“Did he regain consciousness at all?” I asked.
“He woke up briefly,” replied Carmen. “He wasn’t alone – hisdaughter was with him.”
The task of preparing the body to be taken down to themortuary fell to me. This was the one part of the job of nursing that I neverfelt fully prepared for, no matter how many times I did it.
On the way to Thomas’s room I passed Stacey and her fiancé,David. She looked up at me, her tear-stained face full of grief. She let go ofDavid and hugged me.
“It’s OK,” I said as I held her, even though of course itwasn’t.
Nothing could take away the pain of what she had just beenthrough, but if I could offer even the slightest crumb of comfort just from thewarmth of human contact then I had helped, albeit in a small way.
I approached Thomas’s room, steeling myself for the sad taskthat lay ahead. The first thing I would do when I got into the room would be toopen the window, even though it was freezing outside.
This was a nursing tradition that had been taught to me inmy early days by an older nurse who I had worked with in Africa with the RedCross. She was a committed Christian and had claimed that it would help to setthe deceased’s spirit free.
Although I wasn’t much of a believer in the afterlifemyself, it had stuck with me and it always felt like the right thing to do.
Next I would begin the process of laying out the body. Iwould wash the patient from head to toe, and then dress him or her in freshlinen prior to the body being taken down to the morgue. As I went about this, Ialways treated the dead patient with the utmost respect, speaking gently tothem as if they were still alive.
At odds with my generally atheist nature, at these momentsthere was always a small part of me that imagined some small spark ofconsciousness might still exist somewhere. If that were true, then hopefully mywords of comfort might help them along on their journey to wherever theybelieved they might be going.
Or maybe I was just doing it to help me cope better with thetask in hand. Either way, it worked for me.
I was not destined to even get started on these tasks thistime. As I opened the door to the private room I was taken aback to see a veryoddly dressed stranger inside, peering intently at the chart of the bottom ofThomas’s bed.
He was dressed in outdoor clothing, but with anold-fashioned medical white coat draped over the top. If this was some attemptto disguise himself as a doctor it was a pretty lame one, particularly as hewas also wearing a large hiker’s rucksack over the top of the coat.
My first thought on seeing the rucksack was of terrorism. Itwas a reaction I always had now when I saw anyone acting even slightly out ofthe ordinary wearing a rucksack. It was an irrational fear brought on bydecades of terrorist attacks in London and elsewhere.
This man didn’t look like your average terrorist, whateverthat was. I suppose my fears had conditioned me to imagine some young man ofMiddle Eastern origin. This was prejudiced, I know, but too many images in themedia had imprinted this cliché indelibly in my mind.
This man was white and middle-aged – in his early fifties ata guess. Not only did he not look like a terrorist, but also it was illogicalto even think that he might be. Why would anyone want to blow up an emptyhospital room with nothing but a dead body and a cheap, plastic Christmas treein it?
Whoever he was, he ought not to be there, and I had nohesitation in challenging him.
“Who are you?” I demanded, determined not to show any feardespite the distinctly uneasy feeling flooding through my body. “What are youdoing in here?”
“I’m Doctor Gardner,” he said, in a ludicrously posh accentthat just had to be put on as he cast his gaze down at my name badge. “I’m aspecialist, visiting from Harley Street. I’m delighted to meet you, Amy.”
I wasn’t convinced for a moment by his overblown acting. Whodid he think he was, Hugh Grant? I was also not impressed by him ogling mybreasts during his laughably poor performance.
“Don’t give me that,” I replied, “and stop staring at mytits. None of the doctors in this hospital or anywhere else wear white coatsanymore. What they do wear is ID, so where’s yours?”
“Ah yes, one of the chaps down on security was going toprint it off for me earlier this evening,” he ventured. “I must pop down andpick it up at some point.”
I just looked at him with a face that said, “Really?” Ididn’t even have to utter the word. He could see I didn’t believe a word of itand changed tack.
“Look, I’ll come clean,” he said, reverting to a normalaccent. “I’m not a doctor, I’m a scientist attached to the university carryingout some research here. I just need a couple of minutes, that’s all. Then I’llbe out of your hair.”
Was he telling the truth? With his backpack along withwaving a strange metal, wand-like device around in front of him, I guess hecould pass for a scientist, but not a lucid and bona fide one. He looked morelike some crazy character from a sci-fi movie. All he was lacking was the wild,Einstein-style hair.
A more likely explanation was that he was some sort ofescaped mental patient and if that was the case, I could well be in danger. Mindfulof last year’s incident on the ward, I decided the best course of action wouldbe to call for some help.
“I’m sorry, that’s not good enough,” I replied. “Peopledon’t go around hospitals in the middle of the night wearing dubious disguisesunless they’re up to no good.”
“What can I get up to in here?” protested the fake DoctorGardner, gesturing towards the body on the bed. “It’s not as if I’ve come tobump him off, is it?
