Chris shook her head. ‘Nothing new.’
‘Just as well. There’s plenty to be going on with.’ She patted Paula’s shoulder as she passed. ‘I’d have made the same assumption,’ she said on her way out. But I’d still have called to make sure.
Dry mouth. Too dry to swallow. That was just about the biggest thought that could make it through the cotton wadding filling his head. His eyelids flickered. Dimly, he knew there was a reason why opening them would be a bad idea, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He wasn’t even sure he could trust this fuzzy warning from his brain. What could be so bad about opening his eyes? People did it all the time and nothing bad happened to them.
The answer came with dizzying speed. ‘About time,’ the voice snapped from somewhere behind his left ear. Its critical edge was familiar but only historically so. It didn’t seem to fit the ragged impression he retained of his current life.
Tony rolled his head to the side. The movement reawakened pain that was hard to locate specifically. It seemed to be a general ache throughout his body. He groaned and opened his eyes. Then he remembered why keeping them shut had been the better option.
‘If I’ve got to be here, the least you could do is make conversation.’ Her mouth clamped tight in the disapproving line he remembered so well. She closed her laptop, put it on the table beside her and crossed one trouser-clad leg over the other. She’d never liked her legs, Tony thought pointlessly.
‘Sorry,’ he croaked. ‘I think it’s the drugs.’ He reached for the glass of water on his tray, but it was beyond his grasp. She didn’t make a move. He tried to pull himself into a sitting position, idiotically forgetting why he was in the hospital bed. His left leg, weighed down in a heavy surgical splint, shifted infinitesimally but delivered a completely disproportionate blast of pain that made him gasp. With the pain came memory. Lloyd Allen bearing down on him, screaming something incomprehensible. The glint of light on blue steel. A moment of paralysing pain, then nothing. Since then, flickers of consciousness. Doctors talking about him, nurses talking over him, the TV talking at him. And her, emanating irritation and impatience. ‘Water?’ he managed, not sure whether she would oblige.
She gave the flouncing sigh of a woman much put upon and lifted the water glass, prodding the straw towards his dry lips so he could drink without having to sit up. He sucked at the water, taking it in small sips, enjoying the sensation as his mouth recovered moistness. Suck, savour, swallow. He repeated the process till he’d drunk half the glass, then let his head fall back on the pillow. ‘You don’t have to be here,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’
She snorted. ‘You don’t think I’m here from choice, do you? Bradfield Cross is one of my client accounts.’
That she could still let him down so brutally was no surprise but it didn’t stop it hurting. ‘Keeping up appearances, eh?’ he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.
‘When my income and my reputation are at stake? You bet.’ She gave him a sour look, the eyes that were so like his narrowing in appraisal. ‘Don’t pretend you disapprove, Tony. When it comes to keeping up appearances, you could represent England at the Olympics. I bet none of your colleagues has a clue what goes on in your grubby little mind.’
‘I had a good teacher.’ He looked away, pretending to watch the morning magazine show on the TV.
‘All right then, we don’t have to talk. I’ve got work to do and I’m sure we can get someone to bring you some reading material. I’ll stick around for a day or two, just till they get you on your feet. Then I’ll be out of your way.’ He heard her shift in her chair and the tap of fingers on keys.
‘How did you find out?’ he said.
‘Apparently I’m on your personnel records as your next of kin. Either you haven’t updated them for twenty years or you’re still the Billy No Mates you always were. And some clever clogs senior nurse recognized me when I walked in. So I’m stuck here for as long as propriety demands.’
‘I had no idea you had any connection to Bradfield.’
‘Thought you were safe here, did you? Unlike you, Tony, I’m a success story. I have connections all over the country. Business is booming.’ When she boasted, her face softened.
‘You really don’t have to be here,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them I sent you away.’ He spoke quickly, his words tumbling over themselves in an attempt to minimize the effort of speech.
‘And why exactly should I trust you to tell the truth about me? No thanks. I’ll do my duty.’
Tony stared at the wall. Was there a more depressing sentence in the English language?
Elinor Blessing swirled the whipped cream into her mug of mocha with the wooden stirrer. Starbucks was a two-minute walk from the back entrance of Bradfield Cross, and she reckoned there was a groove in the pavement worn by the feet of junior doctors fixing themselves with caffeine to keep sleep at bay. But this morning she wasn’t trying to stay awake, she was trying to stay out of the way.
A vertical line furrowed between her brows and her grey eyes stared into the middle distance. Thoughts tumbled over each other as she tried to figure out what she should do. She’d been Thomas Denby’s SHO for long enough to have formed a pretty clear opinion of him. He was probably the best diagnostician she’d ever worked with, and he backed it up with solid clinical care. Unlike a lot of consultants she’d seen, he didn’t seem to need to massage his ego by trampling junior doctors and students into the dirt. He encouraged them to take an active role in his ward rounds. When his students answered what was asked of them, he appeared gratified when they got it right and disappointed when they got it wrong. That disappointment was far more of an incentive to learn than the sarcasm and humiliation dealt out by many of his colleagues.
However, like a good barrister, Denby was generally asking questions whose answers he knew already. Would he be quite so generous if one of his underlings had the answer to a problem he had failed to solve? Would he thank the person who interrupted the smooth flow of his ward rounds with a suggestion he hadn’t already considered? Especially if it turned out that they were right?
You could argue that he should be pleased, no matter who came up with the theory. Diagnosis was the first step on the journey of helping the patient. Except when it was a diagnosis of despair. Incurable, intractable, untreatable. Nobody wanted that sort of diagnosis.
Especially when your patient was Robbie Bishop.
There was, Carol thought, something dispiriting about knowing your way round a hospital so well. One way or another, her job had taken her to all the major departments of Bradfield Cross. The one advantage was that she knew which of the congested car parks to aim for.
The woman on duty at the nurses’ station on the men’s surgical ward recognized her. Their paths had crossed several times during the surgery and recovery of a rapist whose victim had miraculously managed to turn his knife against him. They’d both taken a certain amount of pleasure in his pain. ‘It’s Inspector Jordan, isn’t it?’ she said.
Carol didn’t bother correcting her. ‘That’s right. I’m looking for a patient called Hill. Tony Hill?’
The nurse looked surprised. ‘You’re a bit high on the totem pole to be taking statements.’
Carol debated momentarily how to describe her relationship with Tony. ‘Colleague’ was insufficient, ‘landlord’ somehow misleading and ‘friend’ both more and less than the truth. She shrugged. ‘He feeds my cat.’
The nurse giggled. ‘We all need one of those.’ She pointed down the hallway to her right. ‘Past the four-bed wards, there’s a door on the left right at the end. That’s him.’
Anxiety worrying at her like a rat with a bone, Carol followed the directions. Outside the door, she paused.