dressed in the pink uniform of a first year student, flitted briefly across his field of view. Distant sounds of children's voices echoed along the high Victorian ceilings. He turned his attention to the posters of characters from Disney which had been stuck up at intervals along the walls to lighten the atmosphere. The sheer height of the walls swamped them making them pathetic rather than effective.
A figure hurried towards them, white coat billowing open. His eyes fell on Tyson, 'Sorry sir, 'couldn't get here any sooner, we've got a mini-bus accident to contend with.'
Tyson nodded. 'She's in there,' he said.
Fenton noticed Tyson visibly swither whether or not to join the registrar in the treatment room and decide not to. It had been over twenty years since he had last been involved in direct patient care.
A heavy trolley, being pushed by two porters, swung erratically to the side as it passed them and made them draw in their feet. Each porter blamed the other. Tyson looked at his watch and displayed uncharacteristic irritation. 'Come on…come on,' he muttered. Another two minutes had passed before a nurse accompanied by an orderly appeared. They were carrying transfusion equipment, the orderly weighed down on one side by a green, plastic crate containing six blood packs. They almost collided with the registrar who chose that moment to emerge from the room. He ignored the new arrivals and came directly towards Tyson. Fenton thought he looked embarrassed and had a sense of foreboding.
'I'm sorry,' said the registrar, as if unable to believe what he was about to say, 'We've lost her.'
Fenton felt pins and needles break out all over his skin. 'We've lost her.' That's what they had said on that awful night when Louise had died. The words echoed inside his head rekindling every second of that hellish moment. After the phone call he had run through the streets in the pouring rain desperately trying to wave down a taxi but the weather had made sure that they were all occupied. He had ended up running the entire three miles to the hospital to stand there, dripping wet under the daylight glare of the lights in casualty to be told that his wife and child were dead. He remembered every pore on the face of the house officer who had told him, the way he had touched the frame of his glasses, the way he had looked at his feet. Now he waited for the next line, 'We did all we could,' but it didn't come. Instead, Tyson's voice broke the spell. 'What do you mean, 'lost her'?' he asked hoarsely.
The registrar had gone a little red in the face, 'I'm sorry,' he said, making a gesture with open palms. 'We couldn't stop the bleeding in time. It's as simple and as awful as that.'
'But why not?' insisted Tyson.
The registrar made another helpless gesture with his hands. 'I'm afraid we really won't know the answer to that until after the post-mortem.
Tyson got slowly to his feet and walked past the registrar into the treatment room; Fenton followed. The nurses melted back from the table to reveal the body of Susan Daniels, very still and very white. Fenton thought that she looked more beautiful than he had ever realised, like a pale delicate flower that had been cut and left lying on its side. Soon it would wither and fade. He was filled with grief and looked for some mundane object to focus his eyes on while he regained control of his emotions. He settled his gaze on a steel instrument tray and kept it there.
On looking up he saw tears running down the face of one of the nurses. He squeezed the girl's shoulder gently and indicated to her that she should leave the room. He himself followed a few moments later. He pretended to look at one of the Disney posters while he waited for Tyson.
In the background Fenton could hear Tyson and the registrar discussing the post-mortem arrangements then he had the feeling that he was no longer alone. He looked down to see a little boy dressed in pyjamas staring up at him. His nose was running. The child did not say anything but had a questioning look on his face. Fenton said, 'Now where did you come from?'
The child continued to stare at him then said, 'I want my mummy.'
Fenton gently asked the boy his name but before he could answer a distraught nurse appeared on the scene. 'Timothy Watson! So there you are!' She swept the child up into her arms and said to Fenton, 'You just can't turn your back on this one for a moment or he's off!' The boy put his thumb in his mouth and snuggled down on the nurse's shoulder.'
'Good-bye Timothy,' said Fenton as the nurse walked away. He decided to walk back to the lab on his own without waiting any longer for Tyson who was still deep in discussion with the Casualty registrar.
It was already dark outside and the sodium street lights glistened in the puddles of rain water as he walked back towards the old villa. As he drew nearer he saw three figures standing in the bay window of the main lab and knew that they were waiting for news of Susan. One of them, Ian Ferguson, came to the door to meet him. 'How is she?' he asked. Fenton stepped inside the hallway and saw everyone standing there. 'Susan's dead,' he said softly, 'She bled to death.'
Ferguson and Alex Ross, the chief technician, followed Fenton into the 'front room', closing the door and leaving the others out in the hall. Fenton crossed the floor and put his hands on the radiator by the window. 'God, it's cold.'
'Did they say what it was?' Ross asked.
'No, I don't think they know. They are going to do a post-mortem on her.' Fenton sensed that his answer had failed to satisfy Ross; he turned round to face him.
Ross said, 'It was natural, wasn't it? I mean, she wasn't murdered like Neil?'
Fenton was shocked. 'Christ, I hadn't even considered that. I assumed it was some gynaecological thing.'
'Me too,' said Ferguson.
'You're probably right,' said Ross. 'It was just a thought.'
'What a thought,' said Fenton turning back to look out at the rain that had just started again.
On Saturday the lab staff finished at one pm leaving Fenton as duty biochemist till Sunday morning. He picked up the internal phone and gave the hospital switchboard his name and 'bleep' number, adding that he was about to go to lunch. He hurried up to the main hospital leaning forward against a fiercely gusting wind and climbed the stairs to the staff restaurant; it was half empty. He looked around for a familiar face but failed to find one save for Moira Kincaid from the Sterile Supply Department who was just leaving. He nodded to her as she passed.
Fenton paid for a cellophane wrapped salad and took it to a table by a window where he could watch the trees bend in the wind. It seemed to be blowing more strongly than ever.
'Want some company?' asked a voice behind him.
Fenton turned to find Jenny and smiled.
Jenny laid down her tray and Fenton held the edge of it steady while she extracted her fingers. 'What a morning,' she complained, 'The ward's going like a fair.'
Fenton smiled, paying scant attention to what she was saying but thinking that Jenny Buchan was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time. 'I didn't hear you leave this morning,' he said.
'You were asleep. It seemed a shame to wake you.'
Jenny joined Fenton in looking out of the window at the rain as it lashed against the blackened stone in wind-swept frenzy. 'Do you think you will manage home tonight?' she asked.
Fenton shrugged his shoulders without taking his eyes off the rain and was about to reply when the bleeper in his jacket pocket went off. He shrugged again and Jenny nodded as he got up to leave. Outside in the corridor he picked up the phone and called the switchboard. 'Fenton here.'
Although the biochemistry lab was primarily concerned with the patients of the Princess Mary Hospital, it also carried out paediatric work for other hospitals in the city. Fenton had been informed that a blood sample was on its way from the maternity unit at the Royal Infirmary, a sample from a jaundiced baby for bilirubin estimation. He sat in the front room until the clatter of a diesel engine outside told him that it had arrived. Taking the plastic bag from the driver he signed the man's book and took the sample upstairs for analysis.
With the blood sample in the first stages of assay Fenton turned on the radio and tuned it to Radio 3. The sombre music seemed appropriate to a grey Saturday afternoon in February. He changed the settings on the analyser for the next stage and, with a fifteen minute wait in prospect, went along the corridor to Neil Munro's lab to collect Munro's research notes. He settled down to read them as, yet again, the rain began to hammer on the windows. The sound made him appreciate of the warmth of the lab. He wondered for a moment if the house had
