The Cold Calling

this time of night. Here … have yourself a replacement.’

Jonathan looked surprised and then smiled tentatively, still unsure whether it was a trap. Getting the cigarette to his mouth, his hand shook, poor wean. Twenty-six years old, veteran of three weeks in A and E, two on the slaughterhouse shift.

‘Aw, come on, son.’ Andy flashed the ancient Zippo. ‘It happens. You did your best, no?’

‘Is that what I am supposed to keep telling myself every night for the next forty years?’

‘It’s what I’ve been saying to young guys like you the last thirty.’ Andy sighed. ‘Aye, you’re right, it’s a trite wee phrase.’

She lit up too, having a good idea what was coming next.

‘I honestly don’t think I am going to stick it,’ Jonathan said bleakly. ‘It’s like working in some sort of meat- processing plant. By midnight, one gets so one doesn’t want to go back out there.’

If she’d had twenty Silk Cut for every time an intern said that to her, she’d have gone down with nicotine poisoning years back. What the hell was she supposed to say? If she told him the truth of how bad it became, he’d just think she was stir-crazy. The truth was you grew to love it. The stink, the drips, the bedpans, the old guys who drooled — you loved it all and, when you took a holiday, your heart ached to get back.

This was how bad it became.

‘But I mean,’ Jonathan said, ‘does anyone ever surprise you? You know, by suddenly responding to treatment? Does that happen any more? And is anybody ever, ever grateful?’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you, doctor, you saved ma life.’ Andy assuming a geriatric quaver. ‘Stayed awake long enough to administer the right drugs in the right order. A credit to the hospital trust.’ She sighed. ‘Ah, Jonathan, in my own worst moments I figure if you manage to save a life you must’ve beaten the system, y’know?’

The same way you loved the whingeing patients and the underpaid nurses and the thirty-year-old doctors looking fifty, so you hated the suits, the admin guys, the caring, cut-glass quango ladies with their spectacles on gold chains and clipboards full of rationalization plans. It was all a business now and the last thing businesses were about was healing.

She became aware that Jonathan was looking down at her in some kind of awe.

‘Sister Andy! My God, it’s true, isn’t it? You really are leaving us.’

‘Where’ve you heard that?’ Knowing — dammit — that with the sharpness of her tone she was confirming it. Although it wasn’t certain, by no means.

‘Well, I … somebody said you accepted a retirement package. But someone else said it was just a vicious rumour and they’d never get you out … out …’

‘… alive? Never get me out of here alive? Bloody hell, Jonathan, I look that old and ruined?’

Jesus God, were the damn sprogs beginning to pity her? Maybe it was time to start dyeing the hair again. Bring back the old red. Fiery red and halfway down her back when she came down from Glasgow in sixty-five. Faded ginger seven years ago when she and Mick were divorced. Straggly grey now.

‘Well, you know, a lot of people nowadays are taking early retirement,’ Jonathan said, embarrassed. ‘To do the things they always promised themselves. Travel the world …’

‘Sod off,’ said Andy. ‘You’re just digging yourself in deeper.’

‘Sorry. Another job, then? It’ll go no further, I promise. It’s just that if even you are getting out-’

‘Look, son.’ Andy glared up, smoking no-hands, pushing the words out the side of the ciggie. ‘If anybody wants to know, I’m gonny marry a brilliant heart surgeon and fly out to his private clinic on Paradise Island, OK?’

‘Sorry. None of my business.’

‘Right,’ said Andy.

Paradise. Sure. Paradise stripped down to a stone and timbered village huddled under the Black Mountains, which were the lower vertebrae of the Welsh border. A paradise called St Mary’s. A grand wee place, in its way, a haven, a sanctuary …

… and the nearest general hospital twenty rugged miles away. A clean break, right enough. Jesus God, was she really going through with it this time? Big hospitals, most people found them soulless and scary, but they gave Andy just a fantastic buzz, the smell of piss and disinfectant invigorating all her senses like ozone. Her element. Was her element. In the days before the suits. Before healing got deprioritized.

‘OK,’ Andy said. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. But it goes no further, right?’

Jonathan placed his hand over his heart.

‘Only, I’ve been worried a while about the personal touch going out of health care. Like you said, a production line. I worry about the drug companies ruling the world, y’know?’

‘Don’t they?’

‘I’ve been studying alternative healing,’ Andy said. ‘Y’know what I mean?’

Jonathan’s eyes widened. ‘Mumbo jumbo?’

‘This is the question, Jonathan. Is it?’

‘Well now, Sister Andy, that is a very profound question.’

‘Glad you think so. I was a wee bit scared to mention witch doctors and such in case you took it as some kind of racist slur on the African health service. We’re all treading eggshells these days, son.’

Jonathan grinned. ‘It’s all turned around again. Now, witch doctors are part of a great cultural tradition. And sometimes … unlike us … they still come up with the odd miracle. But Sister Andy — pardon me if this is racist — one is not aware of a similar tradition here in the UK.’

‘Oh, it’s there, right enough. Just buried deeper. OK. Couple of years ago, before you came, I developed what was turning into chronic ulcerative colitis, y’know?’

‘Unpleasant.’

‘And inconvenient. You cannae do this job efficiently when you’re spending half the morning in and out of the lavvy. I was pretty desperate. Down to about eight stone. Eight Asacols a day. All I wanted was to sleep. Only it doesnae give you much sleep, the colitis. Your hair falls out, you develop big red lumps on your legs …’

Jonathan looked her up and down. ‘You seem fine now. Surgery?’

Andy shook her head. ‘Nor drugs. But it’s cured. Ask me how it happened, we’re talking serious mumbo-’

Jonathan’s bleeper went off.

Shutters slamming down on personal issues, Sister Andy took his cigarette and held open the plastic door for him, like the grizzled old guy in the war movies who pushes the paras out of the hatch.

‘Get your arse outa here, son,’ Andy said. ‘Never let the bastards see the fear, aye?’

‘Bugger!’ The paramedic sweating. ‘I think he’s bloody well arrested.’

The injured guy was still strapped to the stretcher, the red blanket wrenched back and the guy’s chest bared. Big Nurse Debbie Barnes running alongside reaching for the carotid pulse.

‘He’s right, Sister. Nothing.’

‘Oot the way, Debbie.’ Andy’s accent thickening the way it always did in crises. ‘Come on, son,’ she hissed at the patient, ‘we’re no havin’ this.’ Bringing her fist down like a hammer on his chest. ‘Let’s have him on the table, aye?’

‘Car or something,’ the ambulance driver said, helping Debbie attach the terminals. ‘Or mugged maybe. Didn’t just fall over, though he’s had a few. Hit and run, I reckon. Thrown over the bonnet, comes down on his head. Nothing below seems to be broken, but-’

‘Stuff the speculation,’ Andy said briskly. ‘No your problem, Michael. Defib. Come on, move it!’

Blood from left ear, left eye. Strong smell of whisky. Face … Jesus God, face familiar.

‘Monitor flat,’ Jonathan said, drab-voiced, as if it was a formality. ‘How long has he been-?’

‘No more than a minute,’ the driver said. ‘Still going OK in the van. Going strong. Must’ve stopped on the way in. Shock catching up.’

While the tube was going down, before the ambi-bag went on, Andy fitted a history to the face on the end of the neck brace, images clacking in like colour slides: young copper sitting on a stool drinking cocoa in the winter dawn, uniform flecked with snow and someone else’s vomit. Waiting for some assault victim to get patched up. Ten years ago? Twelve?

A dead flat line on the monitor. Andy holding his head as Jonathan got going with the paddles, everyone else