BACCHUS AND SANDERSON (DECEASED)
by
Simon Speight
Copyright © 2014 Simon Speight
All rights reserved.
To Sam; everything I do is for you.
Thank you
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Ernest Sanderson was going to die. It had been decided.
Ernest was energetic, fit and healthy. He had yet to descend into senility and could still complete The Times crossword in less than ten minutes. He wasn’t dying because of ill health or infirmity. It was curiosity that was killing this cat.
Ernest’s last day was similar to everyday in the previous month and the next month would have followed the same pattern. He was a man ruled by routine and repetition.
That evening he had stopped for a drink at the town’s only hotel, chatted to a guest for an hour and then; what? Bed? Sleep? Ernest rolled the thought back and forth in his mind, trying to remember. With a reluctant mental shrug, he accepted that he must be dreaming. How else was it happening?
Looking down on the frantic activity in the back of the ambulance, Ernest watched as the paramedic worked, fighting to save a life. The ambulance lurched heavily around corners, braking at the last minute to maintain speed.
The monitors beeped intermittently, uneven and spasmodic. This, he thought, was a struggle that wasn’t going to be won.
Adrenalin, defibrillation, CPR, oxygen. He heard the hiss of the oxygen leaking out of the facemask and sensed the panic that the paramedic was struggling to conceal. He could see that the man on the stretcher was gravely ill, sweaty, with a pale waxen pallor, his breath coming in uneven, ragged gasps. He was a fighter waiting for the final blow.
Ernest stared at the body, uncertain. The man on the stretcher was familiar in a vague, undefined, out of focus way. A friend perhaps?
His dreams weren’t usually as detailed as this one. The intensity varied according to the medication he had taken that day. Some combinations provoked dreams that were colourful and vivid. Others had a hazy, sepia hue. Tonight’s dream was of a different order of magnitude. Ordinarily, he was the star; tonight he was the audience.
He pushed the nagging familiarity to one side and watched the paramedic putting the body through its paces. Ernest saw her inject drugs, perform CPR, get a steady pulse, only to lose it seconds later. Did it matter whether he lived or died? How his story played out? Not understanding why, Ernest knew that the man’s survival was important, not for altruistic reasons, for something else, though he didn’t know what.
Ernest controlled his thoughts and focused on the scene below. The man’s eyes looked up, staring at the roof of the ambulance where Ernest was floating. As Ernest watched the man his eyes changed; sparkled briefly and appeared to move staring at his own electrode covered chest, before reverting to a blank sightlessness. Ernest followed the eyes to the chest and stared with macabre curiosity. The clothes covering his torso melted away showing his loose, purple veined, pale skin. He concentrated on the partially naked body. The skin, in small incremental stages, began dissolving leaving Ernest looking at the viscera beneath the skin. He fixed his gaze on the paramedic’s hands, watching as she performed chest compressions, hovering millimetres above her patient’s heart. Watching as each compression pumped a squirt of blood to the lungs and on to his extremities.
***
“Who’s your next client?” A short, slight boy in a linen shirt, doublet and colourful hose floated backwards and forwards in front of a pretty girl with an immature boyish body. The girl looked at a translucent clipboard, frowned and said,
“It’s not clear. Two possible that might die or might not.” Tapping a button on the clipboard she read their death stories.
“One appears to be from natural causes. Sedentary and unsatisfactory lifestyle choices with body shape issues. The other is a drug-induced heart attack. Massive heart attack, in suspicious circumstances. He’s looking like he might be my boy.”
The boy looked over her shoulder at the clipboard.
“Both still trying. Bets?”
***
Ernest stared down, fascinated. The heart had gone into atrial fibrillation, the beat rapid and irregular; barely able to pump blood around the body. The walls of the heart slowly dissolved leaving only the cardiac arteries visible. The arteries transformed from opaque to translucent and then to transparent, allowing Ernest to watch a blood clot form, flow forward and then block the artery. A second and then a third blood clot dislodged, edged forward and blocked adjoining arteries.
The body accepted the fight was over. Ernest watched as the patient’s organs failed. The kidneys stopped filtering his blood. The liver stopped breaking down the poisons of life. The lungs had become flabby and unable to diffuse oxygen into the blood. The blood flow diminished, then stopped, when his heart became too damaged to beat.
He was dead. The paramedic remained hopeful, she had to. Where there’s a pulse there’s life, but when it stopped…
“He’s arrested. Mr Sanderson, Ernest, can you hear me? Charging to 360.” His body arched off the stretcher when the defibrillator shocked his heart for the third time. A weak trace showed on the monitor. Georgina looked towards the sky muttering a brief, ‘thank you.’ She said to her partner,
“Chris, how long? I don’t know if he’ll cope with much more.”
Ernest glared myopically at the paramedic, confused. What had she said? Sanderson? Ernest Sanderson? He stared hard at the body below him. The undefined familiarity firming into realisation.
“2 minutes. Keep him going,” Georgina kept a constant dialogue with her patient, urging him to keep breathing.
This wasn’t the dream he had thought it to be. The sharply defined detail and heightened awareness was his own reality.
“Ernest, stay with me, we’re nearly at the hospital. Shit, he’s arrested again. I’ll start CPR while we get him into resus.”
As the body of Ernest Sanderson convulsed in defeat, his spirit slipped back into the body for its final few seconds on earth.
“Tonight must be heart attack night. Dem’s next door with his second heart attack patient this evening.” said the registrar to the paramedic.
“I hope his doesn’t look as bad as Mr Sanderson.” The doctor turned to the throng of junior doctors and nurses surrounding the stretcher that had been wheeled in and said,
“Let’s take bloods, do an ECG
and get a chest x-ray. Oh shit, he’s arrested again.” Grabbing the defibrillator paddles attached to the defibrillator next to him he said,
“Charge to 360 and clear.” The body on the trolley made a huge spasmodic jerk. No response.
***
The boy resumed his study of the array of changing information displayed on the translucent clipboard.
“‘Natural causes seems to be rallying. His death date is surging forward, looks like he’s good until two thousand and forty. Now, druggie. That’s interesting and unusual, see?” He pointed at the death date on the clipboard.
“The death date’s decreasing toward today’s date but the figure in the brackets shows he was good for another ten years, death date two thousand and twenty four; May fourteenth. Murder or accident?”
***
The registrar was giving rhythmic CPR to the body on the trolley, not realising it was already dead.
“Nothing, charge again and clear. OK lets bag him and…” He pushed the patients eyelids up and shone a light into his eyes.
“No, sorry people, it’s all over. Pupils are fixed and dilated.”
Looking around the room at everyone, he asked,
“Are we agreed?” Nobody said a word it wasn’t necessary.
“Okay, time of death 03:50 a.m. Thank you.”
***
“Well, Juanita, how mysterious. A murder with,”
Juanita interrupted,
“Lots of unfinished business, some not even his. This could take a while.”
The boy added, “Unusual to have unfinished business assigned that’s not yours. This death is being viewed as important.” He glanced at the clipboard and blanched.
“The assignment code doesn’t have a higher priority.” He paused continuing to watch the changing story on the clipboard.
“Why is she treating this death as special?”
***
Mimicking and exaggerating the consultant’s voice and mannerisms, Donna Gray turned to the student nurse beside her, April Baxter, and said,
“Sorry people; this one’s a dud. Nothing we could have done.” Returning to her normal voice, she continued, “He’s so up himself. ‘Sorry people’? He’s from Sunderland, not San Francisco.” She looked down at the body on the table with undisguised distaste.
“Well, here we are again. You, a corpse and me. I won’t be sorry when my six months in A&E ends. Chloe in HR hates me. First I got Geriatrics, then A&E. Do you know where they’re sending me next? Oncology.”
April shook her head in resignation and turned towards the trolley. She had heard it all before, never quite the same. Whatever tasks she was given to do, you could be sure Donna would have something to say about them. Death was this week’s topic; last week had been bodily waste. Commodes, urine bottles and vomit bowls. She had been convinced she was the ward’s shit shoveller. If it came from an orifice, it was hers. She was an exceptional nurse, which went some way to explained why Sister Blacken accepted her brash over confident attitude and forgave her idiosyncrasies.
They had met and become friends on their first day of training. Donna wanted to have a good time whenever the opportunity presented itself. Nursing gave her access to a steady stream of young, bright doctors. She considered herself an important part of their on going education. Why waste years of conscientious study into the workings of the human body? She ranked the various specialities according to their ability to put their theoretical knowledge to a more practical use. Top of her list this week were surgeons but she had high hopes for the gynaecologist she was dating at the weekend.
“What would you prefer to do? Mr Sanderson or his belongings.”
“You can have the corpse, I’ll double glove then start on his effects.”
Ten minutes into the task, they heard an unusual noise. The sound of cymbals crashing and cannons firing combined with the buzz of vibration, reverberated around the silent resus bay. Shaken, Donna looked at April and said,
“What is that?”
“The 1812 overture I think.”
“What?”
“The 1812 overture, Tchaikovsky.”
Hissing in reply, Donna said,
“Where’s it coming from?” She looked at the pile of clothing she had been inventorying and said,
“Oh shit, his trousers are moving.”
“His phone. It’s his phone, in his trousers.”
Sliding a hand into the pocket of the folded trousers, she looked down at the glowing screen of the iPhone.
“Thrasher, Thrasher & Braebourne. Who gets calls at four thirty in the morning from a solicitor?”
“Quick, answer it, before they ring off.”
Donna looked at the screen, looked up at April who signalled her to hurry up and then pressed the green button to answer the call.
“Hello?”
A cultured well-spoken voice snapped a reply,
“Who are you? Never mind, get me Ernest Sanderson.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible he’s …”
“I don’t care what he’s doing. Interrupt him, and put him on this telephone.”
Her voice was cold as ice, brittle with anger.
“I really can’t …”
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough for you. He did always favour simple companions.” Continuing in a sarcastic tone and speaking with extreme care, as you would speak to a young child or someone who was especially slow, she said,
“Ask Ernest to come to the telephone, better still give him a message. Tell him that actions have consequences, and these consequences will affect his longevity. Tell him that now would be a good time to leave my family alone. Whatever he thinks he has, is nothing, and he will never get to use it against me.”
Before the woman could hang up, Donna blurted out,
“He died, earlier this evening. He’s dead, a heart attack”
All that Donna could hear was shallow, regular breathing, and then a quiet, unpleasant, chuckle.
“That was quick; his longevity has already been affected.”
When she was sure the phone had been disconnected Donna ran to the workstation, grabbed some paper and a pen and began transcribing the message that the woman had given to her for Ernest Sanderson.
“What did she say? What are you writing?” Waving her hand at April to silence her, she stared into space and then began writing everything she could remember. Once she had written as much as she could recollect, she handed it across to April.
After reading it for a few moments, she asked,
“She really said all of that? The threats to him?”
“She was as mad as a hatter, raving about him looking into her business; intimating she would kill him and then in the end how he had saved her a job.”
“Are you OK, you’ve gone a bit pale?”
“I’m fine. Let’s get finished, get this poor chap to the morgue, and contact his relatives to let them know what’s happened to him. I’ll finish searching through his effects and then we can move him.”
April removed the last tubes and needles and draped a sheet over his face as a mark of respect.
“Done, I’ll call the morgue and ask them to collect him. Have you found anything?”
“Nothing, not a thing. Just a business card for the same firm of solicitors with the name of one of the partners on, Gerald Thrasher, and his mobile number. The card itself just has the company name and the number for the solicitor on it. Nothing else. His wallet has sixty pounds, a couple of credit and debit cards, and he had a key ring in his jacket with four keys on it. Nothing with an address or phone number for him, just the solicitor’s card. When they open in the morning we’ll have to call them. Mr…” she looked down at the card to remind herself of the name,
“Mr Thrasher can notify the family.”
April had started pacing around the room, muttering to herself in a distracted fashion. She stopped by the stretcher with Ernest Sanderson on it. Removing the sheet, she began examining his body in
minute detail. Confused, Donna asked,
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring her, April continued to do a detailed search of Ernest’s body, looking between his fingers and toes, under his nails and even behind his ears.
“April, what are you looking for?”
“Needle marks, other than the ones he would have received from us or the paramedics during his treatment. How many times while you have been training as a nurse have you had a telephone call like the one you answered tonight? Let me answer for you, never. He won’t be autopsied he died of natural causes. But they didn’t hear the phone call you heard. That’s why we have to try and find something. Otherwise, by the time we come on shift tomorrow he’ll be ash at the bottom of the furnace.”
Donna considered what April had said before answering.
“A registrar I dated said that if you had a history of heart disease in the family stay clear of cocaine, as that can induce a heart attack in the right circumstances. So can adrenaline and that’s almost impossible to prove, as your system would be flooded with it anyway. We don’t know who called for an ambulance; we don’t know where he was brought in from. If we can’t see anything on the body, then we have nothing but an angry woman, voicing empty threats, and our over active imaginations.”
They stood looking at the body trying to work out if they had missed anything.
“I’ll put his clothes in a bag then we had better move him to the mortuary, so we’re ready for the next patient.”
“Donna, give me a syringe and a needle.” Without hesitating, Donna passed her a ten-millilitre syringe and a sterile needle from the tray. April fitted the needle into the syringe; she placed the point of the needle against a vein in his arm and slid it into the vein. “OK, take the blood and then we can get him down to the mortuary. I’ll send the sample to John for a tox screen; we should have a result by the time we’re back on shift. I’ll make sure he knows it’s for our eyes only.”
“I’ll leave a note for the day shift to contact the solicitor and let him know about Ernest Sanderson’s death.”
Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) Page 1
