The knocking grew louder as did the voice. 'I say! There's a smell of burning. Are you all right in there?'
Jamieson tried to force his lips into the right shape to speak. He managed a croak but then improved on it with agonising difficulty and managed a weak cry for help.
The door flew open as a shoulder crashed into it and a thin man with red hair looked in on the scene in the bathroom. 'Good God!' he exclaimed as his eyes took in the wiring hanging out of the wall and the smouldering carpet. The man used a towel to protect his hands and lifted the heater up to dump it safely in the hand basin. He quickly trampled out the smouldering carpet and came to Jamieson's aid. 'How bad is it?' he asked, trying to get a better look at Jamieson's hands.
Jamieson shook his head as if to indicate that he did not know.
'Let me see' said the man.
Jamieson withdrew his hands slowly from the flow and the man turned off the taps. Jamieson prepared himself mentally for the surge of pain he felt sure would return to his burns in the air but was mildly surprised when it was not too bad. It was painful but certainly not the agony of second degree burns or worse.
'I think you've got away with it,' said the red haired man examining Jamieson's hands gently. Jamieson, still in partial shock, found himself concentrating on the man's profile. A hawk like nose, hollow cheeks and the very fair skin that invariably went with red hair. In this case the residual scars of bad teenage acne compounded the problem.
'Mainly superficial, you must have got your hands under the cold water in time,' said the man.
Jamieson nodded. He had flashback to childhood when he remembered playing on a rope swing by the river. At one point he had slightly lost grip and slid down the entire length of the rope, using his hands as a brake. The rope burns on his hands might have been serious had it not been for the fact that his fall had ended in the river and the sudden immersion in cold water had saved him from lasting damage. It was a lesson about burns treatment that he had never forgotten.
Jamieson closed his eyes in relief as a sudden wave of tiredness hit him. The red haired man saw the signs and said, 'I think we better get you over to the hospital old son. You've had a bit of a shock… if you'll excuse the pun.' He picked up the towel that was lying on the floor beside him and put it around Jamieson's shoulders before helping him up.
At this point both men had overlooked the fact that, although the heater had been disconnected from the wall, the wires that serviced it were still live and protruding from the conduit channel at the back of the bath. As the red haired man helped Jamieson to his feet Jamieson's thigh brushed against them and once more, mains voltage shot through his body to throw him violently over the side of the bath. He landed in a heap on the still smoking carpet. The red haired man, protected by the dry towel he had been holding between himself and Jamieson, fell to his knees beside Jamieson and cursed his own stupidity between profuse apologies.
The relief that knowing his hands were going to be all right had removed a great deal of the worry from Jamieson's mind, in fact, so much so that, as he lay on the floor looking up at the look of anguish on the red haired man's face, he managed a wry smile.
'Are you all right?' asked the man, fearing that Jamieson's smile might have been an indication of some kind of mental aberration.
Jamieson looked up at him and said hoarsely, 'Frankly… I've had better days.'.'
'The man with the red hair smiled and said, 'I'm Clive Evans.'
'Scott Jamieson. You will excuse me if I don't shake hands.'
Jamieson's bed was surrounded by visitors. The thin, stick-insect like figure of the hospital secretary had been joined by a smaller, more dapper man with silver hair and a clipped, white moustache who introduced himself as Norman Carew, the medical superintendent of Kerr Memorial. A third man, grizzled and thickset was introduced as John Richardson, consultant bacteriologist.
'My dear Doctor, what can we say, this is absolutely awful,' began Crichton, the hospital secretary. 'What a thing to have happened. I just don't know what to say.'
'It was just one of these things,' replied Jamieson, wishing that Crichton would stop being so effusive in his apologies. For some reason it was making his injuries seem worse than they were and this was irking him. Carew started making the same kind of noises and Jamieson had to insist again that it was a totally unforeseen accident that could have happened anywhere and that, apart from a few superficial, albeit painful burns, no real damage had been done.
'And I was looking forward to my sherry too,' said Richardson and immediately lightened the atmosphere. Jamieson smiled and so did the others.
Crichton glanced sideways at Carew and then said, slightly uncomfortably, Jamieson thought, 'Mr Thelwell regrets that he could not manage to get here this evening. He asked me to convey his sympathy and say that he looks forward to meeting you when you are up and about again.'
Jamieson said one thing and thought another. Thelwell was the one who had been described as being 'difficult' he remembered. He was happy to have their meeting delayed. He had had enough 'difficulty' for one day. The sooner today was ended and consigned to the past the better.
'Is there anything we can get you?' asked Crichton as the three prepared to leave.
'I'd like to call my wife,' said Jamieson.
'Of course. Nurse will bring in the phone trolley. We'll say good night.'
Jamieson watched their backs disappear out the door. A few moments later a nurse wheeled in the phone and Jamieson called Sue.
'Scott! Where are you calling from?' asked Sue's delighted voice.
'Actually I'm in bed.'
'At this time?
'I've had a bit of an accident.'
Jamieson gave Sue a suitably understated account of what had happened but she was still very alarmed. 'But you could have been killed!' she protested.
'But I wasn't and everything is all right,' soothed Jamieson.
'But your hands, you said…'
'Superficial burns, that's all,' interrupted Jamieson.
'I'll come up to Leeds right away,' said Sue.
'No you won't,' said Jamieson. 'I am perfectly all right and I want to get on with the job as soon as possible. I don't want this silly little affair to build up into anything more than it actually was so stay there and I'll see you when I come home at the weekend or whenever. OK?'
There was a long pause before Sue agreed. 'I miss you already,' she said.
'I feel the same,' said Jamieson.
Jamieson had just put down the phone when there was a knock on the door and it was opened by Clive Evans.
'I thought I’d pop in and see how you were,' said Evans.
'That was good of you,' smiled Jamieson, now more able to take a good look at his visitor. He was of average height, somewhere in his early thirties and Jamieson thought he detected a faint Welsh accent in his voice.
'I didn't explain,' said Evans. 'I have the room next to yours in the residency. That's how I smelt the burning.'
'I see, so you're on the staff?'
'I'm the assistant bacteriologist in the microbiology department.'
'Dr Richardson's department?'
'That's right.'
'Been here long?'
'All of three months.'
Jamieson smiled. He was pleased to have found someone outside of the hospital hierarchy to talk to. 'You must be very much involved in the investigation of the infection problem then?' he asked.
Evans nodded. 'We're doing everything we can but we're not having any success and we're getting the blame for not finding out the cause.'
'Any ideas of your own?' asked Jamieson.
'It's a complete mystery,' said Evans. 'All the swabs we've taken from the surgical wards and theatres — and
