I found I didn’t much care as long as the end was quick.
We went into one of the consulting rooms in the now-closed outpatients department. There were only two chairs at a table so we all remained standing.
‘What’s this about?’ I asked.
‘Um,’ said the Medical Director uneasily, ‘we have received a complaint concerning your medical competence.’
‘From whom?’ I said, but I knew who it must have been – either the staff nurse who I’d told to administer the adenosine, or the junior doctor who’d been standing by with the defibrillator.
‘That’s not relevant at this point,’ said the woman.
I personally thought that it was very relevant but saying so wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
I was surprisingly calm – not a tingle to be felt anywhere. I even wordlessly congratulated myself on my control in such a stressful situation.
‘We have decided,’ the woman went on, looking around briefly at the other two, ‘that it would be best if you were suspended from duty while the complaint is investigated. On full pay, of course.’
‘Suspended?’ I said. ‘But why? I used my judgement as a doctor to make a decision that I felt was in the patient’s best interests. Are you doubting my ability to make future decisions?’
There was an awkward silence.
‘We are also concerned by the state of your mental health,’ said the Medical Director.
I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
I couldn’t breathe.
How did they know?
‘What about my mental health?’ I tried to sound as calm as possible.
‘We have reasons to believe that you are suffering from clinical depression.’
Putting the word clinical in front always made something sound much more serious.
‘What reasons?’ I demanded, anger rising within me. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have a slight anxiety problem, that’s all.’
‘Chris, please be reasonable,’ the Medical Director said. ‘Several of your colleagues have raised concerns, noting that you sometimes absent yourself from the department during your shift.’
‘A woman is surely allowed to go to the toilet.’
‘But you don’t go to the toilet, do you, Chris? You go and hide in a cupboard. Jeremy Cook saw you do that yesterday.’
He paused but I said nothing, so he went on.
‘I was concerned enough to use my legal powers to gain access to your medical records. One doesn’t have to take Prozac twice a day just for a slight anxiety problem.’
‘I thought personal medical records were meant to be confidential.’ It was almost a mumble.
‘Not when patients’ lives are at risk.’
‘Are you suggesting that my depression has something to do with the death of a patient?’ I could feel the anger rising in me again and, this time, there was a slight tingling in my fingertips.
‘No.’ It was the other man, the one who had so far remained silent. ‘We are suggesting no such thing. We are simply stating the fact that a complaint has been received and it is the hospital’s decision that you be suspended from duty while the circumstances are investigated. No one at this stage is implying that you have done anything wrong.’
Lawyer, I thought. I wasn’t particularly reassured.
‘Right, then,’ I said, almost in a daze. ‘What do I do now?’
‘You go home,’ said the Medical Director.
‘But first I would like you to sign this,’ the lawyer said quickly, removing a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and placing it on the table along with a pen. I sat down on one of the chairs and read the single paragraph printed on the hospital’s official headed notepaper:
I, Dr Christine Rankin, understand that, following a complaint made against me, I have been suspended from duty at Cheltenham General Hospital pending an investigation into my competence to practise. I undertake that, until that investigation is complete, I will not attempt to gain access to the hospital premises in the role of a clinician. I further undertake that, prior to any hearing that might take place, I will not discuss the details of the said complaint with any of my medical colleagues.
Signed.............................................. Date......................
‘What was the complaint?’ I asked. ‘I can’t undertake not to discuss something I know nothing about.’
‘That you failed to consult with colleagues and administered medication to a patient without due professional care and in a manner likely to have hastened the death of the patient.’
The Medical Director read it from another piece of official notepaper, which he now handed to me. It was the formal notification of my suspension from duty.
Someone had been busy, and on a Sunday.
I picked up the pen and signed the lawyer’s paper.
What else could I do?
I believed that the complaint was justified, that the man’s death had been my fault.
I was a bad person.
My phone rang. I looked down. It was Grant calling on his mobile.
I ignored it and, after a while, it stopped.
The time readout on the phone showed it was 04.50.
What was Grant doing up at ten to five in the morning?
For that matter, what was I doing up?
After a few minutes the phone started ringing again. I went on ignoring it and after six rings it stopped once more. It rang again – six more rings, then it would go to voicemail. It stopped.
Beep-beep.
A text arrived. It was from Grant.
‘My darling, PLEASE, PLEASE answer your phone.’
I was sitting in my Mini. I had been all night.
I couldn’t remember driving out of the hospital car park. In fact, I couldn’t really remember driving at all but I must have. How else could I have come to be where I was?
And where was I?
I looked out through the windscreen, past the raindrops on the glass to the view beyond.
Some rightly say that Clifton Suspension Bridge is the most beautiful creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel although, in truth, it wasn’t completed until five years after his death to the final design of two different civil engineers, and only based on Brunel’s original.
But it certainly looked magnificent to me now, dimly lit only by occasional streetlights at this time of the morning. The bridge spans 702 feet across the Avon Gorge, crossing some 245 feet above the river surface. It said so on a notice near one end.
What was I doing here?
I had asked myself that question at least a hundred times.
Did I really intend to throw myself off?
That had been my plan, and that was why I’d driven more than an hour from Cheltenham to get here. I had even walked across the bridge, searching for the best place to go over the side, the place from where death would be most certain, most instant.
Was 245 feet high enough?
Surely it was, especially if I landed on the rocks rather than in the water.
But I had been back in the car now for the last six hours, just sitting here churning things over and over in my head, trying desperately to make sense of my life – or my death.
It wasn’t that I was frightened of dying. I was much more frightened of living, of having to face up to what was happening to me.
The phone rang again.
This time, almost automatically, I picked it up and answered. ‘Hello.’
‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ Grant wailed from the other end. He was crying. ‘Where are you?’
‘Bristol.’
‘Bristol! What are you doing in Bristol?’
‘Looking at Clifton Suspension Bridge.’
The significance wasn’t lost on him.
‘Oh my God, Chris!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do anything. Just stay calm. Please, my darling, don’t do anything! Think of the boys. I’m on my way.’
He
disconnected.
Strange, I thought. He didn’t ask me why.
I got out of my Mini and leaned against it, stretching away the kinks in my spine. I could do with a cigarette but I’d smoked my last one at least an hour ago.
The phone rang once more. It was Grant again.
‘I’m in the car on my way to you,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Please, my love . . . don’t . . .’ It was a desperate plea.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t kill yourself on the roads trying to get here too fast.’
I laughed inwardly at the irony of what I’d just said.
But, if I were going to jump, I’d have probably done it by now.
‘I’m fine,’ I said again, feeling dreadfully weak at the knees. ‘Please just come and get me.’
A police car came hurtling round the corner with its blue lights flashing. Someone else was also having a bad day, I thought, but the car pulled up next to me and two young policemen climbed out.
‘Are you Christine Rankin?’ one of them asked.
I nodded, unable to speak from emotion and with tears streaming down my face.
I was saved – I was safe.
At least for the time being.
5
I spent the next four hours confined in a police cell at Bristol police station.
‘But I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I complained.
‘It’s for your own protection,’ they said. ‘It won’t be for long. We’ve sent for a doctor.’
I sat on the solid concrete bed and stared at the stark grey walls.
How perfectly they summed up my life.
For the last year, I may have been walking around and seemingly living a normal existence but, inside, I was locked into a grey prison cell – closed in by four great walls created by my own consciousness. I was trapped and, like in the nightmare, the four walls were getting ever closer. I felt I could easily reach out and touch them all at once. One day soon they would undoubtedly squeeze the very breath from my body.
Grant arrived before the doctor but, even so, not until nine-thirty.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long,’ he said. ‘I had to get the boys ready for school and also arrange a day off from work.’
I was not much placated. ‘You said you were on your way here over four hours ago.’
‘I know I did. I’m sorry.’ He was embarrassed. ‘I did set out to come but I also called the police and begged them to go and find you. I was still in Cheltenham when they called me back to tell me they had found you and you were all right.’ He was almost in tears. ‘So I went back home to see to the boys.’
I sighed.
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I said that you’d had to stay at the hospital for an emergency.’
‘How did you know that I hadn’t?’ I asked.
‘I woke just before five and you weren’t in the bed. I tried calling your phone but you didn’t answer so I called the hospital. Someone told me you hadn’t been working and you’d been sent home at seven o’clock last night. That made me desperately worried and very frightened.’
Now he was in tears.
‘Please take me home,’ I said.
‘I can’t. We have to wait for the doctor.’
‘I’m perfectly OK. I don’t want to see another doctor.’
‘Darling, you’re not OK. You just tried to commit suicide.’
‘I did not,’ I said indignantly. ‘If I had tried, I would be dead already. I admit that I did think about it but I didn’t do it. I’m fine.’
He shook his head. ‘Chris, you are not fine. You’re just skin and bone. You won’t eat. You don’t sleep. You don’t talk to me. You’ve cut yourself off from all our friends. You don’t even speak to your mother any more. You need help.’
‘What I need is to go home.’
We did go home but not until the afternoon, after I’d been seen by not one but two doctors.
Both of them recommended sending me to a psychiatric hospital.
‘Why?’ I asked them.
‘For your own safety.’
‘But I am perfectly safe with my husband looking after me.’
However, my husband wasn’t so sure.
‘Maybe it would be for the best to do as the doctors ask,’ he said.
‘No. I want to go home.’
The doctors had a conference between just the two of them.
I was worried.
I was all too aware that they had the ability to detain me against my will under the terms of the Mental Health Act. I had even occasionally used the powers myself for seriously disturbed patients, especially those brought in after self-harming. It is known colloquially as being ‘sectioned’ because it refers to the various ‘sections’ of the Act that allow for compulsory hospital treatment for individuals considered to be a danger to themselves or to others.
‘Don’t let them force me to go,’ I said urgently to Grant. ‘You are what is officially known as my Nearest Relative and you have the power to prevent it.’ I could tell that I was putting him in a difficult situation. ‘I promise not to do anything like this again.’ I grabbed his hand. ‘Darling, please!’
He looked at me.
‘But you don’t keep your promises,’ he said. ‘You’re always promising that you will eat something but then you don’t. So why should I believe you this time?’
‘You must.’ I was almost begging. ‘I didn’t do anything, did I? I would never do that to the boys.’
Grant shook his head and, not for the first time, I wondered if he was on my side.
The doctors finished their discussion.
‘It is our joint opinion,’ one of them said, ‘that you should be in hospital. Are you prepared to be admitted as a voluntary patient?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘Then we consider that you should be detained for assessment under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act.’
‘My husband is my Nearest Relative and he disagrees.’
I stared imploringly at Grant and he looked long and hard at me then turned to the doctors.
‘I am prepared to take Chris home with me and look after her there. I will ensure that she sees her psychiatrist as soon as possible.’
The doctors would have known as well as I did that the patient’s Nearest Relative could discharge a patient detained under Section 2 unless there were overpowering reasons why they should not. I couldn’t think that any such overpowering reasons would exist in this case. It wasn’t as if I’d threatened to harm any other person.
‘I didn’t actually attempt to kill myself, did I?’ I said quickly. ‘I accept that I did think about it, but then I decided not to. So I am clearly not a danger to myself or anyone else.’
They didn’t look particularly convinced but the doctors and police finally agreed to leave me in Grant’s care provided we signed some paperwork to the effect that we had both noted their advice and decided not to follow it.
Grant drove home mostly in silence, no doubt worrying if he had done the right thing.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He didn’t reply. He just shook his head slightly and appeared to concentrate hard on the road ahead.
I had been expecting the third degree, starting with Why weren’t you at work last night?, but there was nothing. In truth, he must already know. The complaint had only been the catalyst. The real reason was the mental health issue and Grant knew from experience to tread carefully around that.
We stopped only once, at a motorway service station, to pick up a late lunch – a ham sandwich for him and a lentil salad for me that I didn’t really want, or eat.
‘What about my car?’ I asked as we turned back onto the motorway.
‘I brought Trevor with me from work. He picked it up using the spare keys.’
My Mini was already in Gotherington when we arrived but it wasn’t the only vehicle waiting for us outside our house. There was also a police car parked on the road and a man in civilian clothes climb
ed out as we pulled into the driveway.
‘What does he want?’ Grant said with a degree of irritation in his voice.
I was worried that the Bristol police had changed their minds about allowing me home with Grant but it wasn’t that.
‘Dr Rankin?’ the man asked as we climbed out of the Audi.
‘Yes.’ Grant and I both answered together. He was a doctor too, with a PhD in mechanical engineering.
‘Dr Christine Rankin?’
‘That’s me,’ I said.
‘My name is Detective Sergeant Merryweather.’ He briefly held up a police identity card. ‘I would like to ask you some questions concerning a man found unconscious at the racecourse on Saturday evening who subsequently died at the hospital under your care.’
I didn’t know whether to run away or to hold my wrists out for the handcuffs.
‘Of course,’ I said, trying to keep the nervousness and panic out of my voice. ‘Come on in.’
The three of us went into the sitting room and sat down.
‘How can I help?’ I said.
‘We are treating this as an unexplained death,’ said the policeman. ‘We have had the preliminary results of the post-mortem that was carried out early this morning. There was no cause of death given in the report so we will have to wait for further analysis of the samples taken. But one of our constables told me that you did some blood tests while the man was still alive.’
I nodded. ‘PC Filippos.’
‘Yes, that’s right. He also said that you mentioned the possibility of a cocaine overdose.’
I nodded again. ‘One of my colleagues told me that the blood test showed cocaine in the man’s system. I didn’t actually see the results myself.’
I’d been too busy dealing with the sick and injured on Saturday night and had intended to look at them on Sunday evening, but other events had overtaken me.
‘Could you get those test results for me?’ asked the detective sergeant, ‘and also copies of the man’s medical file?’
‘Can’t you get them yourself, direct from the hospital?’
‘We only have your name as a contact and the hospital told us you were not working today. I have learned from experience that it is far better to approach a named individual than to try to navigate my way through health-service bureaucracy.’ He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
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