Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased)
Read Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Online
Authors: Simon Speight
Copyright © 2014 Simon Speight
All rights reserved.
To Sam; everything I do is for you.
Thank you
Contents
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Ernest Sanderson was going to die. It had been decided.
Ernest was energetic, fit and healthy. He had yet to descend into senility and could still complete The Times crossword in less than ten minutes. He wasn’t dying because of ill health or infirmity. It was curiosity that was killing this cat.
Ernest’s last day was similar to everyday in the previous month and the next month would have followed the same pattern. He was a man ruled by routine and repetition.
That evening he had stopped for a drink at the town’s only hotel, chatted to a guest for an hour and then; what? Bed? Sleep? Ernest rolled the thought back and forth in his mind, trying to remember. With a reluctant mental shrug, he accepted that he must be dreaming. How else was it happening?
Looking down on the frantic activity in the back of the ambulance, Ernest watched as the paramedic worked, fighting to save a life. The ambulance lurched heavily around corners, braking at the last minute to maintain speed.
The monitors beeped intermittently, uneven and spasmodic. This, he thought, was a struggle that wasn’t going to be won.
Adrenalin, defibrillation, CPR, oxygen. He heard the hiss of the oxygen leaking out of the facemask and sensed the panic that the paramedic was struggling to conceal. He could see that the man on the stretcher was gravely ill, sweaty, with a pale waxen pallor, his breath coming in uneven, ragged gasps. He was a fighter waiting for the final blow.
Ernest stared at the body, uncertain. The man on the stretcher was familiar in a vague, undefined, out of focus way. A friend perhaps?
His dreams weren’t usually as detailed as this one. The intensity varied according to the medication he had taken that day. Some combinations provoked dreams that were colourful and vivid. Others had a hazy, sepia hue. Tonight’s dream was of a different order of magnitude. Ordinarily, he was the star; tonight he was the audience.
He pushed the nagging familiarity to one side and watched the paramedic putting the body through its paces. Ernest saw her inject drugs, perform CPR, get a steady pulse, only to lose it seconds later. Did it matter whether he lived or died? How his story played out? Not understanding why, Ernest knew that the man’s survival was important, not for altruistic reasons, for something else, though he didn’t know what.
Ernest controlled his thoughts and focused on the scene below. The man’s eyes looked up, staring at the roof of the ambulance where Ernest was floating. As Ernest watched the man his eyes changed; sparkled briefly and appeared to move staring at his own electrode covered chest, before reverting to a blank sightlessness. Ernest followed the eyes to the chest and stared with macabre curiosity. The clothes covering his torso melted away showing his loose, purple veined, pale skin. He concentrated on the partially naked body. The skin, in small incremental stages, began dissolving leaving Ernest looking at the viscera beneath the skin. He fixed his gaze on the paramedic’s hands, watching as she performed chest compressions, hovering millimetres above her patien
t’
s heart. Watching as each compression pumped a squirt of blood to the lungs and on to his extremities.
***
“Who’s your next client?” A short, slight boy in a linen shirt, doublet and colourful hose floated backwards and forwards in front of a pretty girl with an immature boyish body. The girl looked at a translucent clipboard, frowned and said,
“It’s not clear. Two possible that might die or might not.” Tapping a button on the clipboard she read their death stories.
“One appears to be from natural causes. Sedentary and unsatisfactory lifestyle choices with body shape issues. The other is a drug-induced heart attack. Massive heart attack, in suspicious circumstances. He’s looking like he might be my boy.”
The boy looked over her shoulder at the clipboard.
“Both still trying. Bets?”
***
Ernest stared down, fascinated. The heart had gone into atrial fibrillation, the beat rapid and irregular; barely able to pump blood around the body. The walls of the heart slowly dissolved leaving only the cardiac arteries visible. The arteries transformed from opaque to translucent and then to transparent, allowing Ernest to watch a blood clot form, flow forward and then block the artery. A second and then a third blood clot dislodged, edged forward and blocked adjoining arteries.
The body accepted the fight was over. Ernest watched as the patient’s organs failed. The kidneys stopped filtering his blood. The liver stopped breaking down the poisons of life. The lungs had become flabby and unable to diffuse oxygen into the blood. The blood flow diminished, then stopped, when his heart became too damaged to beat.
He was dead. The paramedic remained hopeful, she had to. Where there’s a pulse there’s life, but when it stopped…
“He’s arrested. Mr Sanderson, Ernest, can you hear me? Charging to 360.” His body arched off the stretcher when the defibrillator shocked his heart for the third time. A weak trace showed on the monitor. Georgina looked towards the sky muttering a brief, ‘thank you.’ She said to her partner,
“Chris, how long? I don’t know if he’ll cope with much more.”
Ernest glared myopically at the paramedic, confused. What had she said? Sanderson? Ernest Sanderson? He stared hard at the body below him. The undefined familiarity firming into realisation.
“2 minutes. Keep him going,” Georgina kept a constant dialogue with her patient, urging him to keep breathing.
This wasn’t the dream he had thought it to be. The sharply defined detail and heightened awareness was his own reality.
“Ernest, stay with me, we’re nearly at the hospital. Shit, he’s arrested again. I’ll start CPR while we get him into resus.”
As the body of Ernest Sanderson convulsed in defeat, his spirit slipped back into the body for its final few seconds on earth.
“Tonight must be heart attack night. Dem’s next door with his second heart attack patient this evening.” said the registrar to the paramedic.
“I hope his doesn’t look as bad as Mr Sanderson.” The doctor turned to the throng of junior doctors and nurses surrounding the stretcher that had been wheeled in and said,
“Let’s take bloods, do an ECG and get a chest x-ray. Oh shit, he’s arrested again.” Grabbing the defibrillator paddles attached to the defibrillator next to him he said,
“Charge to 360 and clear.” The body on the trolley made a huge spasmodic jerk. No response.
***
The boy resumed his study of the array of changing information displayed on the translucent clipboard.
“‘Natural causes seems to be rallying. His death date is surging forward, looks like he’s good until two thousand and forty. Now, druggie. That’s interesting and unusual, see?” He pointed at the death date on the clipboard.
“The death date’s decreasing toward today’s date but the figure in the brackets shows he was good for another ten years, death date two thousand and twenty four; May fourteenth. Murder or accident?”
***
The registrar was giving rhythmic CPR to the body on the trolley, not realising it was already dead.
“Nothing, charge again and clear. OK lets bag him and…” He pushed the patients eyelids up and shone a light into his eyes.
“No, sorry people, it’s all over. Pupils are fixed and dilated.”
Looking around the room at everyone, he asked,
“Are we agreed?” Nobody said a word it wasn’t necessary.
“Okay, time of death 03:50 a.m. Thank you.”
***
“Well, Juanita, how mysterious. A murder with,”
Juanita interrupted
,
“Lots of unfinished business, some not even his. This could take a while.
”
The boy added, “Unusual to have unfinished business assigned that’s not yours. This death is being viewed as important.” He glanced at the clipboard and blanched.
“The assignment code doesn’t have a higher priority.” He paused continuing to watch the changing story on the clipboard.
“Why is she treating this death as special?”
***
Mimicking and exaggerating the consultant’s voice and mannerisms, Donna Gray turned to the student nurse beside her
,
April Baxter
,
and said,