‘She’s an only child,’ replied Turner. ‘We’re checking her parents’ tissue types, but of course the chances aren’t good.’
‘So we’re talking about a kid who might not make it any other way?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a very real chance that she might not make it here either,’ said Giordano.
‘Of course. Look, Mr Giordano, let’s level with each other,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make any political or commercial sense for you to say yes to Amanda. I’m asking you purely on humanitarian grounds. She’s a lovely kid with a couple of real nice people for parents. I’d like to see them all get a break simply because they deserve it.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Giordano, ‘and thanks for being honest with me. But the final say is not up to me. In this instance we’d have to put the request to our medical director, Dr Kinscherf, and, of course, to Dr James Ross, who’s in charge of the transplant unit.’
‘Would you at least do that?’ asked Turner.
‘Sure,’ agreed Giordano. ‘If it were up to me I think I’d say yes right now. I think it’s good if the local hospitals can help each other out. The trouble is that if we at Medic Ecosse so much as ask for the loan of a pint of blood it hits the headlines as the scandal of NHS blood subsidizing the rich. You know how it goes.’
‘Yup, I know.’
‘In the meantime, why don’t you send over the paperwork anyway? It’s as well to be prepared.’
‘Thanks. I’m grateful.’
‘Think nothing of it. Hope it works out for you and the kid.’
Turner put down the phone and tapped his pen end over end on his desk. He’d done his best; he just wasn’t convinced it was going to be good enough. He finished filling in the form and signed it. Grayson as head of unit would have to sign it too before it could be submitted. He looked at his watch. Grayson would have left by now. He’d get him to do it in the morning. He was about to put away Amanda’s case notes when the lab form listing her tissue type caught his eye. He moved over to an adjacent desk with a computer terminal on it and logged on to the International Donor Register. He had checked availability that morning but there would be no harm in checking again as he had the details in front of him. He entered Amanda’s details then requested a search for a match.
DEGREE OF HOMOLOGY? requested the computer.
80 PER CENT, entered Turner.
NEGATIVE.
Turner punched in, 70 PER CENT. NEGATIVE.
Turner logged off. Maybe tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ he murmured as he left the room and returned to the ward.
Sandy looked at his watch and whispered an expletive. The traffic had been heavy on the way back and road works on the dual carriageway had reduced a five-mile section to single-carriageway with no overtaking.
‘Are you going to have time for something to eat before you start work?’ asked Kate.
‘’Fraid not,’ he replied. ‘I’ll just drop you at home and then get on up there. I’ll have something later when I get home.’
‘I’m sure Charlie won’t mind if you’re half an hour late,’ said Kate.
‘Normally no,’ agreed Sandy. ‘But it’s one of his kids’ birthday today. I said I’d be on time.’
Sandy dropped Kate at the foot of the hill leading up to their cottage, at her suggestion, and drove on up to the district hospital. He was only five minutes late.
FOUR
It was Sunday evening. Steven Dunbar took the airport bus from Glasgow Airport into the centre of the city. Outside it was dark and it was raining. That and the general gloominess of the dark Victorian buildings — made to seem even blacker by the rain water — did nothing to inspire good feelings in him. He was due to begin his attachment to the Medic Ecosse Hospital on the following morning.
It was something he certainly wouldn’t have bet on when he’d heard the Scottish Office contingent refuse to modify in any way their demand for swingeing cuts to James Ross’s research budget. Their intransigence had come as a complete surprise to almost everyone at the meeting. In retrospect it had been embarrassing that the Scottish Office had not seen fit even to make a token gesture in the interests of making the negotiations seem genuine. The feelings and work of an eminent surgeon had been of no importance at all.
Dunbar had fully expected Ross to tender his resignation and, in doing so, set off a train of events that would have led to the closure of the hospital and a backfire of the whole gamble, but it hadn’t happened that way. Instead, and to everyone’s surprise, Ross had acceded to the Scottish Office demands, taking it philosophically and saying simply that he understood the awkwardness of their position and the financial constraints they were operating under.
Dunbar supposed that some kind of behind-the-scenes deal between Ross and the Medic International group must have been done to retain Ross’s services and to avoid closure of the hospital, but there had been no official acknowledgement of this or of continuing research funding for Ross from an alternative source. Ross had simply stated that, as a doctor, he felt obliged to carry on with his work at Medic Ecosse. He had a waiting list of patients he felt responsible for and couldn’t let them down. It would be business as usual as far as the transplant unit was concerned.
It was clear that the Scottish Office people had pulled off a major triumph in the re-negotiation of terms of their involvement at Medic Ecosse. The look of surprise and relief on Bannon’s face when Ross had swallowed his pride and acceded to what he must have thought were impossible demands was only fleeting but Dunbar had seen it. Now it wouldn’t be known if he had ever intended to back off at the last moment. The injection of more public funds into the hospital would now be offset by the much more favourable terms of the agreement and by greater public access to the Medic Ecosse facilities. Even the Labour opposition at the meeting had been forced to concede that it was a good deal.
As part of the agreement there was, of course, his own secondment to Medic Ecosse as the government’s man on the ground, the overseer of public funds. His masters’ subterfuge had worked well. He was now in place to begin his investigation.
Sci-Med’s involvement had been precipitated by a complaint from a staff nurse who no longer worked at the hospital. She had maintained that there had been something improper about the treatment a transplant patient had received at Medic Ecosse some five months before. The young patient, Amy Teasdale, had died after rejecting the kidney she had been given during what was thought to be, at the time, a routine transplant operation. The staff nurse, one Lisa Fairfax, maintained that there had been a serious mix-up resulting in her patient being given the wrong organ. She was unable to be more specific, stating only that the sub sequent rejection had been so severe that no other explanation would suffice. In other circumstances her claims would almost certainly have been dealt with at local level but what had caught Sci-Med’s attention was the fact that a similar complaint had been lodged only months after the hospital opened, almost three years before and again by one of their nursing staff.
That time Sister Sheila Barnes had said much the same thing after a young boy in the transplant unit rejected the kidney he had been given. She had subsequently resigned in protest at what she saw as being ignored by the authorities, who had interviewed her but refused to take her claims seriously or to mount an internal investigation. She had maintained at the time that the authorities were keen to dismiss her complaint because they feared the bad publicity would damage the new hospital. Sister Barnes had never retracted her claim. She had intended to press for further investigation, but shortly afterwards had contracted cancer and had had to abandon her campaign. She was now in the terminal stages of her disease, a resident at The Beeches, a hospice for the terminally ill down at Helensburgh on the Clyde coast. She and her allegations had been largely forgotten until Staff Nurse Fairfax made her own complaint and Sci-Med’s computer had drawn attention to the similarity as part of its collating programme.
All reports of allegations of wrongdoing in British hospitals were recorded, filed and collated on the Sci-Med computer, however trivial they might seem. Most of them were indeed trivial, usually disgruntled patients making unfounded accusations, or staff with grudges against their employers making equally spurious allegations. But
