The man turned his Weimaraner eyes on her, his face keen and intelligent.
‘In that case you could be a rather useful young woman.’ He smiled. ‘I wonder if you would oblige us with a few samples. Don’t worry, they’ll be painless.’
Stevie could see a couple of nurses at the nurses’ station looking at them, wondering what the huddle was about. She wanted to leave, but the thought of Joanie stalled her. The idea that the solution might lie in her blood was strangely nauseating, but if she could help, then she would.
‘I have to go to work later. I’m happy to give you whatever samples you need but I’m afraid I can’t hang around.’
‘In that case, Nurse Webb will take you down to the lab.’ The pale man looked at Dr Ahumibe. ‘Makes more sense for them to take whatever samples they need there.’ He nodded to the nurse and put an arm around his colleague’s shoulder, steering him away from the two women without waiting for an answer. ‘Do you have a moment? I’ve got to dash off and collect William in a minute.’
Dr Ahumibe murmured, ‘Miss Flint was Simon’s girlfriend.’ The newcomer’s eyes glanced back at her, sharp and quick as a scalpel. Dr Ahumibe added, ‘She dropped in to deliver something from Simon to Malcolm but . . .’ He let the sentence trail away.
‘O-h.’ The newcomer dragged out the vowel, like a politician trying to buy time before answering a tricky question. He let go of Ahumibe’s shoulder and took Stevie’s hand in his. ‘I’m Alexander Buchanan, the chemist in the team. Please accept my condolences. In our profession you have to press on, regardless of personal feelings, but please believe me, everyone is devastated by Simon’s death.’ The chemist’s hands were warm and dry and there was genuine regret in his expression. ‘I’m happy to take responsibility for whatever it was Simon wanted to pass on to Mr Reah.’
Stevie looked at the doors lining the ward. Behind each one were beds bearing small, sick bodies. She returned her gaze to the doctors. Their white coats were clean, but they spoke to her of blood and infection.
‘I’ll pass the package to Simon’s cousin. She’s his executor and a doctor, so she’ll know what to do with it.’
‘Whatever you think best.’ Buchanan took a notebook and a ballpoint pen from the pocket of his white coat and handed them to her. ‘Do you mind leaving me a note of where we can contact you?’ His smile was apologetic. ‘As Simon’s friends and colleagues, we’re keen to pin down the exact cause of his death. At present it all seems a bit vague. I assume you’d like to be alerted to whatever we come up with.’
‘Of course.’
Stevie scribbled down Shop TV’s address and her mobile number, and handed it back to Buchanan.
Nurse Webb said, ‘Follow me,’ and walked towards the exit. Stevie trailed her through the double doors and out into the corridor. The nurse went on, but Stevie paused and looked through the glass doors, back into the ward.
Ahumibe and Buchanan were still standing there, deep in conversation. Beyond them stood the closed doors of the sick children’s rooms. She wondered why the doctors didn’t go to them.
‘It’s this way.’
Nurse Webb’s voice echoed, tired and impatient, along the hallway. Stevie turned and hurried after her.
Twelve
Nurse Webb resembled a small gymnast in her white scrubs and plimsolls, lithe and strong, able to pull more than her own weight. Stevie matched her pace, keeping an arm’s length between them. A glow of resentment surrounded the other woman, like a radiation field it would be unwise to enter.
Two stretcher-laden trolleys, each with a porter at their head, exited a lift at the end of the corridor and trundled towards them. Nurse Webb hurried on, neatly negotiating the procession, but Stevie felt the same panic that sometimes overtook her at the sound of a siren when she was driving through crowded traffic. She stepped to one side, flattening herself against the wall, and let them pass.
A woman of about her age lay motionless beneath a white sheet on the first trolley. The woman’s blonde hair was cut in a neat asymmetrical bob. Her lips were cracked and pale, her eyelids tinged with blue. The woman’s eyebrows were dark. Stevie caught herself noting the detail and thinking that the contrast in colours was too much. She censored the thought almost as it occurred, but she saw a blur of lipstick smeared on the woman’s mouth, mascara crusting her eyelashes, and realised that, earlier that morning, the woman had been well enough to examine her own features in the mirror and apply her make-up. Stevie’s eyes met the porter’s and he looked away.
The second trolley was ferrying a young girl. A sequined clasp pinned her long black hair on the top of the girl’s head; her skin was sallow and sheened with sweat. Her mother and father followed behind, the mother’s pink shalwar kamiz looking festive and out of place in a hospital corridor, her father’s beard and military bearing lending him the air of a Russian tsar. Stevie saw the husband take his wife by the hand, and dropped her gaze, wondering if it was anxiety that had drained the couple’s faces, or if they were wilting beneath the same sickness that had felled their daughter.
She caught up with Nurse Webb at the lift. The other woman looked at her for the first time since they had left the ward and Stevie saw again the tiredness blighting her eyes.
‘Were you really going out with Dr Sharkey?’
‘Yes.’
The lift rumbled down the shaft towards them.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ The nurse’s voice was flat and free of emotion, as if she had learnt the condoling phrase by rote. ‘It must have been a shock.’
Stevie saw again Simon’s face in the mirror, the awkward angle of his head, the line of spittle trailing from his mouth.
‘Yes, it was a shock.’
The lift doors opened, and they were met with the stares of the people cramped inside, whey-faced and packed together as if in an upright tomb. Nurse Webb put an arm on Stevie’s elbow and stepped smartly forward, taking Stevie with her. The lift’s inhabitants squeezed impossibly closer to make room for them. They travelled downwards in a fug of sweat and recycled breath. The lift shed occupants at each floor, like a metaphor for the randomness of death, until Stevie was left alone with Nurse Webb, but it wasn’t until they stepped out into the cool of a deserted basement corridor that the nurse spoke again.
‘Dr Sharkey was a good surgeon. He saved a lot of children’s lives.’
It sounded like an accusation and Stevie wondered if the nurse thought Simon might still be alive if he had found a girlfriend who had known how to take proper care of him. She said, ‘Simon spoke about the hospital a lot, but it was generally funny stories, the human things that happened.’ She smiled at the irony of it. ‘It’s only now that I realise I was never really clear what Simon did. I knew he was a surgeon, I knew he worked with sick kids, but he never talked about the details.’
‘You didn’t know about his cerebral palsy work?’ The hint of accusation was back in the nurse’s voice.
‘No.’
Nurse Webb’s small chin jutted out. She reminded Stevie of the war memorial in her home town: a female Victory, her triumph tempered by the death of so many gallant youths.
‘Dr Sharkey was modest about it, but he was part of a major breakthrough in treating the condition.’
Simon had liked chic restaurants and loud nightclubs that made her ears ring the next morning. He had liked her to bite his shoulders when they made love, and to leave marks so that he could remember it later. He was a member of a carpool with access to a series of sports cars that drew pedestrians’ stares. Simon’s being a surgeon had seemed part of his glamour. He had encouraged her to see him that way, Stevie realised, and she wondered if that was the reason he had kept her separate from his family and friends.