Moir, investigation of severe stomach pain, exploratory laparotomy, pyloric obstruction found and repaired.
'He is asleep,' said the day sister.
'And the new ones?' asked Jenny.
'One is asleep but the other has first night nerves, you know the form.'
Jenny nodded and signed the take over form.
'Good night Nurse.'
'Good night Sister.'
Jenny began her rounds as the ward door closed, acknowledging the presence of the junior night nurse at the far end of the ward with a raise of the hand. Many of the children were already sleeping but she paused here and there to tuck in occasional arms and legs freed by their restless owners.
A pair of frightened blue eyes peered up at her from the mouth of their blanket cave. Jenny recognised the signs of first night nerves, one sign of sympathy from her and these full eyes would overflow. 'Ah, good, you're awake,' she began. 'I could do with some help. Would you mind?'
Surprise replaced fear on the child's face for this was unexpected. Reassurance had been the odds-on favourite, possibly encouragement, even gentle chiding, but a request for help? The surprised look still had not faded as his feet, now slippered, hit the floor.
'Good, now follow me.'
The slippers padded along behind Jenny until she stopped and pointed to the clip board hanging at the foot of a bed. She said, 'I want you to read off these names to me as we come to them. All right?'
A nod.
'Well then?'
'A. n.g.u.s…Cam.e. ron.'
'Check,' said Jenny officiously and moved on. Three more names and all thoughts of home and family left the boy as he warmed to his new role as assistant to Night Nurse Buchan.
The child recovering from surgery was in a side ward sleeping peacefully. Jenny placed her hand gently against his forehead and felt it to be quite normal. She checked the boy's notes; no medication was indicated, no special instructions. All that was needed was a good night's sleep. She tip toed out of the room and closed the door behind her, a trifle more noisily than she had intended. She looked back through the glass panel. The boy had not stirred.
Midnight came and Jenny began to feel optimistic about the chances of a quiet night. She even said so to the junior nurse as they sipped illicit coffee in the duty room while the rain outside continued to pour.
'Brrr, I'm glad I'm not out in that,' said the girl, trying to draw the curtains even closer together to shut a persistent gap in the middle.
'Pity the poor sailors,' said Jenny.
'That's what my mother used to say,' said the girl.
'Mine too,' said Jenny.
'Do you think he's out there?' said the girl.
'Who?' asked Jenny.
'The killer of course.'
'Let's not talk about that.'
'Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, I mean, I didn't…'
'Forget it.'
At one o'clock the phone rang and Jenny raised her eyes before picking it up.
'I thought it was too good to last,' said the junior.'
'Ward 10, Nurse Buchan speaking…Yes…Yes…Understood.' Jenny put down the phone and said, 'Admission in ten minutes, seven year old girl, burns to both legs, hot water bottle burst.'
'Poor mite,' said the junior.
'Prepare number three will you?' said Jenny. 'I'll get the trays ready.
As she went to get sterile dressings Jenny paused in the corridor to look through the glass panel at the surgical case. He was still sleeping peacefully, right arm outside the covers, fingers hooked over the side of the bed.
A distant siren gave early warning of the imminent arrival of their patient and the duty house officer came to the ward shortly afterwards. She had heard the same sound from her room in the doctors' residency. 'Sounds like a bad one,' she said.
'Burns are always bad,' said Jenny.
The junior held open the ward door to allow the trolley to enter with its entourage of ambulance men, parents and a policeman. Jenny signalled to the junior with her eyes and the girl ushered the parents away from the procession and into a side room where they would be plied with tea and sympathy.
Jenny stood by as the temporary dry dressings were removed from the child's legs to reveal a mass of livid, raw flesh.
'Her mother used boiling water in the bottle,' said one of the ambulance men quietly.
'She's going to need extensive grafting,' said the house officer. 'We'll transfer her when she' stable but in the meantime she's going to be in a lot of pain when she comes out of shock. I'll write her up for something.' The house officer looked at Jenny and said, 'She'll need specialling as well.'
An hour later calm had returned to the ward. The girl had been sedated and installed in a side room under the care of an extra nurse who had been sent up to sit with her, the policeman had completed his note book entry on the treble nine call and the ambulance men had returned to their stand-by quarters. The parents, stricken by remorse, and now to be haunted by conscience, had gone off to spend what was left of the night at home.
At 3am Jenny walked round the ward again, gliding quietly between the cots and beds in the soft dimness of the night lights. All was quiet. She opened the door of the side ward to check on the surgery boy and found him still asleep and lying in the same position as before. As she closed the door it suddenly struck her as strange that he was lying in exactly the same position. He was sleeping not unconscious and everyone moves when they sleep.
Jenny had a sense of foreboding as she went back in again and approached the boy to put her hand on his forehead. He was cold, icy cold. There was a sound at her feet like the contents of a glass being spilled but she knew that that could not be. She looked down to see a stream of blood pour from beneath the blankets and spatter over her shoes. She felt faint but pulled back the top covers slowly to reveal a sea of scarlet.
Jenny buried her face in Fenton's shoulder and tried to find comfort in his arms. 'It was awful,' she murmured. 'He just bled to death in his sleep. If only I had looked in sooner…'
'Don't blame yourself,' whispered Fenton. 'There was nothing you could have done.
'You did say it would be another patient,' said Jenny.
Fenton nodded.
'There's something else,' said Jenny. 'The boy had group AB blood like the Watson boy.'
Fenton held Jenny away from him in disbelief. 'But that is just too much of a coincidence,' he said. 'AB is a rare group.'
'Did you check up on the others?' Jenny asked.
Fenton shook his head slowly and confessed that he had not, 'I thought when Sandra Murray turned out to have group B blood that we were on the wrong track.'
'Maybe not?'
'But if this is all to do with blood groups,' said Fenton with a sudden thought. 'That's what Neil Munro's book is all about!'
Fenton felt excitement mount inside him as the letters and numbers in Munro's book began to make sense. CT did not stand for Charles Tyson because it stood for 'clotting time!' The figures in the columns were the times taken for samples of fresh blood to clot in the presence of Saxon plastic!
Against the letter 'O' were figures equivalent to the normal clotting time for human blood. The separate columns were simply repeat tests on the same samples of group O blood. Fenton found a similar set of entries against the letter 'A' and concluded, as Neil Munro must have done, that there was no problem with either group A or group O blood and that would cover the majority of the population.
There was only one entry against the letter, 'B' and the initials, S.M. were appended. Sandra Murray! thought
