Ten minutes later a nurse turned up and started asking questions. I answered most of them: Fiona wasn’t up to it. The nurse marked the answers off on a clipboard. Quite soon she seemed to reach a decision and said, ‘Follow me, please.’ As she led us off down a corridor I ventured a meek complaint: ‘There don’t seem to be many doctors about.’
It was already after eleven o’clock.
‘There’s only one casualty officer tonight. He’s seeing the majors and the minors, so he’s got a lot on his plate. There was one very sick patient in earlier. Rotten luck, isn’t it, on New Year’s Eve?’
I didn’t know whether she meant it was rotten luck for the patient or for the medical staff, so I didn’t answer.
She took us into a tiny windowless cubicle, equipped with a trolley and not much else, and fetched Fiona a gown.
‘There you are, dear. Can you put that on?’
‘Perhaps I’d better step outside,’ I said.
‘It’s all right, he can stay,’ said Fiona, to the nurse.
I turned to the wall and didn’t look while she took off her clothes and put the gown on. I’d never seen her naked.
The nurse took her temperature and her pulse and blood pressure. Then she disappeared. About a quarter of an hour later we were seen by the casualty officer, a harassed-looking man who went through only the most cursory introductions before putting his stethoscope to Fiona’s chest.
‘Nothing very startling there,’ he said. After that he took her pulse, and glanced at some figures from the chart which had been left by the bedside. ‘Hmm. Bit of a chest infection, by the looks of things. You may have to come in for a few days. I’ll get on to the admitting team, and in the meantime we’ll see if we can get you X-rayed tonight: assuming there isn’t too much of a queue.’
‘She’s been X-rayed already,’ I said. He looked at me questioningly. ‘I don’t mean today. I mean a few weeks ago. Her GP – Dr Campion – sent her up here and they took X-rays then.’
‘Who was the consultant?’
I couldn’t remember.
‘Dr Searle,’ said Fiona.
‘What did they show?’
‘We don’t know. The first time she came for the results he didn’t turn up, and the next time – a couple of days ago – they couldn’t find the notes. Said they were lost in the system.’
‘Well, they’re probably back in medical records by now. We can’t get at them tonight.’ He put the chart back on the bed. ‘I’ll bleep the registrar right away, and she can get hold of Dr Bishop for you. Our houseman,’ he explained to Fiona. ‘He’ll be down to see you in a few minutes.’
With that he left, pulling the curtain behind him. Fiona and I exchanged glances. She smiled bravely.
‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘At least he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with my chest.’
‘I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with your chest,’ I said. Don’t ask me why: I know people are supposed to make stupid jokes at moments of crisis, but surely not that stupid. But she did her best to laugh, and perhaps it was, in a way, a kind of turning point: a final acknowledgement of the physical attraction I’d been running away from these last few weeks.
The moment soon passed.
Dr Bishop wasn’t long coming. He was young and gangly, with heavy bags under his eyes and an alarming shell-shocked, punch-drunk expression. It looked to me as if he’d had no sleep for thirty hours or more.
‘OK, I’ve been talking things over with the sister,’ he said, ‘and we’ve decided the best thing would be to find you a bed as soon as we can. It’s a busy night tonight and we need all the casualty bays we can get, so it’ll be better for us and better for you. They’re snowed under in radiology at the moment so we’ll have to get the X-rays done in the morning. We’ll get them done first thing. Anyway, as soon as you’re on the ward, you can have your first lot of antibiotics.’
‘The thing is, though,’ I said, ‘she’s got this lump on her neck. We wondered if that might have anything –’
‘The important thing is to find a bed,’ said Dr Bishop. ‘That’s the difficult part. If we can find you a bed, then we’re laughing.’
‘Well will that take long? We’ve been waiting –’
‘It’s pot luck in this place at the moment.’
And with that unsettling remark, he disappeared. A couple of minutes later the nurse popped her head around the curtain.
‘Everything all right in here?’
Fiona nodded.
‘Some of the staff are having a few drinks upstairs. Soft drinks, that is. Just to see in the New Year. I wondered if you might like anything.’
She considered. ‘Some fruit juice would be lovely. Orange juice, or something.’
‘They were looking a bit low on orange juice,’ the nurse said doubtfully. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Would Fanta be all right?’
We gave her to understand that Fanta would be fine, and then we were left alone again, for what seemed like a very long time. I could think of nothing to say except to keep asking Fiona how she was feeling. She said she was tired. That was all she ever complained about, feeling tired. She didn’t want to move, or sit up: she just lay on the trolley, holding my hand. She clutched it tightly. She looked terrified.
‘What’s taking them so long?’ That was my other heavily overworked piece of small talk. Just before midnight I went out into the corridor to see if anything was happening. Looking around for a familiar figure, I caught a glimpse of the casualty officer. He was rushing towards reception. I chased after him, shouting out, ‘Excuse me,’ but then he was met by a team of nurses pushing an unconscious patient along on a trolley. I stood at a short distance while he started asking questions. The patient had only just been brought in, apparently, after being found almost dead in a car. There was talk of carbon monoxide poisoning, and some earnest, low-voiced remarks were exchanged about his chances of survival. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of this, but as the trolley passed by I caught a glimpse of the patient’s face and for some reason it seemed distantly familiar. For a moment I was almost certain that I had seen this man somewhere before. But the feeling could have come from anywhere – it might just have been someone I’d passed in the street a few times – and I soon forgot about it when I felt a tap on my shoulder and found myself looking into the nurse’s beaming face as she said: ‘Mr Owen? I’ve some good news for you.’
I didn’t understand at first, but as my mind came gradually into focus, thinking only of Fiona and the urgent search to find her a bed, I too broke into a relieved, helpless smile. It froze when I realized that the nurse was trying to place two plastic beakers into my outstretched hands.
‘There was some orange juice left after all,’ she said. ‘And listen.’ From the radio on the receptionist’s desk, we could hear the chimes of Big Ben as it sounded the hour. ‘It’s twelve o’clock. A very happy New Year to you, Mr Owen. Ring out the old, ring in the new.’
Mark
December 31st 1990
When it became clear that a war against Saddam Hussein was inevitable, Mark Winshaw decided to celebrate by throwing an especially elaborate party on New Year’s Eve. He had no friends as such, but still managed to attract more than a hundred and fifty guests, drawn partly by the promise of each other’s glittering company and partly by stories of the extravagant hospitality for which Mark’s house in Mayfair was famous. There was a smattering of politicians and media people (including his cousins Henry and Hilary), and a few celebrities, but the bulk of the guest list was made up of middle-aged men whose dull grey paunchiness gave little indication that they were among the richest and most powerful captains of commerce and industry. Mark wandered between the groups of people, occasionally stopping to say hello, even more occasionally stopping to say a few words, but otherwise as aloof and inscrutable as ever. Meanwhile his young and beautiful German wife (he had remarried quite recently) seemed to be so busy attending to the guests that nobody saw her speak to her husband once all evening. The atmosphere was high-spirited, but Mark did not join in the hilarity. He drank hardly anything; he danced only once; even when he came upon a group of models taking turns to throw each other into the basement swimming-pool, he watched from a distance, without a tremor of feeling.