Sarah was relieved to find that, as the day wore on, Logan was actively avoiding her. She was pleased she had stood her ground earlier, but her stomach still had butterflies over the incident. Although she had not said anything to the nursing staff, it was clear that they knew of her altercation with Logan and seemed to be going out of their way to be nice to her. It helped build her confidence to have them on her side.
She completed brain function tests on the six patients she had been assigned and plotted their progress, or lack of it, on their daily update charts. Four remained on a plateau; one had actually shown some loss of function but the last, a patient named Trevor Brown in Beta 2, was showing a definite improvement in terms of electro-pulse readings. Brown had been in a coma for the past thirteen weeks but Tyndall had predicted that he would recover. Many consultants were reluctant to make such predictions about coma patients, but the state of the art equipment that HTU was blessed with enabled them to detect the slightest of changes in brain function and base prognoses on them. In particular, the Sigma Scan apparatus — which Murdoch Tyndall had played a major role in developing — was proving itself in the field trials it was undergoing.
Unlike the other monitoring probes, which only needed the attachment of exterior electrodes, Sigma scan required that two electrodes be surgically implanted in the patient’s skull. The procedure was not suitable for all patients, but in those who had had them implanted it had been possible to achieve an incredibly sensitive estimation of brain activity. Tyndall had worked out a table for the readings and, from that, a formula that could be applied to predict a patient’s recovery potential.
Sarah applied Tyndall’s formula to the figures for Brown and came up with the prediction that Brown would surface from the coma at some time during the next thirty-six hours.
Sarah was taking her work sheets back to the duty room when she passed through Alpha and noticed that John McKirrop’s admission sheet was still hanging on the end of his bed. She was puzzled. She thought that Logan would have wanted to carry out the tests on McKirrop himself — especially as Tyndall had asked to be kept informed. She looked for Logan and found him examining an electro-encephalogram with the aid of a magnifying lens and a ruler. She coughed to attract his attention.
“Yes, what is it?” said Logan without turning round.
“It’s about Mr McKirrop’s tests...”
“You do them. The tramp’s all yours.”
“But Dr Tyndall specifically asked to be...”
Logan turned round and said coldly, “He was being polite. But you’re the blue-eyed girl of the moment so you do them and inform him of your findings. As far as I’m concerned, McKirrop is a lost cause. A waste of my time. He’s going to die. With a bit of luck we’ll get permission to use his organs for transplant.”
Sarah bit her tongue, believing that Logan was deliberately trying to goad her into speaking out of turn. She ignored his callousness and simply said, “Very well, Doctor.” It was important not to lose the ground she had gained with regard to Logan and she had resolved to be cold and curt in her dealings with him. She returned to the duty room and asked Sister Roche if she could have a nurse to help her with the tests on McKirrop.
“Of course,” said Roche. “I’ll give you Nurse Barnes. She’s on the console at the moment. She could do with a change.”
The ‘console’ was a computerised monitoring station that sat outside the entrance to Beta with Alpha on one side and Gamma on the other so that the duty nurse could see into all three from the swivel chair she sat in. In front of her, a bank of VDUs gave her a read-out of the vital signs of all twelve patients. A bank of red warning lights sat along the base of the unit ready to flash along with an audible warning buzzer should any patient falter in their tenuous grasp on life. Sister Roche herself relieved Nurse Barnes herself at the console.
Having established that McKirrop’s blood pressure was acceptable and his pulse rate steady, Sarah set about adorning his head with a series of electrodes. First, she and the nurse had to make sure that as good an electrical contact as possible was achieved. This they did by depilating and cleaning the relevant areas of McKirrop’s skull and rubbing on high conductivity jelly before taping the electrodes into position. The injuries to McKirrop’s skull had ruled out the surgical implantation of Sigma probes.
“This always reminds me of these awful experiments we had to do in biology at school,” said Nurse Barnes. “You know, the ones with the frogs.”
“Don’t remind me,” said Sarah, screwing up her face. “What a bunch of sadists we all were. How are we doing?”
“All ready I think,” replied the nurse.
Sarah made some last fine adjustments to the oscilloscope controls, getting the wave form as clear as possible on the screen. “Will you check the recorder settings?” she asked the nurse.
Nurse Barnes moved away from the patient to stand by the roll-chart recorder. “Shoot,” she said.
Sarah read out the settings on the oscilloscope. “X-axis, 5.”
“Check.”
“Y-axis, 5.”
“Check.”
“Amp 4”
The nurse moved a knob one click to the right before saying, “Check.”
“Gain, 10.”
“Check.”
“Let’s go for it.”
Nurse Barnes pressed the green START button on the recorder and the chart pen started to make its trace over a set time course. The nib made a scratching sound as it rose and fell on the rolling chart, leaving a thin red record of where it had been. A buzzer sounded and the pen fell to the base line. Sarah removed the completed chart and set up the next test. It took forty five minutes in all to gather the information she needed for McKirrop’s first condition appraisal. On completion, she thanked Nurse Barnes and took her file of graphs and read-outs to the doctors’ room to begin a detailed analysis of them.
The ‘doctors’ room’ sounded much grander than it actually was. In reality, it was one of the original ward side-rooms which had not been modernised at the time of the creation of HTU. It was close to the front door leading to the main corridor and lifts and was sparsely furnished with a table, three chairs in varying states of decay and a coffee percolator which Sarah switched on as soon as she went in.
There was a calendar sponsored by a local garage up on the back of the door and various charts supplied by pharmaceutical companies pinned up on the walls here and there to break the monotony of vast areas of pale green paint. The only thing the room had going for it was that it was quiet, apart from the gurgle of water when it rained — there was a drain pipe situated immediately outside the window. At the moment it was fair. There was an unwritten rule in the unit that no one would disturb you there unless it was really necessary. For that reason the room had been dubbed, “The Ivory Tower.”
Sarah lost track of time as she analysed McKirrop’s tests. The conclusion she was coming to was not what she expected so she was forced to double-check everything. The fact that Tyndall had asked to be personally informed of the results had put an added burden on her. She mustn’t make a fool of herself over this. She remembered the mug of coffee that was growing cold at her elbow and took a sip. “Well, John McKirrop,” she said quietly. “Unless I’m very much mistaken you’re not nearly as badly injured as everyone thought you were. The question is, why not?”