Quintin Jardine - For The Death Of Me

‘That’s okay, you just do what you have to, as quickly as you can.’

We watched her as she turned her back to us and picked up a phone. As she spoke, I couldn’t help noticing the back of her neck go pink, then red, then redder. Finally, she hung up and turned back to face us. ‘Someone’s on his way to speak to you, Mr Blackstone,’ she said. I could tell from her face that he would not be bearing good news. So could Ellie: she hugged me, as if for support.

‘Is he gone?’ I asked her quietly.

‘Please,’ she begged us, ‘wait in the staff room.’

I took pity on her and did as she said. There was a coffee machine, the kind that takes sachets. It’s not my favourite, but I switched it on and set it to make a double espresso.

I had just handed the end product to Ellie when the door opened and a man in a white coat, with the inevitable stethoscope hanging from his neck, stepped into the room. He looked no more than twenty-five, and he was holding a clip-board as if it was a comforter. Maybe it was. ‘Mr Blackstone?’ he began. ‘I’m Dr Oliphant, senior house officer in the cardio unit.’

I shook his clammy hand. ‘This is my sister, Mrs January,’ I told him. ‘I’ve just arrived but she and my step-mother have been here for over three hours. What do you have to tell us about our father? Is he in surgery?’

‘Well,’ the young doctor began. No, he had not brought good news, and he wasn’t looking forward to breaking it. ‘The thing is. .’

‘Yes?’ My patience was totally gone.

‘The thing is, he’s not here.’

‘What?’

‘He’s been transferred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We don’t do the sort of surgery here that he requires.’

‘Jesus!’ Ellie gasped. I laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her going into orbit.

‘I’m terribly sorry that nobody advised you of this, Mrs January, but my colleagues said they couldn’t find you. They thought you’d gone home.’

‘They thought. .’ She sounded like a volcano, starting to erupt. The lad was in deep trouble, until I decided to rescue him from my sister’s wrath.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s not get into a blaming situation. Someone fucked up and that’s it. What’s our dad’s condition? That’s all we really care about.’

‘He’s critical: he’s suffered a massive failure of the aortic valve, and he needs replacement surgery or he won’t survive.’

‘What brought it on?’

‘Nothing. We think it’s a congenital thing, a defect; the consultant who saw him described it as a time-bomb that could have gone off years ago.’

‘When was he transferred?’

‘Two hours ago. He could be in surgery in Edinburgh already.’

‘How long will the procedure take?’

‘Four hours, minimum. At least, that’s what I recall from medical-school lectures. I’ve never seen one done.’

I ruffled Ellie’s hair and gave her a hug. He was critical, but he was alive, and they don’t make them tougher than Mac Blackstone. ‘Come on, sis,’ I murmured. ‘Let’s get down there. We’ll get him some bacon rolls on the way; if I know him he’ll be hungry when he wakes up.’

We didn’t burn any rubber on the road to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; there was no need for we knew he’d be in theatre longer than it would take us to drive there. Before we left, Dr Oliphant phoned and found a colleague there, advising her that we were on our way. She promised to contact her media-relations people. It was necessary: when we rejoined Conrad and Mary we discovered that a Grampian Television crew was camped outside.

We gave them the slip. . I’m an expert at that, when I want to be. . and headed off in Ellie’s Peugeot towards Perth and the M90.

Conrad drove, with my sister navigating: I chose to sit in the back with Mary.

‘I should have known,’ she muttered, as we cruised along the A914. ‘I should have seen the warning signs.’

I looked at her in profile. It was night, but in Scotland there’s always a lighter blue glow in the north at that time of year, so I could see her clearly. ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ I reassured her, ‘because there weren’t any warning signs. The boy Oliphant said that a consultant cardiologist wouldn’t have spotted this before it happened, unless Dad had been hooked up to an ECG machine.’

‘I should still have known. I’m his wife.’

‘And Ellie’s his daughter: she saw him last weekend and she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.’

‘Still.’

‘Mary,’ I said firmly, ‘stop blaming yourself. There might have been things in life you should have dealt with better, but not this.’

I don’t know what made me say that. Stress, I suppose: it can make your tongue do things you don’t mean it to, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get into that, not there, not then. I saw her frown, her profile sharp in the gloaming that passes for night in high-summer Scotland, and I looked forward. ‘See if you can find some local radio, Ellie,’ I called out quickly. ‘If someone at the hospital tipped off the telly, they could have it too.’

We had missed the eleven o’clock bulletin on Kingdom Radio by about ten minutes, but we caught up with Radio Forth at midnight as we drove along the Edinburgh bypass. Sure enough, there was a piece at the top of the news, read by a harsh-voiced woman, about ‘Scots movie star Oz Blackstone in mercy dash to the bedside of his sick father’.

They were waiting for us at the entrance to the hospital, three television crews, three radio reporters, and the rest of the pack, more than I cared to count. Conrad and I flanked Mary and Ellie, shielding them as best we could. They were reasonably polite and I knew that they were only doing their jobs. It was my fault that they were there, nobody else’s. There’s a price of fame, but it’s not just the famous who have to pay it. Ask the wee boys Beckham if you doubt me.

‘How is he, Oz?’ one of them called out.

‘That’s what we’re going to find out. I called ahead ten minutes ago and they said that he’s still in theatre.’ We reached the hospital doors. ‘Keep in touch with the PR people,’ I told them. ‘I’ll talk to you again when I have something positive to say, but don’t look for it to be tonight.’

The hospital press officer, who introduced herself as Sydney Wavell, met us as soon as we stepped inside: no doubt the poor woman had been summoned from a peaceful evening at home. She took charge of us and led us through several corridors into a small sitting room in what appeared to be the hospital’s office area, where we were given coffee and chocolate biscuits. At first I was embarrassed: genuinely, I never feel like a celebrity in Scotland, especially not in Edinburgh, and I try to avoid acting the part, yet here I was getting the full treatment. Still, Ellie and Mary were reaping the benefit, and that was good.

When we were settled in, Ms Wavell left us, returning a few minutes with a doctor. His name was Singh, and he exuded competence and reassurance. He didn’t give us any soft soap, but his approach was informed and up-beat. He told us he had just checked with the theatre and that although the operation was in its early stages, Dad was stable and his signs were good. He offered to talk us through the procedure, but I reckoned that was the last thing the girls needed to hear; I didn’t fancy it much myself.

We settled to our vigil. Conrad decided that he was going to sit in the corridor outside to guard the door, in case an over-zealous reporter sneaked inside in search of an exclusive. I thought he was suffering from an excess of zeal, until I realised something. He knew my dad, he had played golf with the two of us, and he liked him. He was anxious too, and was simply looking for something to take his mind off it, for a job on which he could focus. So I let him do as he wished.