Chameleon (6 page)

The night staff-nurse in charge of Princess Mary ward called out the duty houseman who was reluctant to come at first for what he felt sure was probably normal post-operative discomfort but the nurse insisted. She won with a veiled threat to call Mr Thelwell directly. 'I think it might be another problem case,' she said.

'But it can't be,' insisted the houseman. 'Mr Thelwell used one of the orthopaedic theatres today. There's never been any trouble with infection in orthopaedics.'

'Well maybe there is now,' said the nurse, putting down the phone as another scream tore the air and wakened the rest of the ward. Sleepy voices were seeking reassurance as she hurried to Sally Jenkins' assistance. 'Nothing to worry about Mrs Elms ... It's all right, Mrs Cartwright, we're dealing with it ... Go back to sleep Mrs Brown, Nothing to worry about ...'

The houseman, white coat pulled on over a hastily donned shirt which still had three buttons undone, arrived within five minutes and ran his fingers through tousled hair while the nurse briefed him. A cursory examination, established that Sally Jenkins' temperature was touching one hundred and two and she was showing all the classic signs of bacterial septicaemia. If this had been an isolated incident, he might have prescribed the normal front-line antibiotics and felt confident of their efficacy but with the current problem-infection in the unit he was reluctant to do this.

If there was a chance that the Pseudomonas was responsible for the infection then penicillin, always the safest drug to prescribe because of its safety and lack of side-effects, would have no effect. On the other hand, none of the other drugs at his disposal had had much effect on the bug in the previous cases. The houseman swithered for a moment, weighing up the pros and cons of seeking assistance. It was now after midnight but the desire to pass the buck on this one was overwhelming. He called Thelwell at home. Thelwell's wife answered.

'I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour Mrs Thelwell but could I possibly speak to your husband. It's Graham Dean at the hospital. I've got a bit of a problem.'

'I'm sorry Graham, Gordon isn't home yet. He's been attending a dinner this evening. Would you like me to give him a message?'

Dean gave Marion Thelwell a brief outline of Sally Jenkins' condition to relay to her husband when he came home and said that he would try to contact Thelwell's number two. After reading the number from the chart on the wall behind the phone, Dean called Thelwell's senior registrar, Phillip Morton and had more luck. He explained the situation to Morton and the buck passed to him. Morton said that he would be there within fifteen minutes. In the meantime, Dean was instructed to start chemotherapy immediately on the assumption that it was a Pseudomonas infection like the others. 'Start her on Pyopen.'

'And the pain?' asked the houseman.

'Omnipon, usual dose,' said Morton.

* * * * * *

The door to the basement apartment opened and heavy curtains were drawn across rain splashed windows before it was closed again and locked twice from the inside. The man inside stood still for a moment in the darkness with his back against the door, listening to the sound of his own breathing and feeling the cold and damp surround him. A slight smile crossed his face for to him it felt good, it felt right. He clicked on the light, not that a forty watt bulb made much inroads into the gloom, and walked slowly through to the bathroom where a rubber apron hung over the bath and a row of surgical instruments were lined up along the back of the sink where he had left them. They were clean and dry and ready to be used again.

He took down the apron and folded it neatly before packing it into a briefcase. The inside of the case was protected by a polythene lining because the man prided himself on detail. There were to be no tell-tale blood stains, no blood anywhere there did not have to be.

In a separate compartment in the case he had a number of plastic bags. He counted them and decided to add a few more. There was still plenty of adhesive tape. He put down the case for a moment and went to the fridge in the kitchen to open the door. There, lying in two plastic bags was what he had removed from the Spooner woman. The man gave a satisfied grunt. There was one less bitch to spread her filth, one less to snare and entrap the unwary with her silks and perfumes. What fools men were not to realise what vile creatures lay hidden behind the smiling faces and the pretty clothes. But they were not entirely to blame. Nature had equipped the bitches well. It was so easy to succumb to their wiles. He knew that only too well.

The man closed his eyes and shook as he relived a private agony. His mother, God bless her, had always brought him up to be aware of the deceit and artfulness of women and he in turn had always believed her but on that one night in the town when the bitch had come out at him from the doorway he had suddenly become weak. He had wanted to push her away but something inside had prevented him. He remembered standing there, breathing in her sweet smelling scent, feeling her body brush against him, feeling the hardness start and the yearning to squeeze the breasts that were thrusting up at him from the half-open blouse.

The bitch had taken him by the hand, giggling and smiling, and pulled him into the darkness of the alley where she had gripped him between the legs and complemented him on what she felt there. 'You want me don't you,' she had crooned and the more she spoke the more he had wanted her.

He had paid her what she had asked and she had taken him to a filthy room in a crumbling tenement where the bed had smelled of sweat and the sheets had hard stains on them. But at the time it hadn't mattered. Nothing had mattered. In the midst of all that squalor, he had still wanted her. He had been on fire. He had lost all self control in the desire to possess her. The whore had egged him on until he had taken her quickly and urgently like an animal in heat.

Afterwards, he had lain there, with her laughter ringing in his ears. With passion spent, he had been able to see clearly that the bitch had trapped him. She had tricked him into doing something entirely against his will. All at once he had been able to see everything with crystal clarity. He had felt ashamed, dirty and very angry.

He had beaten up the whore. He felt he had duty to. He had smashed her face with his fists and kicked her senseless. It would be a long time before she trapped anyone else with her looks. But, for him, it had all been too late. The whore had given him an infection. She had given him a terrible infection.

At first it was just a burning pain when he urinated. He couldn't bring himself to believe that it was anything more than a slight urethritis but then the chancre appeared. It had disappeared on its own but he knew that this was just one of the symptoms, one of
Treponema pallidum’s tricks
for it would be sure to come back and next time it would bring the secondary phase of the disease, the rash, the invasion of his entire system, lesions in his bones, his joints, maybe even his central nervous system. He would go blind and maybe mad. The whore had given him syphilis.

Modern antibiotic treatment should have dealt with the problem. God knows, it was embarrassing enough to be on the treatment at all and to have to attend that damned awful clinic where you were given numbers in a pathetic attempt to preserve anonymity, but fate had something else in store for him. The strain of syphilis he had succumbed to proved not to be amenable to such treatment. It stubbornly refused to die. There was a war going on inside his body and
Treponema
was winning. The clinic staff kept up an unending stream of platitudes and reassuring pap in order to convince him that things were under control and but he knew better. They were doing their best to treat him but they were failing. His condition was untreatable.

All of us have within us, a mental threshold that decrees how much pain and anguish we can endure before we lose control and mentally start to fall to pieces. Fortunately, in times of peace, few of us ever approach this borderline. But for a man who had been a loner all his life, the oddball at school, the one the girls laughed at and the boys taunted, the one who had been unable to risk leaving the security of his mother's love, the disease within him was the last straw.

He had first approached the threshold when his mother collapsed and died just over a year before. There had been no warning, no time for him to prepare. He had simply gone into her bedroom one morning and found her lying there, icy cold and with her eyes open. When that happened he had felt so betrayed and alone that he had been unable to speak for weeks. They had taken him to the clinic on the hill where he had sat in a wickerwork chair and stared at the wall for days on end, totally withdrawn and unwilling to communicate with the world for fear of what else life in might have in store for him.

He had been given pills which allowed him to sleep and others which took the edge off reality during the day. He was artificially released from stress until, in time, he recovered enough to give life one more chance. He saw the disease as the result of his misplaced trust.

This time he did not lapse into a trance. He did not capitulate to the overwhelming forces of fate and bow his head in anguished acceptance. There was no flirtation at the threshold between reality and madness. He sailed way over it and there was no going back. This time he was filled with anger. A deep, burning anger that knew no bounds. What he wanted now was not pills or kind words. It was revenge.

He would have to protect himself against the evil charms of the whores for he was not yet immune. He had known this last night when the bitch had been tied up and he had felt the hardness come on. The hardness was even coming on now when he thought about it. He pulled down his fly and reached inside his trousers to grip himself while he thought about the wiles the bitch would use. The stockings, the underwear, the perfume, the laughing red lips. He had to protect himself. He turned out the light and in the darkness of the basement he relieved himself of the desire that would be such a weakness in the job ahead of him.

With the surgical instruments wrapped in cloth so that they would not rattle and the blades in foil sheaths so that they would not be dulled he snapped shut the case and put out the light before opening the door. He paused in the basement area for a moment to listen for footsteps but all was quiet. The rain was still falling. That was good. There would not be many people on the streets. But the whores would be there. They were always there, whatever the weather. If all went well he would be back within two hours.

*****

Gordon Thelwell called the hospital at a quarter to one to say that he had just arrived home and understood that his houseman, Dean, had been trying to contact him earlier in the evening. He spoke to the night staff-nurse in charge of the ward where Sally Jenkins lay and was given a report on her current condition and an outline of the treatment prescribed for her by Phillip Morton.

'Appalling!' exclaimed Thelwell. 'This whole hospital is a cesspit of infection.'

The nurse remained silent and waited for Thelwell to continue. He asked her what specimens had been sent to the lab and she told him after referring to the ward lab records book.

'I hope they're not just lying in the collection basket,' said Thelwell.

'They were marked urgent and the duty microbiologist was called out to deal with them sir,' replied the nurse.

Thelwell grunted and asked if Dean was still in the ward.

'No sir,' replied the nurse. 'Mrs Jenkins seems to be stable at the moment sir. Dr Deans left about fifteen minutes ago.'

Thelwell grunted and asked to be informed if there was any change in the patient's condition.

'Of course sir,' said the nurse.

'We'll see how she is in the morning.'

'Yes sir.'

'Trouble dear?' asked Marion Thelwell, sitting up in bed and blinking against the light which her husband had switched on.

'One of my patients. She may have a wound site infection,' replied Thelwell distantly.

Marion Thelwell stopped blinking and looked concerned. 'Not another problem case,' she sighed. I thought you were going to use the Orthopaedic Theatre today?' she said.

'I did use the Orthopaedic theatre,' snapped Thelwell.

'Yes dear.'

Thelwell regretted his sharpness and apologised saying, 'I'm afraid I'm a bit on edge. This business is getting me down.'

'I understand dear. Come to bed.'

'Later.'

'Yes dear.'

Scott Jamieson woke at three in the morning. He usually did when something was troubling him. It was no comfort to know that he was one of thousands in the country who woke regularly at this time. Nature had decreed that three in the morning was the hour when people with problems ranging from the unmanageable size of their mortgage to true manic depression would wake to face their personal hell. Optimism required daylight. Despair thrived in the dark.

He felt alone as he lay in the subdued night-light of the strange ward listening to the sounds of the night. He missed not having Sue next to him. He missed not being able to stretch his arm over her sleeping body to cuddle in to her. He resolved to oppose any possible suggestion in the years to come that they change to single beds. It irked him that he had got off to such a bad start in his new job. Almost subconsciously he flexed the fingers of both hands beneath the bandages to assess how painful they were. It was academic really for he had already decided to start his investigation in the morning however badly he felt. As it happened, they did not feel too bad at all.

His impatience to get on with the job was not entirely due to his inability to come to terms with imposed idleness. It was reinforced with the belief that if he did not get on with the investigation Sci-Med might well feel obliged to send in someone else and that would mean that he had failed, a completely unacceptable state of affairs for Scott Jamieson whatever extenuating circumstance there might be.