The White Tower

by Dorothy Johnston

  Tanya stared at the figures over the top of Cheryl’s head.

  ‘Who gave you my name and address?’

  ‘A friend of Niall Howley’s. Not someone from radiotherapy.’

  After what seemed a long time, she said, ‘If I tell you what I think, will you promise to leave me alone? Never come back?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Those four numbers are the date I left. And the ones immediately before them, these ones here—’ Tanya pointed to the sequence 20018000, ‘They’re a date too, and a radiation dose.’

  ‘A radiation dose?’

  ‘Yes. Eight thousand rads is the treatment dose a radiotherapy patient received on that date. That is, January twentieth.’

  ‘What happened to the patient?’

  ‘Barry. His name was Barry. It was an overdose. He died,’ Tanya said quickly, as though, now she’d begun, she wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.

  ‘What dose should Barry have received?’

  ‘Two hundred rads. Doses of over five hundred can be fatal.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Instead of looking at me, Tanya played with the edge of Cheryl’s blanket, rolling it in her fingers the way you’d roll a cigarette, then letting it fall loose again.

  ‘I loved working for Dr Fenshaw. He made everyone who worked for him feel special. We were part of, I don’t know, it was like a grand adventure.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘The other radiotherapists were younger than me. None of them had kids. They didn’t really understand, though some, like Niall, were sympathetic. Then, when I got pregnant with Cheryl—it wasn’t a planned pregnancy.’

  She fell silent. I felt cocooned with her in the waiting room, and prayed that the receptionist wouldn’t call her daughter’s name.

  She started again at another point in her story. ‘Sometimes I go to bed at night and I can’t remember a single thing about the day. Or the day before. Whole weeks are just a kind of fog. I talked to Gavin—my ex-husband. Dr Fenshaw said he’d find a replacement for a year, to have the baby if that was what I wanted, take my time. He was great. Then Gavin dropped a bombshell on me. He told me he’d met someone else and wanted out of the marriage. He didn’t want Cheryl. He didn’t even want to have much to do with Billy.’

  Tanya paused again. I could see that her story wasn’t a line set out for her to follow, but made of material, some sort of embroidered carpet perhaps, and she knelt in the middle, and every time she turned her head another section caught her eye.

  ‘You were the person who administered the overdose, weren’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And Barry?’

  ‘He was burnt. All along his left side, and his hip.’

  ‘Were you alone when it happened?’

  Tanya didn’t answer straight away. ‘At a certain point, my mind kind of—well—blacks out. I was working with Colin. I was in the control room. Normally we swap jobs, but since I was pregnant I couldn’t give treatments. I was in a state, with Gavin, and trying to work out whether to have the baby, what to do. Colin was setting up the table while I typed in the treatment data. There’s a set of checking ­procedures you have to go through and I did that. Then I pressed the P key to start the treatment, and instead of the message Treatment In Progress, I got one that said Error 53.’

  ‘What’s an Error 53?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I’d never seen it before. What the computer does is check the data you type in with the settings in the treatment room, to make sure they correspond. If you’ve made an error keying in, or the person setting up has made an error, the computer will tell you. It won’t allow treatment until the error’s been found. So I thought it was most likely that.’

  ‘What was the error?’

  ‘That’s just it. There wasn’t one. I started from the beginning and re-entered all the data. Then I hit the P key again. There was a yell from the treatment room and on the monitor I saw Barry jump, try to jump up from the table. Colin and I rushed in and he was burnt all along his side and shouting in pain.’

  ‘You and Colin rushed in—Colin was with you in the control room?’

  ‘At that point, yes.’

  ‘What was Colin doing while you checked the data?’

  ‘I don’t remember if he was there the whole time. It took a while to re-enter the data, and Barry was waiting in the treatment room. The phone rang and Colin answered it. He says he left the control room for a few minutes and when he came back he—Barry—had been burnt. I don’t remember Colin going out. I wasn’t concentrating on what Colin was doing.’

  ‘So you re-keyed your data and then hit the P key?’

  Cheryl moved on her mother’s knee and began whimpering again. Tanya looked up hopefully as a patient came through double sliding doors at the far end of the room. The receptionist called out a man’s name.

  ‘Not before I called Dr Fenshaw,’ Tanya said. ‘But Dr Fenshaw says I never called him. It must have been while Colin was out. Colin said I must have typed in the wrong dose twice. But I don’t see how I could have. I mean, of course I can see how I might’ve made a typing error, but when I checked it all, my figure was the same as on the Ventac’s settings in the treatment room, and the same as on the treatment sheet that we were working from. The right dose was there. I didn’t go back and alter it afterwards. I’m not a criminal.’

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘I’ve racked my brains over it. I just don’t know. I think it must be something in the Ventac itself, not in our checking system. But the technicians said that wasn’t possible. Dr Fenshaw got an engineer down from Sydney. This guy took the Ventac apart but couldn’t find anything. He said it was impossible for that machine to overdose. All I know is, what couldn’t happen, did.’

  Before I could ask Tanya any more questions, we were interrupted by a nurse walking over and telling us that Dr Chan would see Cheryl now.

  Tanya stood up and thanked me for looking after her daughter. I said I’d wait. She frowned and shook her head, then followed the nurse through the sliding doors into a consulting room.

  I thought back over what she’d said. She hadn’t mentioned the phone call to Dr Fenshaw straight away. What she’d said was that she’d re-keyed the data, hit the P key, and the patient had been burnt. She’d also said that she couldn’t remember whether or not Colin had left the control room. What was Colin’s responsibility in all of this? Should he have checked the re-entered data line by line? What had he been doing outside the control room? Who had phoned him, if indeed anybody had? And had Tanya phoned Dr Fenshaw, or did she only wish she had?

  I thought of Eve, who’d said nothing to me about the overdose, though she must have known. And Eamonn. Word of an accident like that would have been around the hospital in no time. I could understand Eve and Colin not wanting to talk about it, but Eamonn? Why had Eamonn given me Tanya’s Sydney address unless he wanted Tanya to tell me?

  She came back looking much happier. ‘It’s okay. Cheryl can stay here for the afternoon. She’ll probably just sleep. I could’ve brought her in this morning. I panicked.’

  ‘What did Dr Fenshaw say when you rang him to tell him about the Error 53 message?’

  Tanya bent down to pick up Cheryl’s bag, which she’d left under one of the chairs, answering reluctantly.

  ‘He said I was upset, overwrought. He told me to take time off. He came to see me. He was furious with Gavin.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘The Ventac 2 is unreliable, but no one’s been able to find anything wrong with it. I’d never had an Error 53 before, but every now and again it would throw up a message that made no sense. The messages weren’t in any of the manuals we had, and the hospital engineers couldn’t reproduce them. So we overrode them. We weren’t allowed to take that step on our own, but in practice what happened was that we’d check with Dr Fenshaw and he’d give the okay to go ahead with treatment.’

  Tanya hoisted the bag
over one arm. ‘I have to go now and get Cheryl settled down.’ She began to walk towards the sliding doors. This time I followed her.

  ‘Did Fenshaw come and check the treatment data himself?’

  ‘In the beginning.’

  ‘How did he feel about it?’

  ‘He was dismayed, shocked by Barry’s death. What do you think?’

  ‘I mean how did he feel about the technical fault in the machine?’

  ‘They’re still using it. What are they going to do? Take it to the tip? It’s been checked and double-checked and rechecked. No one can find anything wrong with it.’

  ‘Does Colin physically check the data every time?’

  ‘If he’s rostered on. I mean, in pairs you check for each other.’

  ‘What did Niall Howley think about the overdose?’

  ‘Look, I—’ Tanya paused just in front of the doors and sighed. She said that Niall had come to see her at home. She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going back to the hospital. Her voice cracked, but then she gave a small smile and said that Niall had been great.

  ‘Was there an inquiry?’

  ‘An internal one. Of course. The suppliers sent a rep over from the States. And there were our engineers. It was kept quiet. And the ­hospital board let me know they wouldn’t make a big deal of my ­negligence.’

  ‘If you kept quiet as well.’

  Tanya nodded

  ‘What about Error 53?’

  ‘They couldn’t reproduce it, like I said. Niall tried. He spent hours over it.’

  ‘He was that involved?’

  ‘He was determined to find the fault. Well, it wasn’t as though the engineers weren’t. Everybody tried to. Niall would find stuff on the net about Ventacs in the US and Canada and ring me up to tell me about it. But all I wanted by then was to get away. I felt as though I was going mad. Niall couldn’t understand that. Well, he didn’t have kids. He wasn’t even married.’

  ‘What about the American and Canadian Ventacs?’

  ‘The Two relies a lot more on software safety checks than the older models. There aren’t the hardware locks. They were considered superfluous by the manufacturers and they added to the cost, so they were dropped.’

  ‘Was that raised at the inquiry?’

  ‘I haven’t seen the report. I didn’t want to.’

  I realised I hadn’t asked Tanya how she felt about Niall’s suicide.

  ‘It’s pathetic,’ she said, moving forward. The doors opened. She was one step away from disappearing. ‘I didn’t believe it when I heard, and I don’t believe it now.’

  She swung round to impress her last point on me. ‘I meant what I said about leaving me alone.’

  I thanked her and she accepted my thanks with another sudden smile.

  I thought of Niall surfing the net for information about Ventacs late at night. Had Natalie, or his parents, actually asked him what he was doing? Would he have told them? Or would he have replied with some off-putting reference to the MUD? Was this the point where Ferdia the Hero had gone to Niall’s head? Ferdia who’d risen to a level no other Hero had risen to before. Was it possible that, after excelling in the fantasy world of Castle of Heroes, Niall believed he could tackle and solve the problem of the Ventac single-handed? Had he come to believe it was his personal quest?

  Eighteen

  I left Brook messages, unable to reach him on any of his phones, then rang Eamonn and asked him what he knew about the accident. Eamonn replied in his mild way that he was aware a patient had been burnt while receiving radiation treatment, but he didn’t know any of the details.

  I asked him why he hadn’t told me before, to which he replied with infuriating mildness that I hadn’t asked him.

  Now was the moment to accuse him of lying to me, and for one or the other of us to hang up. Instead, I reminded myself what he’d said the last time we met, when he’d asked me to stay away from the hospital.

  ‘Tanya Wishart told me Niall spent hours searching websites to try and establish a performance pattern for the Ventac 2.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone who gave you Tanya’s address.’

  ‘I won’t. Niall wouldn’t have left his information lying round for anyone to find.’

  ‘I don’t know what he did with it. I told you that.’

  ‘The Ventac 2 is still in use. Colin Rasmussen showed it to me.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ve done all I can to help, I really have. Please don’t phone me. Please don’t contact me again.’

  . . .

  Ivan went off to the ANU early the next morning. I strapped Katya in the car seat and drove to Brook’s flat, praying he’d be home and on his own.

  The puzzle of Niall Howley’s death was like a Rubik’s cube. I’d been holding it one way and trying to get the colours to match. Now I’d turned it upside down and was looking at it from the bottom up, it was different altogether. I was seeing the cube from a different angle, but I’d added a colour. I still couldn’t get the blocks to match.

  Brook kissed us both and led the way into his small, neat living room. He said he was sorry he hadn’t rung back, but he’d been working late the night before.

  His flat was what you’d expect of a man in his forties living on his own. The scrubbed wooden table always had a bowl of fruit sitting in the middle, and Brook belonged to the class that left sauce bottle, salt and pepper shakers arranged like a table decoration too.

  ‘Have you two had breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, we’re fine.’

  ‘You’ll bear with me while I make a cup of tea.’

  ‘I know what Niall was doing in the weeks before he died,’ I said, and told Brook about meeting Tanya, and the overdose.

  Brook made tea and toast and listened without interrupting. I’d ­forgotten how good he was at puncturing the drama of a situation, especially a situation of my making. I sat Katya on the floor and gave her my car keys, pursed my lips and waited.

  Finally Brook asked, ‘What makes you think this girl was telling you the truth?’

  ‘Why would she make up such elaborate lies?’

  ‘If it’s true, why didn’t she go to the police with her version of events?’

  ‘She needs to go on working, and the hospital board made sure she understood the benefits of leaving quietly.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she was bewildered, scared that it had been her fault.’

  Katya reached over and tapped Brook’s foot experimentally with the keys. He leant down and picked her up, which was unnecessary since she was quite happy on the floor. He held her briefly against his chest before looking at me over the top of her head.

  ‘Fenshaw rang Bill McCallum to complain about me. Wanted to know what was going on, why I was out at the hospital wanting to go through their computers, what I was up to when the coronial verdict had been clear and uncontested.’

  ‘What did McCallum say?’

  ‘That the boss had spoken to the coroner and they’d agreed some new information had come to light which needed investigation.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I wasn’t there to eavesdrop on the conversation, but I have the feeling that Bill let Fenshaw draw the conclusion that he agreed with him about it all being a waste of time.’

  I pictured McCallum’s bunchy, ill-fitting uniform, his recollections of old times, his blue eyes saying trust me.

  I repeated what I’d told Brook in the café. ‘It wasn’t Niall who wiped his hard drive that night and loaded the castle picture for his parents and your colleagues to find.’

  The phone rang in the hallway and Brook went to answer it.

  I thought how strange it was, the way certain places made possible the saying or withholding of a thing. The veranda of my house. Brook with those photographs in a buff-coloured envelope. Kat asleep in her stroller. Brook’s shy smile, offering pictures of a death he didn’t want to know about. The coronial report, its broken bones too numerous to hold in
the mind at once. The quiet neatness here, the way walls could hold in balance and determine what went on between them.

  Go through it with me, I would say when he came back. He’d smile and say, ‘Okay Sandy.’ And we would go through everything, step by step, so that pieces connected, so that it began making sense. Places would come forward between us, the Telstra Tower, Dunluce Castle on a windy day.

  ‘That was Sophie.’ Brook came back smiling like a boy. ‘I’ve been flat out all weekend.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s been very understanding.’

  I waited.

  ‘We’re having lunch.’

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘Why not front up to Fenshaw unannounced, see how he reacts?’

  Brook was still smiling from the sound of Sophie’s voice. ‘I have to get the facts right first.’

  ‘At least you can request a copy of the accident report.’

  He was all charm suddenly, willingness to help. ‘Oh yes, I can do that all right.’

  . . .

  I spent the rest of the morning washing sand out of clothes and buying groceries. Katya’s black eyes scanned shelves of cereal packets at the supermarket. I remembered Peter’s love affair with dog food tins, in the days before we found Fred, a starving puppy licking up lines of worms around puddles at the school playground.

  I stopped in the middle of the aisle to watch my baby smile at a stranger, upright and calm in her ringside seat, hands with a beautiful even spacing on the trolley bar, a gymnast’s sense of balance. The frailty and courage of the choices children made, their insight for what mattered. A sense of foreboding in that bright place, surrounded by confectionary on special. Feeding Katya—this was gone now. It appeared that only I regretted it. Katya, as far as I could see, had put the experience behind her.

  . . .

  Brook rang in the afternoon. ‘Well the fat is in the fire now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I asked Fenshaw about the Wishart woman. He wanted to know where I’d got her name. I asked him why she left, and he said that, with a baby on the way and a marriage breakdown, the work became too much for her. I asked him whether he fired the others too and he told me hard luck stories about his underprivileged youth.’