a breakdown in the Flight Control computer. What
she found when she finally got home temporarily galvanised her. The house looked as though
it had been burgled. Wilt’s ordinary clothes, along with his shoes, were scattered on the
floor of the bedroom and to add to her alarm several drawers in the bedroom had
obviously been clumsily searched. The same was true of the desk in his study. Finally,
and in its own way most alarming of all, the mail had been opened and lay on a side-table
beside the front door. While the quads, still relatively subdued, went upstairs she phoned
the Tech only to be told by the Secretary that he hadn’t been seen there and there was no
saying where he was. Eva put the phone down and tried the Braintrees’ number. They were
bound to know where he was. There was no answer. She pressed the button on the answerphone
and heard herself repeatedly telling Henry to phone her in Wilma. She went back upstairs
and felt in the pockets of Wilt’s clothes but there was nothing to indicate what he had
been doing or where he was. The fact that they were lying in a pile on the floor frightened
her. She’d trained him to fold them up carefully and he’d got into the habit of hanging
them over the back of a chair. From there she went to the wardrobe and checked his other
trousers and jackets. None of them were missing. He must have been wearing something when
he left the house. He couldn’t have gone out naked. Eva’s thoughts ran wildly to extremes.
Ignoring Penelope’s questions she went back downstairs and phoned the police
station.

‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said. ‘My name is Mrs Wilt and I’ve just got
back from America and my husband is missing.’

‘When you say missing do you mean’

‘I’m saying he has disappeared.’

‘In America?’ asked the girl.

‘Not in America. I left him here and I live at 45 Oakhurst Avenue. I’ve just come back and
he isn’t here.’

‘If you’ll just hold the line a moment.’ The telephonist could be heard muttering to
someone in the background about some ghastly woman and she could understand why her
husband had gone missing. ‘I’ll put you through to someone who may be able to help you,’ she
said.

‘You lousy bitch, I heard what you just said!’ yelled Eva.

‘Me? I didn’t say anything. And I’ll have you for using offensive language.’

In the end she was answered by Sergeant Yates. ‘Is that Mrs Eva Wilt of 45 Oakhurst
Avenue?’

‘Who else do you think it is?’ Eva snapped back.

‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you, Mrs Wilt. Your husband has been in some
sort of accident,’ the Sergeant told her. He obviously didn’t like being snapped at.
‘He’s in the Ipford General Hospital and he’s still unconscious. If you…’

But Eva had already slammed the phone down and, having told the quads in her most
menacing manner to behave themselves really well, was on her way to the hospital. She
parked and stormed through the crowded waiting room to the reception desk, pushing aside a
little man who was already there.

‘You’ll just have to wait your turn,’ the girl told her.

‘But my husband has been injured in a serious accident and he’s unconscious. I’ve
got to see him.’

‘You’d better try A&E then.’

‘A&E? What’s that?’ Eva demanded.

‘Accident and Emergency. It’s out the main door. You’ll see a sign,’ said the
receptionist and attended to the little man.

Eva hurried out the door and turned left. There was no sign of Accident and Emergency
there. Cursing the receptionist she tried to the right. It wasn’t there either. In the end
she asked a woman with her arm in a sling and was directed to the other end of the
hospital.

‘It’s way past the main door. You can’t miss it. I wouldn’t go in, though. It’s
absolutely filthy. Dust everywhere.’

This time Eva did find it. The place was filled with children injured in the coach crash.
Eva went back to the main door and found herself in what looked like a shopping mall with a
restaurant and adjacent tearoom, a boutique, a parfumerie and a book and magazine stall.
For a moment she felt quite mad. Then gathering her wits together she headed down a
passage following a sign which read ‘Gynaecology’. There were more signs pointing down
other corridors further on. Henry wouldn’t be in a gynaecological ward.

Eva stopped a man in a white coat who was carrying a decidedly sinister-looking
plastic bucket with a bloodstained cloth over it.

‘Can’t stop now. I’ve got to get this little tot to the incinerator. We’ve got another
starting in twenty minutes.’

‘Another baby? That’s lovely,’ said Eva without getting the implication of ‘the
incinerator’.

The nurse put her right. ‘Another bloody foetus,’ he said. ‘Take a dekko if you don’t
believe me.’

He removed the bloodstained cloth and Eva glanced into the bucket. As the nurse hurried
away she fainted and slid down the wall. Opposite her a door opened and a young doctor, a
very young doctor, came out. The fact that he was a Lithuanian and had recently attended
a seminar on Obesity and Coronary Infarcts didn’t help. Fat women lying unconscious
were his chance to show his expertise. Five minutes later Eva Wilt was in the Emergency
Heart Unit, had been stripped to her panties, was being given oxygen and was about to be put
on a defibrillator. That didn’t help either. She wasn’t unconscious long. She woke to
find a nurse lifting her breasts for a defibrillator pad. Eva promptly hit her and hurled
herself off the trolley and grabbed her clothes and was out of the room. She dashed to the
toilet and got dressed. She’d come to visit her Henry and nothing was going to stop her.
After trying several other wards she traipsed back to Reception. This time she was told
that Mr Wilt was in Psychiatry 3.

‘Where’s that?’ Eva asked.

‘On floor 6 at the far end,’ the receptionist told her to get rid of the wretched woman.
Eva looked for a lift, failed to find one and had to walk up to floor 6 only to find herself
outside Autopsy. Even she knew what an autopsy was. But Henry wasn’t dead. He was in
Psychiatry 3. An hour later she found that he wasn’t. In the following two hours she had
walked another mile and was furious. So furious in fact that she tackled a senior
surgeon and screamed abuse at him. Then because it was getting late she remembered the
girls at home. She’d have to go back to see they weren’t up to any mischief and to make
supper. In any case she was too exhausted to continue her search for Henry. She’d try
again in the morning.

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.