‘It lasted exactly three months. It was a Saturday afternoon when it happened. There was a light drizzle and Ella Fitzgerald was singing Moonglow on the car radio as I drove to the hospital. The traffic got held up because of some kind of political march or rally up ahead. A crowd of youths were waving union jacks and holding clenched fists in the air while the police tried to maintain a barrier between them and another group brandishing anti-fascist slogans.
There was a lot of hatred around but I remember it all leaving me cold. I sat there, watching them hurl abuse at each other while the police, caught in the middle, linked arms and had their helmets knocked askew as they fought to contain the mob. Press photographers were climbing on top of cars to get the best shots of the violence.
A woman, pushing a pram got caught up in the whole thing and was trying to find shelter in a shop doorway. She took the child from the pram and was holding it in a corner to protect it from the stones that were starting to fly but one of them hit her on the back of the head and she fell to the ground. I got out the car and ran to see if I could help but a policewoman got to her before I did. Luckily, she was not seriously hurt and the policewoman said that an ambulance was on its way so I went back to the car. I got in and found two men in the back. They had detached themselves from the union jack brigade and one of them had a gun.’
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Tansy.
MacLean nodded and said, ‘It was the first one I ever saw one close up. I found the small black hole in the end of it quite hypnotic; it was pointed at my chest. I was told to do exactly what I was told.’
‘Then what?’
‘When the trouble up ahead cleared and the traffic started to move again, I followed their directions which took us to a quiet spot by the river where we all got out. They had a brief discussion about my identity and one of them produced a photograph. It was my Lehman Steiner staff photograph.’
‘My God! What possible connection could there be?’
MacLean shook his head and said, ‘I’ve no idea. But with no further doubt remaining about my identity they told me to face the river. I stood there waiting for a bullet to crash into my spine. I remember the smell of the grass and the sound of a seagull crying overhead. I could see every ripple on the water and hear every gurgle by the bank. It was as if all my senses had been heightened. These were the last things I was to see and hear on earth.’
‘But they obviously weren’t.’
‘For some reason, maybe the noise factor, they didn’t shoot me. Instead, they hit me over the head with the gun barrel and pushed me into the water. By rights I should have drowned but I survived. An angler fishing a few hundred yards downstream pulled out my unconscious body and called an ambulance.’
‘You were lucky,’ said Tansy.
MacLean looked at her as if what she had said was debatable. ‘I didn’t come round for four days; I had a fractured skull but I was alive. I was also a nervous wreck. I had cheated death three times, there probably wasn’t going to be a fourth.’
Tansy nodded and touched the backs of MacLean’s hands.
‘When I was well enough to leave hospital I decided to disappear. I changed my name, my address and my job. I became Dan Morrison, itinerant labourer.’
‘A labourer?’
‘There aren’t too many jobs you can get without papers and identity checks but working on a building site is one of them.’
‘That must have been quite a change.’
‘It was,’ agreed MacLean, smiling slightly at the recollection. ‘For the first few weeks I had to go straight to bed when I got in at night; I was so exhausted. When I got up in the morning it seemed as if every muscle in my body was screaming at me. But gradually it got better. I became fitter, leaner, harder. I regained confidence in myself because the intense physical effort was giving me relief from mental anguish. I was always too tired to dwell on the past for very long. I even started to make plans for the future. I would be Dan Morrison for two years. After that time I reckoned that Lehman Steiner would have given up on me and it would be safe for me to go back to medicine as long as I maintained a low profile.’
‘So you stayed on the building site,’ said Tansy.
‘For a while,’ said MacLean. ‘But the talk among the men was of the big money to be made on the North Sea oil platforms. It sounded like something a single man with no ties like Dan Morrison would go for. Apart from that, who would think of looking for a plastic surgeon on an oilrig in the North Sea?’
‘Good point,’ said Tansy.
‘I left the building site one Friday and headed north to Aberdeen. By the following Thursday I was a roustabout on the Celtic Angel rig, two hundred miles north-east of Stonehaven.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Tansy.
‘It was cold, hard and lonely. I didn’t know a soul on the rig and I didn’t have anyone on shore to come home to. The work was heavy and the weather was appalling. The North Sea has a malevolence in winter that words just cannot do justice to. The wind howls down from the Arctic with nothing to get in its way and the sea can look like a mountain range on the move. It got so cold at times that if you touched anything metal on deck without gloves on, your skin stayed there.’
‘It sound awful,’ said Tansy.
‘These chaps earn their money,’ said MacLean. ‘Don’t ever let anyone ever tell you otherwise.’
‘How long did you stick it?’
‘Eighteen months,’ said MacLean.
Tansy was surprised. ‘A long time,’ she said.
‘I know it must sound strange after what I’ve just said but in some ways it was one of the best times of my life. As time went by I made friends, good friends among men I wouldn’t have normally met. There was something very satisfying about living a life completely free from all petty social veneers and pretensions. There’s no room for airs and graces on the drilling platform in a force eight gale. Equally there’s no room for slackers or incompetents. Mutual respect and honest endeavour were the rules of the game.’
‘So you worked hard,’ said Tansy with a question mark in her voice.
‘All right,’ agreed MacLean, ‘We played hard too if that’s what you mean. But it wasn’t the meaningless waste I’d always assumed that to mean. Drink helped us to relax and we deserved that. In fact it was essential to unwind. The alternative might have meant a real nervous breakdown.’
‘And you were free of Lehman Steiner?’
‘Yes, I was finally free of Lehman Steiner. I reckoned on spending six more months in the North Sea and then returning to medicine. Then came the accident.
We were working on the drilling platform in atrocious conditions. The wind carried away any words almost before they left our lips so we had to communicate by hand signals. There was a misunderstanding and chains started to fly everywhere. Two of the gang were hit and seriously injured. There was no possibility of a helicopter landing on the rig in that weather so I had to do what I could for them. We had a well-equipped sickbay on board but the men needed more than first aid. I took over from the attendant and performed a tracheotomy on one of them to help him breathe.’
‘That must have raised a few eyebrows,’ said Tansy.
‘There was more to come I’m afraid,’ said MacLean. ‘The other man went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Mouth to mouth and cardiac massage failed to re-start his heart. Even the paddles had no effect.’
‘Paddles?’ asked Tansy.
‘For electric shock,’ replied MacLean. In the end I cut open his chest and started his heart with my hand,’ said MacLean.
‘My God,’ said Tansy. ‘What a risk.’
‘Luckily it paid off. Both men recovered when they were eventually flown off but I had blown my cover. The gang worked out that I had something more than a first-aid badge from the boy-scouts. I had to come clean and admit that I was a doctor. I asked them to keep my secret.’
‘And?’
‘They were great. They said that they understood perfectly. To be working on the rig I must have been struck off for taking advantage of my female patients while under the anaesthetic. They would do the same given half a chance.’
