Donor sd-1

by Ken McClure

  He squirmed down the tray, trying to get as far from the door as possible, but he was still vulnerable to a casual upward glance from below. To combat this he manoeuvred himself into the tiny gap between the top of Angela’s body and the ceiling of the fridge and lay still on top of the dead woman, as if locked in some hellish embrace.

  As the minutes passed and there was no sound from outside, he started to have doubts. Was it silent because of the heavy insulation on the fridge doors and walls, or was there really no one out there? After all, the voices needn’t have been those of people on their way to the mortuary.

  The fridge door suddenly opened and light flooded in. Dunbar froze. He saw that the head cloth had fallen away from Angela’s face. Please God no one had come for her! He held his breath.

  With unutterable relief, he heard the lower tray being slid out. The pig was removed, to the accompaniment of much grunting and groaning from its bearers.

  The fridge door slammed shut again, causing a sudden rise in internal air pressure that hurt Dunbar’s ears. When the buzzing stopped, he found himself in deep, dark silence again. He was surprised at how quickly the air inside the fridge was used up. Although it was cold, he was soon aware of a film of sweat forming on his forehead and of starting to feel generally uncomfortable. Time to leave.

  He started to wriggle his way up to the front again, inevitably becoming less and less reverential towards Angela as he manoeuvred awkwardly in the confined space. He finally reached the bulkhead over the door and stretched down his right arm to grip the release pin on the clasp. There was just enough room for his arm if he kept it in one orientation, but when he tried to turn it to grip the pin properly he couldn’t do so and was forced to bend his wrist round at an unnatural angle. To his horror, the pin came clean away and fell with a clang on to the empty tray below.

  Fear gripped him like a vice. His throat tightened and his head filled with nightmare thoughts. He was trapped. There wasn’t room for him to get down between the top tray and the wall of the fridge. The pin must be at least two feet below the limit of his reach, not that he could see it in the dark, anyway. Panic welled up in his throat but throwing in the towel and yelling for help would be of no use. The insulation on the fridge would reduce any sound to a murmur, and in any case there was no one out there to hear it. He’d be yelling his way into eternity and using up the limited air supply even faster.

  He rolled on to his back and tried to get his wits back. He ran through his surroundings in his head, the framework, the dimensions of the trays, the gaps between the trays and the walls, the gap between his body and the ceiling. There was only one chance, he concluded. If he could dislodge the top tray and tip it up so that it fell down through the frame, giving him access to the lower tray, there was a chance he could get out of this mess. The trouble was, both he and Angela were lying on it.

  There wasn’t room to dislodge it sideways, he reckoned. It would have to be dislodged front to back and then twisted so that it fell diagonally through the frame. The chance of achieving this seemed so slim that he didn’t want to think about it. He simply started trying. He felt that the bones in his fingers must snap as he applied more and more pressure to the metal tray in an attempt to lever it and the combined weight of two bodies over the end of the frame. At the third attempt he managed it, sweat running down his forehead and stinging his eyes despite the cold. Fear was triumphing over temperature.

  The next thing was to edge the tray forward. This time his arms had to take the strain as he took as much of his own weight as possible off the tray by pressing his hands against the side walls. He hooked his feet over the back edge of the tray and inched it slowly forwards so that as much of it as possible rode up on the front lip of the frame until it was stopped by the door.

  Dunbar took a breather. He was literally poised between life and death. His right foot was going to decide the outcome of his predicament. If, when he thumped it down hard on the bottom edge of the tray, the tray didn’t twist and go crashing down through the gap, complete with Angela and himself, he could forget any other plan. There wouldn’t be any.

  He took a moment to focus all his attention on the toe of his shoe. There could be no drawing back in deference to pain. Every ounce of strength he possessed had to go into the kick. He slowly raised his foot until his heel was stopped by the ceiling — a pitifully small length of travel. He brought his foot down with all the force that fear and focus could muster. The tray twisted and went down through the gap, bottom first. Dunbar and Angela finished up in a semi-erect embrace, leaning against the door.

  Dunbar eased the tray slowly out of the way and tried to prop Angela up in the corner so that he could feel for the pin. After a few seconds, the searching palm of his right hand made contact with the pin. He felt his way up the back of the door until he found the hole for the pin, keeping his left index finger in it until he had the pin in place. He inserted the pin and gave it an almost despairing thump with the heel of his right hand. The clasp released and the door swung slowly and mockingly back. Dunbar put his hands down on the floor outside and dragged himself free. He lay on the floor for a few moments, breathing deeply and looking back at the maw of the fridge that had so nearly become his tomb.

  His relief at being alive gave way to considerations of his present predicament. He had to put things back in order in the fridge and return Angela to her upper berth. He got somewhat unsteadily to his feet and pulled her fully out of the fridge. It took only a moment for him to restore the fallen tray to the top runners and slide it in. When he was satisfied it was running true, he slid it half out again, lifted her up and fed her slowly on to it. He closed her eyes with his finger tips and replaced her head cloth. ‘Requiescat in pace, Angela,’ he said. He slid the tray home and closed the door.

  As he recovered from his ordeal, Dunbar turned his attention to the question of the pig and what had happened to it. He was almost certain that it had been taken to the post-mortem suite along the corridor. The chains above the operating table, he now knew, must be animal hoists. The question was, could he find out what exactly they were doing to it there without being discovered?

  The affair in the mortuary fridge had taken a lot out of him; he had no heart for more heroics, but he did think he could get into the ante-room outside the PM room without being seen. Once in there, he might be able to see something of what was going on inside.

  Dunbar went through his usual routine of listening at the door before opening it and then cautiously looking up and down the corridor. Luck was still with him. He ran along to the door to the PM suite and listened for voices again. He couldn’t hear anything but this was a bit of a gamble. If there was someone in the suite he’d better have his story ready. Nothing too elaborate, he decided. Better to play the bumbling English civil servant just having a look around the hospital. He opened the door; there was no one there. He entered quietly and looked through the glass panel in the door leading to the scrub room. Three jackets were hanging on pegs on the wall. Taking a deep breath, he moved through the scrub room and sidled up to the glass panel in the door leading to the PM room itself.

  He saw what he supposed he had expected: an autopsy being carried out on the pig. Three gowned and masked figures were working on the carcass, which was secured to the table by leather straps. Its insides were exposed through a sweeping incision from its throat to its genitals. The huge operating light above the table illuminated the scene with a brilliance that made the scarlet hellish bright.

  Dunbar was puzzled. Why should the three people at the table be fully gowned, gloved and masked for an animal autopsy? Such precautions were more appropriate for work on a living patient, when aseptic technique was paramount in avoiding subsequent infection. They seemed to be removing certain of the pig’s internal organs and transferring them to plastic wrapping and then to stainless steel containers. Dunbar presumed this was for histological work later in the lab, but then a sudden awful doubt crept into his mind. That was why
they were removing them, wasn’t it? Surely they didn’t intend using the animal’s organs for anything else?

  He tried to make out who the masked figures were but it proved impossible. He gave up and slipped out of the scrub room, through the ante-room and out into the corridor. As soon as he got back to his office he phoned Lisa.

  ‘I know it’s late, but can I come over?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘A pig?’ exclaimed Lisa.

  ‘They were dissecting it with full aseptic precautions.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I think it’s reasonable to assume that it must have had something to do with Ross’s research programme.’

  ‘He’d be using pigs?’

  ‘Almost certainly. The pig stands in line to become man’s best friend in that department. The immunology journals are full of experimental work on them. Their organs are the right size for us if the rejection problems can be dealt with, and there’s a lot of work going on into that.’

  ‘But at night and in the Medic Ecosse Hospital?’ protested Lisa.

  ‘That worries me too,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you. They were treating the pig as if it were a human patient. Gowns, masks, the whole bit. It just made me wonder.’

  ‘Good God you don’t think they were planning to use…?’

  Dunbar’s mind too rebelled against the thought, but he couldn’t dismiss the notion that what he had seen might explain why two patients appeared to have been given the wrong organ.

  ‘But surely you need all sorts of permission and sanctioning for anything like that?’ said Lisa.

  ‘I’m sure you do. Unless you just go ahead and do it anyway.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what they did to Amy? Gave her a pig’s kidney?’

  ‘It’s something we have to consider.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Call London. But first I have to check on something back at the hotel. I’ll ring you later.’

  Dunbar thought hard as he drove to his hotel. He had a clear idea of what he wanted to do next, should it be possible, but felt compelled to consider the consequences. There were people’s sensitivities to consider. He could end up causing great distress. Was it absolutely necessary? Was there a way around it? By the time he reached his room back at the hotel he had concluded not. The only thing left to discover now was if it was possible.

  The files Sci-Med had given him at the outset contained the information he needed. Kenneth Lineham, the boy who had died in Sheila Barnes’s care, had been cremated but Amy Teasdale had been buried. She lay in a churchyard in Lanarkshire. What he was going to request was therefore possible, but he still hesitated before picking up the phone and dialling Sci-Med’s number.

  ‘I want her exhumed.’

  ‘Have you thought this through, Dunbar?’ asked Frobisher, the number two man at Sci-Med who was on call for any important decisions to be made during the night. ‘This is a major undertaking. If we get an official order and exhume the child and you turn out to be wrong, there’ll be merry hell to pay. The backlash could seriously damage Sci-Med. I’m not sure we can take that kind of chance at this stage. All you have to go on is the fact you saw a pig autopsy in the hospital.’

  ‘I’ve thought it through and I think the sooner we exhume her the better,’ said Dunbar. ‘Does it have to be official?’

  ‘Now we’re really getting into dangerous territory,’ said Frobisher. ‘We’re not M15, you know. We can’t go around digging up people willy-nilly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t believe it to be important,’ said Dunbar.

  Frobisher let his breath out slowly between his teeth. ‘There’s nothing we can do until morning, anyway,’ he said. ‘I’ll relay your request to Mr Macmillan when he comes in. He won’t be any happier about it than I am but maybe together we’ll think of some way we can do this without a brass band playing. There’s nothing the television people like better than a bloody exhumation.’

  Dunbar was about to hang up when Frobisher said, ‘Hang on, there’s a lab report here for you. Do you want it now?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Dunbar.

  ‘It’s an analysis of some radioactive debris you sent in. The lab say the source was an industrial isotope used in the testing of radiation shielding.’

  ‘Industrial?’ exclaimed Dunbar. ‘Not medical?’

  ‘Apparently not. They’ve narrowed it down to four possible companies that use this sort of thing, apart, of course, from the Amersham company which makes the stuff.’

  ‘Any of them in Glasgow?’

  ‘Afraid not. None in Scotland at all. The nearest to you would be Baxters on Tyneside.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dunbar.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Something’s troubling you,’ said Kate as she watched Sandy play with the food on his plate. He’d just turned over the same forkful of mashed potato for the third time.

  ‘Mmmm,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, out with it then,’ demanded Kate.

  ‘I suppose it was Amanda being so low yesterday. It really got to me. I felt sure she’d be better not worse. To see her like that was just so-’

  ‘But she was much better today,’ interrupted Kate. ‘Just like the nurse said she would be, and she’ll probably be even better tomorrow. You’ll see. They’re very pleased with her. Yesterday was just because of the tests they had to do.’

  ‘But they didn’t have to do them. That’s just the point. She’d already had all her immuno-typing done. It must be in her notes. Why did they put her through all that pain all over again?’

  Kate shook her head as if it were an unreasonable question. ‘You know much more about these things than I do,’ she said. ‘But the nurse said they were just routine procedures to check her immunology… something or other.’

  ‘Immunology pattern. Yes, I know, but that’s all been done before. Her blood group, her tissue type, everything has already been done. It all had to be done before they entered her on the transplant register. Why put her through the misery of a marrow puncture?’

  Kate shrugged and said, ‘Well, I suppose I’m happy to assume that the hospital knows best.’

  ‘Hospitals depend on that,’ said Sandy sourly.

  ‘Who’s being cynical, then?’ said Kate with a cajoling smile.

  He relaxed a little and said, ‘All right, maybe I am worrying unnecessarily but I work in hospitals, remember. I know they’re not infallible. Mix-ups happen, mistakes are made, wrong tests are ordered, overdoses are given. In many ways they’re the most dangerous places on earth. Reservoirs of infection posing as havens of hygiene and sterility.’

  Kate had heard it all before. ‘Look, if you’re really upset about this test thing, why don’t you make an appointment to see one of the doctors and ask them outright about it? I’m sure they’d be happy to tell you.’

  ‘I suppose because I don’t want to be seen as a troublemaker. They’re treating our daughter for free and they’re the best chance she’s got. In fact, they’re probably the only one. It would look like ingratitude and, believe me, I’m not ungrateful.’

  ‘I still think it would be all right if you asked politely. After all, you’re in the business, so to speak.’

  ‘Hospitals hate that worse than anything,’ said Sandy. ‘They prefer complete ignorance in their patients and relatives, followed by unquestioning acceptance of anything they care to tell you.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to ask them, why not ask Clive Turner? Maybe he knows why they did the tests again. He’s always been very nice to us and you wouldn’t question anything he’s done.’

  ‘Now that’s a good idea,’ he agreed, brightening. ‘I might just do that. In fact,’ — he looked at his watch — ‘I’ll try to catch him right now.’

  ‘Paging Dr Turner for you,’ said the hospital voice.

  ‘Dr Turner.’

  ‘Clive, it’s Sandy Chapman here.’

  ‘Hello ther
e. I was just thinking about you folks this morning. How’s Amanda doing?’

  ‘That’s really why I’m calling. She was quite ill when we went to see her yesterday and a nurse told me that she’d had her dialysis withheld while they did some tests on her, including a marrow puncture.’

  ‘A marrow puncture?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Sandy, acknowledging the surprise in Turner’s voice. ‘The nurse there said it wasn’t unusual for transplant patients. I pointed out that Amanda has already had all these tests done, but I don’t think I got through to her. I didn’t like to request a meeting with the doctors over it because I didn’t want to make a fuss but, on the other hand, I’d still like to know why they put her through that. I thought you might have some idea?’

  ‘I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t,’ replied Turner. ‘Amanda’s immunological data is all known and recorded on the register.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why they’d want to repeat it all, although I suppose there must have been a reason… I’m trying to think if there’s any way I could find out for you without stepping on sensitive toes.’

  ‘I don’t want to make waves, but it’s something that’s been niggling away at me.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Turner. ‘There’s a chap I know over there called Steven Dunbar. He’s a doctor but he’s not actually on the medical staff so he won’t be inclined to take offence. Maybe I’ll ask him if he can find out for us discreetly. I know him through the negotiations to have Amanda admitted there.’

  ‘I think I know him too,’ said Sandy, recognizing the name. ‘He helped me push-start the car one night when it played up. He’s some kind of government official, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right. Truth to tell, you have him to thank for Amanda’s referral to Medic Ecosse being successful. He had the final say over it and didn’t question it at all. Simply gave it his seal of approval. He seemed like a good bloke.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ exclaimed Sandy. ‘He never said. I owe him one.’