Warren Street
I’ve never been one of those people who tell everyone they’re fine and try to climb out of their hospital bed. Feeling as shit as I did is your body’s way of telling you to lie the fuck down and take in fluids – preferably intravenously – so that’s what I did.
I was a little surprised that they took me to UCH, which was not the closest casualty unit, until Dr Walid appeared in my treatment cubicle and proceeded to loom over the shoulder of the junior doctor who was treating me for various cuts, bruises, scrapes and possible exposure. To give him his credit, the junior doctor who – from his accent – had inherited his breezy confidence and a private education from his parents, tried for professional insouciance. But there’s just something uniquely intimidating about a wiry six-foot Scot. Once he’d arranged to have a nurse come and put the actual bandages on, he gave me a professional smile and legged it out of there as fast he could go.
By day Dr Walid is a world-renowned gastroenterologist, but by night he dons his sinister white coat and becomes England’s foremost expert on crypto-pathology. Anything weird that turns up, living or dead, gets examined by Dr Walid – including me and Lesley.
‘Good evening, Peter,’ he said as he advanced on me. ‘I was hoping you’d make it all the way to Christmas intact.’
He became the fifth person to shine a light in my eyes to check for pupil reactions. Or perhaps he was looking for something different.
‘Does this mean you’re going to stick me back in the MRI?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes,’ said Dr Walid with great relish. ‘Between you and Lesley I’m finally beginning to develop some decent data on what happens to your brain when you become a practitioner.’
‘Anything I should know about?’
‘Early days yet,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to get you booked in as soon as possible. I’m supposed to be on the train to Glasgow tonight.’
‘Are you going home for Christmas?’
Dr Walid perched on the edge of bed and scribbled a few notes on a clipboard. ‘I always go back to Oban for the holidays.’
‘So the rest of your family aren’t Muslims then?’
Dr Walid chuckled. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Loyal sons and daughters of the Kirk each and every one of them. Very dour, serious people except at this time of the year. They celebrate Christmas and I celebrate them. Besides, they’re always pleased to see me since I bring the bird to the feast.’
‘You take the turkey?’
‘Of course,’ said Dr Walid. ‘I have to be sure it’s properly Halal after all.’
True to his word, I was decanted into a wheelchair and raced up to the imaging department where they stuck my head in the MRI. It’s an expensive piece of kit and has a strict waiting list for tests that Dr Walid seems to ride roughshod over at will. When I asked him where his extraordinary privileges came from he explained that the Folly, through a charity first established in 1872, made a contribution to the hospital finances and in return he got to pre-empt non-emergency cases.
The techs who ran the MRI had been seeing me and Lesley on a regular basis since the summer – god knows what they thought I had. Some form of rare brain cancer I suppose. I must have been getting used to the machine, because, despite the sledgehammer sound of the magnetic coils, I drifted off to sleep mid-scan.
Saturday
23
Warren Street
I woke up in a private room, the same one Nightingale had been stashed in when he got shot, I thought, to find Lesley asleep in a chair by my bed. She can’t sleep in the mask so she was barefaced but with her head twisted awkwardly away from the door to make sure nobody could look in and see her face. Her mask was clutched in one hand, ready for instant donning if I woke up.
In sleep, her face looked just as horrible but weirdly more like a face. I found it easier to look at when I knew she wasn’t looking back at me – judging my reactions. It was dark outside but this time of year that could be late afternoon or early morning. I weighed up not waking Lesley against her probable reaction should she catch me staring at her face without permission.
I lay back in my bed, closed my eyes and groaned theatrically until Lesley woke up.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it back on.’
I had an inkling how long I’d been asleep when I had to rush to the bathroom down the corridor and spend what seemed an inordinate amount of time having a wee. After a shower and a change into a new and clean but otherwise identical open-back hospital gown, I climbed gratefully back into my bed and went back to sleep.
I woke up to daylight and the smell of McDonald’s – my stomach rumbled.
Lesley had returned with an unauthorised dinner, the newspapers and reassurances that Kumar and Reynolds had both escaped with minor cuts and bruises.
‘And Miss FBI,’ said Lesley. ‘What was all that about?’
In exchange for a Big Mac and the promise that she’d fetch me some clean clothes I told her all about Peter Grant’s adventures underground. She particularly liked the Holland Park rave and the part where I hallucinated myself back into the fourteenth century.
‘I bet he was fit,’ she said. ‘All these supernatural types are fit.’
I was almost afraid to ask. ‘Did we make the papers?’
Lesley held up a tabloid with the understated headline TERROR ON THE UNDERGROUND. I pointed out that they’d missed the Christmas angle so Lesley held up another tabloid with XMAS TUBE FEAR covering the whole front page. I was tempted to lie back down and pull the covers over my head.
The Commissioner had turned up on TV to state categorically that terrorism was not involved and in this he was backed up by Transport for London and the Home Office. It was strongly hinted that a water leak had undermined the platform and caused a localised collapse. The damage was confined to the platform and a resumption of train services was expected in time for the Boxing Day sales.
There was a noticeable absence of CCTV footage or even stuff caught on phone cameras. I discovered later that whatever my friend the Earthbender had done it had fried every chip within ten metres and degraded cameras and phones out to another twenty.
‘Congratulations,’ said Lesley. ‘After this, nobody will even remember the Covent Garden fire.’
‘Do I get a name check?’ I asked.
‘No, amazingly enough,’ said Lesley. ‘Because as they were digging you out a heavily pregnant woman went into labour and gave birth in the casualty triage point practically in front of the cameras.’
‘I’ll bet that got their attention,’ I said.
‘Gets better,’ said Lesley. ‘She had twins.’
That couldn’t possibly be a deliberate distraction by Nightingale or whoever it was who was supposed to arrange these things. I mean, you’d have to have teams of pregnant women on standby – it just wasn’t practical. Damn, but the newspaper editors must be banging their heads on their desks trying to cram the words ‘miracle’ and ‘tot’ into their headlines.
‘My money’s on Christmas Miracle Twins,’ I said.
‘XMAS TWIN TOTS BIRTH JOY,’ said Lesley. ‘The
‘Has anyone else visited?’ I asked. Seawoll and Stephanopoulos were not going to be happy.
