The Wench Is Dead

‘I'm going to survive?' ventured Morse, as the nurse added her further findings to the data on his chart.

‘You've got a temperature,' replied the uncommunicative teenager.

‘I thought everybody had got a temperature,' muttered.'Morse

For the moment, however, the nurse had turned her back on him to consider the latest casualty.

A youth, his legs caked with mud, and most of the rest him encased in a red-and-black-striped Rugby jersey, had just been wheeled in – a ghastly looking Cyclopean slit across his forehead. Yet, to Morse, he appeared wholly at his ease as the (same) ancillary worker quizzed him comprehensively about his life-history, his religion, his relatives. And when, equally at his ease, the (same) nurse put him through his paces with stethoscope, watch, and thermometer, Morse could do little but envy the familiarity that was effected forthwith between the young lad and the equally young lass. Suddenly – and almost cruelly – Morse realized that she, that same young lass, had seen him -Morse! – exactly for what he was: a man who'd struggled through life to his early fifties, and who was about to face the slightly infra-dignitatem embarrassments of hernias and haemorrhoids, of urinary infections and – yes! – of duodenal ulcers.

The kidney-bowl had been left within easy reach, and Morse was retching violently, If unproductively, when a young houseman (of Morse's age, no more than half) came to stand beside him and to scan the reports of ambulance, administrative staff, and medical personnel.

'You've got a bit of nasty tummy trouble – you realize that?'

Morse shrugged vaguely: 'Nobody's really told me anything yet.'

'But you wouldn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to suspect you've got something pretty radically wrong with your innards, would you?'

Morse was about to reply when the houseman continued. 'And you've only just come in, I think? If you could give us – Mr, er, Morse, is it? – if you give us a chance, we'll try to tell you more about things as soon as we can, OK?'

I’m all right, really,' said the duly chastened Chief Inspector of Police, as he lay back and tried to unloose the knot that had tied itself tight inside his shoulder muscles.

'You're not all right, I'm afraid! At best you've got a stomach ulcer that's suddenly decided to burst out bleeding' – Morse experienced a sharp little jerk of alarm somewhere in his diaphragm – 'and at worst you've got what we call a 'perforated ulcer'; and if that is the case… '

'If that is the case…?' repeated Morse weakly. But the young doctor made no immediate answer, and for the next few minutes prodded, squeezed, and kneaded the paunchy flesh around Morse's abdomen.

'Found anything?' queried Morse, with a thin and forced apology for a grin.

'You could well lose a couple of stone. Your liver's enlarged.'

'But I thought you just said it was the stomach!'

'Oh yes, it is! You've had a stomach haemorrhage.'

'What's – what's that got to do with my liver?'

'Do you drink a lot, Mr Morse?'

'Well, most people have a drink or two most days, don't they?'

'Do you think a lot?' (The same words – a semitone of exasperation lower.)

As non-commitally as his incipient panic would permit, Morse shrugged his shoulders once more: 'I like a glass of beer, yes.'

'How many pints do you drink a week?'

A week?' squeaked Morse, his face clouding over like that of a child who has just been given a complex problem in mental multiplication.

'A day, then?' suggested the houseman helpfully.

Morse divided by three: 'Two or three, I suppose.'

Do you drink spirits?'

‘Occasionally.'

'What spirits do you drink?'

Morse shrugged his tautened shoulders once again: 'Scotch – sometimes I treat myself to a drop of Scotch.'

'How long would a bottle of Scotch last you?'

'Depends how big it was.'

But Morse immediately saw that his attempt at humour was ill appreciated; and he swiftly multiplied by three: 'Week – ten days – about that.'

'How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?'

'Eight… ten?' replied Morse, getting the hang of things now and smoothly dividing by three.

'Do you ever take any exercise – walking, jogging, cycling, squash…?'

But before Morse could switch back to his tables, he reached for the kidney-bowl that had been left within reach. And as he vomited, this time productively, the houseman observed with some alarm the coffee-grounds admixed with the tell-tale brightly crimsoned specks of blood – blood that was de-oxygenated daily with plentiful nicotine and liberally lubricated with alcohol.

For some while after these events, Morse's mind was somewhat hazy. Later, however, he could recall a nurse bending over him – the same young nurse as earlier; and he could remember the beautifully manicured fingers on her left hand as she flipped the watch out again into her palm; could almost follow her thoughts as with contracted brow she squinted at the disturbing equation between his half-minute pulse-rate and the thirty-second span upon her watch…

At this point Morse knew that the Angel of Death had fluttered its wings above his head; and he felt a sudden frisson of fear, as for the first time in his life he began to think of dying. For in his mind's eye, though just for a second or two, he thought he almost caught sight of the laudatory obituary, the creditable paragraph.

Chapter Two

Do you know why we are more fair and just towards the dead? We are not obliged to them, we can take our time, we can fit in the paying of respects between a cocktail party and an affectionate mistress – in our spare time

(Albert Camus, The Fall)

When Morse awoke the following morning, he was aware of a grey dawn through the window of the small ward, 10 his left; and of a clock showing 4.50 a.m. on the wall above the archway to his right, through which he could see a slimly attractive nurse, sitting in a pool of light behind a desk, and writing in a large book. Was she writing, Morse wondered, about him? If so, there would be remarkably little to say; for apart from one very brief bout of vomiting in the small hours, he had felt, quite genuinely, so very much better; and had required no further attention. The tubing strapped to his right wrist, and stretching up to the saline-drip bottle hooked above his bed, was still dragging uncomfortably against his skin most of the time, as if the needle had been stuck in slightly off- centre; but he'd determined to make no mention of such a minor irritant. The awkward apparatus rendered him immobile, of course – at least until he had mastered the skills of the young man from the adjacent bed who had spent most of the previous evening wandering freely (as it seemed) all over the hospital, holding his own drip high above his head like some Ethiopian athlete brandishing the Olympic torch. Morse had felt most self-conscious when circumstances utterly beyond his control had finally induced him to beg for a 'bottle'. Yet – thus far – he had been spared the undignified palaver of the dreaded 'pan'; and he trusted that his lack of solid nutriment during the preceding days would be duly acknowledged with some reciprocal inactivity by his bowels. And so far so good!

The nurse was talking earnestly to a slightly built, fresh-faced young houseman, his white coat reaching almost to his ankles, a stethoscope hooked into his right-hand pocket. And soon the two of them were walking, quietly, unfussily, into the ward where Morse lay; then disappearing behind the curtains (drawn across the previous