Angel Kate (3 page)

Hard-bitten after years of experience, O'Reilly and Piggott looked grimly at each other.

They sympathised with the nurse's desperation. Lose Tom Galvan? It
was
unthinkable…

But when the chips were down even a neuro-surgeon was only human. And they both knew the score. This one wasn't going to make it. No one could save Tom Galvan now.

T
he senior consultant in General Surgery fished out his Blackberry and rang home.

'I'm leaving in five minutes.'

'Do hurry up, darling, you're going to miss the Pavlova.' Mary sounded annoyed and he couldn't blame her, single-handedly holding the fort with their guests, four visiting American VIPs.

 Pavlova, his favourite pudding! Wretched woman, interrupting his evening with her neurotic bowels. But the Night Sister had been right to call him: it might have turned out to be an early obstruction and Mrs Lah-di-dah was paying the earth to be sure of Professor Davy's personal attention.

And St Crispin's benefited, Frank saw to that.

For a man of his age the Professor was in fair shape. Ignoring the lift, he came nimbly down the   stairs leading to the main foyer of the Maynard private wing. It was surgery that kept him so spry at sixty-three. He loved his job. Not one of them had dared hint at the looming spectre of Frank Davy's retirement.
Let 'em dare!

Glass doors glided open at his approach. A shallow bank of steps flanked the entrance and lent a certain grandeur to the private wing. To the side was the slope of a wheelchair ramp.

The Professor paused, filling his lungs with a deep draught of night air. The last niggle of irritation wafted away on the breeze which was now teasingly revealing the bald spot in his thinning hair. Definitely a touch of spring tonight. Pity he'd had to refuse the offer of a coffee with that charming Night Sister upstairs …

Now if I hadn't told Mary I was on my way I could have taken Sister Lewis up on that coffee. 

But there was a raspberry pavlova waiting. And, of course, the visiting American consultants.

The Bentley was parked close by. Elderly but well-preserved, mused Professor Davy fondly, and that goes for the two of us. Never given me a moment's trouble, have you, old girl. Not in fifteen years.

He turned the key in the polished walnut dashboard  and immediately the engine purred as if it ran on cream. Humming 'Love Me Do', he drove slowlyg along the one-way system, past the mortuary and the chapel, turning right when he reached the exit road. Then all of a sudden,
'What
the devil!!'
he exploded.

Out of the shadows raced a tall nurse, right into the Bentley's path - arms waving wildly, grasping the handle even as he slowed to a halt, wrenching the driver's door open and urgently clutching at his  sleeve.

'Professor Davy!' the nurse gasped, 'come quickly, quickly! Mr Galvan's very badly injured. We may be too late.'

The words tumbled from Kate's lips in an urgent gabble, but with immediate effect. 'Hop in, lass!'

 Ignoring the 10 mph limit he sped round to A&E, abandoning his car at the ambulance entrance, following hot on Kate's heels as the desperate staff nurse raced back into the bright lights of Casualty.

Much later, Kate couldn't believe what she'd done. Dragged
the Professor out of his Bentley, racing him to Tom Galvan's side about thirty seconds before the SHO himself arrived on the scene to get the pasting of his career.

Rapidly the head of General Surgery assessed Tom's injuries, calling down the wrath of the gods on every doctor within scolding distance.

And at this point Mike rolled up: he'd been genuinely detained with another emergency but this didn't save him from the great man's blistering Welsh tongue. 'Blithering idiots, the lot of you!' he was storming - a general description that included every member of the team including Kate herself—and quite deservingly, she was agreeing silently as she cut away Tom Galvan's clothing and prepared him for surgery.

'I find Tom in a state of shock and not a doctor in sight! Now get him into theatre
immediately,
d'you hear me?'

'Yes, sir.' The SHO's freckled face was grimly adult, no trace of boyishness now. Em, the medical student, rushed up with a Giving Set for Dr Filing to administer fluids. Kate ripped open the sterile pack while a third-year student nurse scurried off to fetch a drip stand.

'Haven't you got that drip up yet?
'

'Just—er—seeing to it, sir,' muttered Mike, struggling to find a vein in Tom Galvan's right arm.

'Professor!
' interrupted Kate, her voice sharp with urgency. For even as the riot act was being read over him, Tom Galvan's face was altering to an ominous pallor.

'Oh shit!
' muttered the surgeon beneath his breath as his experienced clinical eye warned that Galvan had perhaps two minutes to live. He wrenched off his jacket and rolled his sleeves up tight over surprisingly muscular forearms. It wouldn't be the first time he'd operated in his shirt sleeves.

'He needs blood. Five units immediately and probably another four litres to come. Staff Nurse—I want two more Giving Sets and two drip stands and on the double. We'll give him the blood twice as fast.'

Kate moved like greased lightning.

'As for
you,
boyo,' continued Frank, breathing down Dr Filing's neck, 'if he's not on the table and ready for me in seconds, I'll have y'r guts for garters.'

Now it was Mike's turn to blench. The duty registrar came bursting into the emergency theatre, his white coat spattered with dark red spots, face shocked and anxious.

'
Mister
Brownley,' observed Professor Davy with ominous sing-song calm. 'Good of you to pop in and see us.'

'Appalling!' Mr Brownley was shaking his head over the unconscious neuro-surgeon. 'Tom Galvan of all people. Hell of a decent bloke.' He peered at the more obvious injuries and whistled through his teeth. 'Really don't like the look of that. What are you going to tackle first, Frank?'

Scrubbed and gowned, Kate stood shivering with shock by the instruments trolley. She fixed her eyes on Mr Galvan's face as if committing every inch of torn and bruised flesh and bone to memory. In fact she was trying to relate this battered mess with the face she remembered in the car park. With half of her concentration she picked up fragments of what the two surgeons were discussing … shattered arm … miracle … smallest movement could have sent a sliver of bone ripping through the main artery to the left hand … 'Is he going to make it, do you think?' Simon Brownley's lean face was shocked and grave. The Professor's response was brisk. 'Not if we stand around gossiping. Now make yourself useful, Mr Brownley—get a haematology technician to come in and crossmatch that blood immediately.'

The adrenal glands were already responding to the excitement of challenge, pouring their secretions into the surgeon's bloodstream as he extended a gloved hand for the first instrument. The surge of adrenalin drove the last thought of raspberry pavlova from the Professor's keenly concentrating brain. 'We're going to pull our man through,' he pronounced to his team with grand and confident optimism.

And behind her mask Staff Nurse Wisdom held her breath. She was banking on it.

*  *  *

Next morning, just as she was going off-duty and heading for the locker room,  Kate was hailed in the main entrance hall. Professor Davy had been making a visit to Critical Care before starting his ward rounds. He was smiling. Kate smiled back, her hopes rising.

'Our Tom's holding his own. Not out of the woods by any means, but he's still with us.'

Still with us …
! Kate felt nauseous with fear and fatigue.

'Sent a rocket round your department, mind you, but it turns out no one was to blame. Brownley was dealing with an obstetric emergency, and that whipper-snapper SHO —forget exactly what his excuse was but it held water. More hands on deck, that's what's needed in A & E. What did you say your name was again? Kate Wisdom?'

Wisdom—now that rings a bell,
mused the professor, observing the dark circles under Kate's tired brown eyes and the drained pallor of her skin. But of course it couldn't be … Archie Wisdom's daughter an RGN? Just not possible. A girl like that wouldn't be working in a provincial hospital in a sedate cathedral city. She'd be at Guy's or Tommy's, sticking with the London scene.

'Away to your bed, girlie. That was one scary night for us all. I don't mind admitting it now, see. If we'd lost Tom I'd never have forgiven myself. But we'll get him through this, won't we, have him back at St Crispin's almost as good as new. I'm ready to take a bet on it, I am.'

At this, Kate heaved a mighty sigh of relief. Her sudden smile was like the sun breaking through and  Professor Davy, on the receiving end, mentally revised his first impression of her as a rather prim-looking young woman.

'I'm just starting my nights off,' she said wistfully, wishing for once that she was going to be back on A&E that evening so she could keep a close eye on the neuro-surgeon's progress.

 'Well you've earned your break,' the Professor said kindly, putting his hand on her bare arm. And the eyes of those who passed along the corridor gleamed with curiosity because very senior consultants did not as a rule fondle junior staff nurses in public places.

 The professor strolled away and Kate hesitated for a moment, deep in thought. She'd dearly like to slip up to CCU and see Mr Galvan with her own eyes. See that all was as well as could be expected, considering the gravity of his injuries.

After all, she wouldn't be back for the next six nights. Yes, she'd do that. Kate took the lift up to the second floor.

But they were very busy in the Unit and it wasn't the most convenient moment to interrupt the day staff and ask for a progress report. Peering through the glass screens, she could see that seven of the ten beds were occupied, each surrounded by its quota of the sort of machinery that figured in a layman's nightmare visions. Seven people who were very ill indeed. But which one was her man?

The level of heat was getting to her, and she winced at the trickle of sweat stealing down between her shoulder-blades and the constriction in her throat as if she too breathed only with difficulty.

Nothing for it but to go on home. Her shoulders drooped in weary disappointment. Come off it, Katie, she scolded herself. You can't afford to get wound up about patients; a nurse would soon burn out if she didn't exercise some self-control.

Just then, one of the masked and gowned nurses moved aside, and there Tom lay, attached to all manner of equipment. Kate's tired eyes noted IV infusions, a urinary catheter, electro-encephalogram monitoring brain activity; and Tom himself—at such a time she couldn't think of him as Mr Galvan, the invulnerable professional—covered only by a sheet from under which clear plastic tubes snaked down into Redivac containers already filling with the seepage of blood-stained fluids draining from the liver repair.

But he was breathing for himself and seemed to be in a drugged post-operative sleep, his face partially obscured by the naso-gastric tube taped across his left cheek.

'Looking for someone?' demanded a sarcastic voice. Kate gave a start, glancing round for an instant before her eyes travelled back to Tom Galvan's still form. The anaesthetist clicked her tongue impatiently. The last thing she needed was lovesick nurses trooping in and out all day to gawp at the hospital heart-throb. But she softened a bit when this drained, weary staff nurse explained that she'd been there when they operated on Mr Galvan and she'd popped up for a moment to see how he was.

'Torn liver, shattered arm… he's as well as can be expected. Bit of an alarming sight at the moment, of course,' acknowledged the doctor, 'but that's just superficial bruising and oedema. Got two lovely black eyes.'

The ashen-faced staff nurse couldn't raise even a ghost of a smile.

'Must have had quite a whack on the head, but we're monitoring that. Of course he's not out of the woods yet,' she said, repeating Frank Davy's words, 'and I shouldn't like to be there when he wakes up and realises that arm's been well and truly plastered.'

'Thank goodness it was his left,' sighed Kate in weary relief.

'Well he's left-handed! I dread to think what this is going to do to Tom's career.'

*  *  *

Dr Mallory was coming over for supper. The usual arrangement when Kate started her nights off. Her routine was to sleep till mid-afternoon then take a brisk walk to the shops and stock up with eggs, cheese and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. A malted wholegrain bloomer from Ye Olde Bakehouse completed her list. And a couple of bottles of red wine.

Today she cycled wearily back from the hospital, her legs aching from being on her feet most of the night. She put her bike away in the empty garage at the bottom of the garden. Sometimes on a really wet day Kate did think about getting a car, but the fresh air revived her after night duty and  she really did want to manage without because she had to think about James. If he moved in, he wouldn't be want to leave his Toyota in the narrow side-street.  

Kate was never too tired to experience that little thrill of pleasure at unlocking her gloss-green front door. 'Hello house, have you missed me?' she called, stepping over  the pile of post on the mat.

Her very own home, a proper house not a flat, decorated and furnished just as she wanted. Of course, she only owned half the cottage. It was semi-detached, dating back to the early 1800s with walls so thick you would never know someone lived on the other side of the dividing wall. Her neighbours were a dear old couple with a picture-perfect garden that mirrored Kate's. Thanks to Henry and Hetty the dreaded carrot fly shouldn't be able to find her neat rows of carrots. She'd nap for a couple of hours, then pop round and see if there was anything they wanted from the shops.

She picked up her post and found a chunky envelope hidden among the usual unwanted circulars. With eager fingers she ripped it open. Photographs of little Ben, proudly showing off his new grey-and-red nursery-school uniform, his happy face smiling up at her. A more typical one of him looking cheerfully messy with chocolate smeared round his mouth and on his fingers. Pictures that turned her heart over … and a letter that began: 'Kate darling, more pictures for you. I never want you to feel Ben is growing up a stranger to you. As you see, your Easter egg caused enormous pleasure and even more mess! Yes, he's so much like his father and that is understandably painful for you. But, Kate, I see so much of
you
in Ben too …'