Chameleon (9 page)

'Anything else?' asked Evans.

'You said something about lunch?'

After a forgettable lunch in the hospital staff restaurant Jamieson returned to his 'cupboard' in the Microbiology lab and telephoned Thelwell's secretary to arrange a suitable time to visit. He was told that four o'clock would be best for the surgeon. Jamieson said he would come at four. He put down the phone and Evans came in to hand him a sheet of paper. 'The names of the two double negatives in the swab tests. I wish I'd noticed it earlier.'

Jamieson read the names out loud. Staff Nurse Marion Fantes and ... Mr Gordon Thomas Thelwell. 'Thank-you,' said Jamieson trying to keep emotion out of his voice. 'I'll mention this when I go up there later on.'

'Very good,' said Evans with just a trace of a smile in his voice, Jamieson thought. 'Is there anything else I can do for you?'

'I'd like some lab space,' said Jamieson.

'Lab space?' echoed Evans.

'Yes, lab space and a culture of the Pseudomonas. I want to see the thing for myself, do some of my own tests.'

The request seemed to trouble Evans for a moment. 'Actually we are a bit short of room as you probably noticed. I can't think where ... Unless of course, you wouldn't mind sharing my lab?'

'That's very good of you,' smiled Jamieson. 'Any bit of bench will do.'

Evans took Jamieson across the corridor into his lab and introduced him to a serious looking girl. This impression was created in part by the fact that the girl's dark hair was tied back in a neat bun and she was wearing fashionably large spectacles. She seemed intent on what she was doing and did not look up at first.

'This is Moira Lippman, one of our senior technicians,' said Evans. 'I'm sure she will help you with anything you want in the way of equipment and advice.'

The girl finally looked up and smiled. She held up her gloved hands to excuse herself from shaking Jamieson's hand.

'Of course,' said Jamieson, returning the smile.

'Moira, Dr Jamieson would like a culture of the Pseudomonas. Perhaps you could get him one as soon as you have a moment?'

The girl finished what she was doing and then walked over to a sink where she stripped off her contaminated gloves and dropped them into the open maw of a pedal bin before elbowing on the taps and washing her hands. As she dried them again she walked towards Jamieson and indicated to a row of cardboard boxes above the bench. 'You'll find gloves and masks up there,' she said. ‘Surgical gloves are not going to be any good for you with these bandages on your hands. You can use the large plastic inspection type; there's a box by the door. I'll try to find a lab coat for you.'

With Jamieson kitted out in mask, gloves, lab coat and plastic apron Moira said, 'We keep all the dangerous bacteria in the fridge with the red tape across the door.'

'I get the picture,' said Jamieson noting the skull and cross bones in the middle of the red band.

'Normally we would not classify Pseudomonas as deadly but this particular strain has made it on merit.' Moira opened the locked fridge with a key she took from a pin on the back of her lapel and took out a plastic dish containing a straw coloured jelly. The surface of the jelly was pock-marked with colonies of the organism and tinged with a slight blue-green colour. 'You can't mistake it,' said Moira. 'The pigment gives it away every time.'

'Pyocyanin,' said Jamieson.

'You've been doing your home-work,' smiled the girl. 'Someone told me you were a butch ... a surgeon.'

Jamieson smiled at the near slip of the tongue and said. 'Jack of all trades.' He looked down at the culture dish and detected the vague smell of new-mown grass that he associated with pseudomonas from his time in microbiology. It seemed so innocuous when confined to the culture dish. The pigment was even a pretty colour. Its name, pyocyanin sounded mellifluous until you thought about the meaning. Blue pus producer.

Sally Jenkins' insides knew the reality of the Pseudomonas bug. She was dying of an infection that had turned her peritoneal cavity into a suppurating, festering mess. The organism had invaded her tissues at will starting from her operation scars and spreading into the surrounding area with complete immunity to the drugs that were pumped into her. It had now invaded her blood stream sending her into a delirium that separated her from her husband who sat by her bedside in his own private hell of helplessness. 'Is there nothing you can do,' he whispered hoarsely. 'God damn it, there must be something!'

Phillip Morton shook his head and swallowed his emotion. 'I'm sorry,' he said simply. 'Perhaps it would be better if you waited outside for a while?'

'No,' insisted Jenkins taking a new grip on his wife's hand. 'I want to be with her. I'm not leaving. Sally! Can you hear me?'

Morton exchanged glances with the ward sister. Both felt impotent in the circumstances. There was nothing worse than knowing there was nothing that could be done in the presence of relations who expected better.

Sally threw her head from side to side making it difficult for the nurse beside her to wipe away the sweat from her face. Her breathing was rapid and laboured and her fingers moved constantly and restlessly as if searching for an escape from pain. No one from the outside world could reach her across the intellectual deserts of delirium.

Quite suddenly she stopped moving. Her neck went rigid. For a brief moment she was absolutely silent then a long, gurgling sigh erupted from her throat and her body relaxed slowly into death.

The death restored a sense of order to Morton and the nurses but Jenkins' agony was just beginning. He flung himself across his wife's body and sobbed in long uneven spasms. His lips sought her dead fingers to kiss them as if in some desperate attempt to communicate with her and call her back. 'Don't leave me!' he sobbed. 'Don't leave me Sal.'

Morton ushered the nurses to the door and said softly to them, 'Give him a moment.'

Moira Lippman watched Jamieson sit down to inoculate a fresh culture dish with the Pseudomonas she had taken from the fridge. He flamed the inoculation wire to red heat in the Bunsen burner and allowed it to cool for a moment before touching it to the donor culture and then streaking the charged wire sequentially across the surface of the new culture.

'You can tell a lot about people from the way they do that,' said Moira.

'Really?' asked Jamieson, mildly amused at the thought.

'It's a bit like hand-writing. Quiet, timid people do lots of thin lines very close together. Extroverts make a few large streaks and finish the last one with a flourish, just as if they were making their signature.'

'How did I come out of it?' asked Jamieson.

Moira took the new culture and looked at the surface through the lid. 'Lines perfectly parallel, neat, well proportioned and perfectly angled. I would say a meticulous worker who shows great attention to detail.'

'I'm happy to settle for that,' smiled Jamieson.

Moira put the culture plate into the incubator and asked, 'What exactly is it that you want to do with the bug?'

'I want to do some routine biochemical tests, get a feel for the beast if you like. At the moment it's just a collection of facts and figures on paper. If I actually do the things myself I think I might have a better notion of what it's all about.'

'Standard range of tests?'

'Full range.'

'You won't be able to do them until your culture has grown up overnight. Would you like me to prepare the tubes for you in the morning?'

'That would be a big help,' agreed Jamieson. 'But I don't want to interfere with your other work.'

'No problem,' said Moira. 'I'll show where to find them in case I have to go up to the wards in the morning.

Jamieson called in at the administration block to inquire about Staff Nurse Marion Fantes only to be told that, according to the ward records, she was off duty until seven forty-five on the following morning. He was resigning himself to having to wait to talk to the nurse when the clerk added that she lived in the nurses' home in the hospital. There was a chance that she might currently be there. Jamieson thanked the man and asked where the home was situated. He followed the directions he was given and found himself in a square outside a broody, dark, three-storey building that stood next to the hospital kitchens.

A sign said, The Thelma Morrison Home for Nurses, and a stainglass window on the front of the building above the doorway depicted a nurse tending to the wounded of the Crimea. Was having a 'heritage' all that big a deal? The whole damned business seemed to him to consist of constant allusions to a history filled with the killing and maiming of others. A glorification of them, not a derogation. Sometimes he thought it might actually be quite nice to live in a country with very little 'heritage'. Somewhere where there was no bullshit. Somewhere where the buildings were new and everything worked. Was there such a place?

The square was noisy. It was filled with the clanging of food trolleys and hissing of steam from the kitchens whose three loading bays opened out on to a yard. A porter was singing an operatic aria badly as he manhandled a heavy container in opposition to the will of its castors on the cobbles. Jamieson thought the man might be hoping for 'discovery'. Someone from a television talent show would step out from behind one of the bins and lead him to overnight stardom. He had that air of ingenuous awfulness about him. He pitied the night nurses that had to sleep through the racket during the day.

He entered the nurses' home and was confronted with a staircase in front of him and corridors running to both sides but no indication of who lived there or of any room plan. There was a desk but it was unmanned and there seemed to be no one about. Jamieson found the place strange. It had the aura of a church, a property conferred on it by the light coming through the stainglass window which, as Jamieson could now see, filled the entire wall of the first landing on the stairs.

The dull, red carpet deadened his footsteps as he moved along the corridor to explore further. The air was still and musty and had a cold edge to it that only stone built buildings can impart to their interiors. He was looking at a perfectly formed spider's web on the reel of a fire hose when he heard the front door open and saw a man in an ill fitting navy-blue uniform shuffle across the corridor with cup and saucer in his hand. He planked himself behind the desk and reached underneath it for a newspaper. He had not seen Jamieson and so was startled when Jamieson walked towards him and coughed to attract his attention.

''Ere! What's your game!' exclaimed the man, obviously startled. 'You shouldn't be in here!'

'I'm looking for Staff-Nurse Fantes,' said Jamieson.

'Well, you're supposed to ask at the desk not wander about the bleedin' corridors.'

'You weren't at the desk,' said Jamieson evenly and eyeing the cup and saucer.

The man imagined he caught a whiff of management about Jamieson and decided to play safe. He changed his tone to a more ingratiating one and asked, 'And who might I enquire is wanting her?'

'Dr Jamieson and it's official not personal,' added Jamieson, anticipating the next question.

'I'll just see if she's in doctor,' said the man with what he imagined was a friendly grin but which made him look like a dachshund with tooth-ache. He put on a pair of spectacles one handedly and traced his finger down a list of residents before picking up an internal phone and tapping three digits. He shot Jamieson another grin while he waited for a response and seemed disappointed not to get one in return but his call was answered and he gave the message to the person at the other end.

'She'll be down in a moment Doctor,' said the man putting down the phone and missing the rest at the first attempt. 'You can wait in the day room. It's along here.'

Jamieson followed the hunched figure along the bottom corridor and was shown into a large, high-ceilinged room to wait for the nurse. There was a tall, elegant fireplace at one end with an embroidered fire screen standing in front of it and a brass log box beside it. Cold rooms and empty fire places, thought Jamieson. There was something very British about it. Faded oil paintings of English rural scenes hung on the white walls at regular intervals and a number of assorted arm chairs that had seen better days were dotted about the lino covered floor. Copies of, Nursing Standard and various women's magazines were stacked in neat piles on a small, black table.

Jamieson checked his watch; it was three-fifteen. The door opened and a small, dark girl in her late twenties, thin at the shoulder but broad at the hips came into the room and closed the door quietly behind her before announcing herself as Marion Fantes.

Jamieson said who he was and why he had come to Kerr Memorial.

'I see,' said the girl but her eyes betrayed the fact that she was trying to work out why Jamieson had come to see her.

'It's about the swabs that were taken as part of the surgical team screening.' said Jamieson.

'But they were negative,' said the girl quickly.

'Indeed, that's why I'm here.'

'I don't understand,' said the girl.

'They were too negative.'

The girl shook her head slightly in bewilderment. 'Too negative?'

'No bacteria at all,' said Jamieson.

'Is that bad?' asked the girl, obviously feeling that it wasn't.

'Not bad,' said Jamieson quietly. 'It's unusual, unless of course you were on treatment involving anti-bacterial drugs ... but there is no mention of that on your medical record.'

The girl held Jamieson's gaze for a moment then dropped her head and looked at the floor. Her shoulders visibly drooped forward. 'What a fool,' she said softly. 'I should have thought of that. What a fool.'

Jamieson waited quietly until the girl had recovered her composure. Somewhere in the building a door slammed and the noise reverberated round the room challenging the length of the silence.

'You are quite right.' Marion Fantes said softly. 'I am on treatment.'

'What's the problem?'