William McIlvanney - The Papers of Tony Veitch

‘You a doctor then, sir? It’s ma eye here. Played at headers wi’ the pavement. Ye know? Pavement beat me wan-nothin’. Ah would’ve won if ah hadny been drunk.’

Laidlaw smiled and shrugged.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’

The man went on past the partition at the end of the room. Beyond that lay the legendary Room 9, resuscitation room at the Royal, a place that has seen a lot of what there is to see in the way of physical calamity. The man was ushered out again at once by a doctor who directed him back along the casualty room.

‘Excuse me,’ Laidlaw said. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

Laidlaw showed his identification-card. The doctor looked at it, his tongue resting on his front teeth, and nodded, showing nothing. He couldn’t have been older than late twenties, bespectacled and shaggy-haired, but already he looked the type who might raise his eyebrows at an earthquake. His coat was speckled brown with the statutory bloodstains.

‘A heavy night,’ Laidlaw suggested.

‘No. This is a quiet one. Although a couple of R.T.A.’s and an M.I. through here.’ He nodded towards Room 9. ‘So who are you looking for?’

‘I don’t know,’ Laidlaw said.

The doctor didn’t show surprise or amusement or interest. He just waited. He was checking the progress of the elderly man along the room. Laidlaw knew that an R.T.A. was a Road Traffic Accident. He thought he’d better not ask about the M.I. The doctor didn’t look in the mood to stand in for a medical dictionary.

‘I’ve been told somebody was brought in here asking for me. Asking for Jack Laidlaw. An old bloke. Unshaven. Probably well bevvied.’

The elderly man had found the haven of a nurse. The doctor’s eyes came to rest on the floor. He looked up at Laidlaw, as if measuring him for an improbable connection.

‘You mean the old wino?’

‘I might.’

‘Yes. That was the name, I think. Kept repeating it. I thought maybe it was his own. Could get nothing else out of him. Having trouble with his airways. They had him in E. God, he was filthy. Didn’t know whether to dialyse or cauterise. A walking Bubonic.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He just got worse. Seemed to use the last of himself just getting here. Cleaned him up. They had him in the Lavage Room. Alcohol and Belair were about all they got, I think.’

‘So what’s wrong?’

The doctor shook his head.

‘How about everything?’ His eyes were moving around the room again. ‘The nearest they got to a diagnosis was imminent death. The respiratory problem was getting worse. Rather than intubate him here, they took him straight to Intensive Care. He’s just gone.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Surgical block. That’s-’

‘I know.’

‘But they’ll probably not welcome you.’

‘They don’t have to,’ Laidlaw said.

On the way out, he threw a cigarette to the young man on the invalid chair. Placate the gods.

It was cool outside. Laidlaw took his bearings. The middle unit of the main building, the one in darkness, was administration. The unit on the right, nearest the gate, was medical. He went left.

Crossing the courtyard, he took the doctor’s point. It probably was a quiet night. It was all comparative. Laidlaw himself had a simple shock-absorber he used to enable him to cope with some of the things he had to look at. He remembered Glaister’s Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology — a quiet name for the most harrowing book he had ever looked through. Talking reasonably about horrifyingly exotic deaths, reproducing good photographs of decapitation, strangulation, genital mutilation, its depiction of accidental and compelled brutality made the Marquis de Sade look like the tourist he was. Once you knew that’s where we live, you had to accept the need to face what you would rather not see.

Laidlaw accepted. He climbed the curving stair to the first floor. The blue board with white lettering said ‘Intensive Care Unit’. He went through the swing doors and found himself in a short, wide corridor, faced with another set of swing doors.

Immediately, a woman looked out from a side-room. Her face became a prohibitive notice, the professional’s annoyance at the clumsy intrusion of the layman. Laidlaw felt as if he had a camera round his neck. She came out, pointing herself towards him like a gun.

‘Yes?’

‘Excuse me. I believe you’ve just had someone brought in. He was asking to see me. My name is Laidlaw. Detective Inspector Laidlaw.’ He showed her his card.

‘Yes?’

‘I wondered if I could see him.’

She gave a short, monosyllabic laugh, like the barking of a distant guard-dog and as indicative of humour. She shook her head in officialese and offered that stern, condescending look that’s supposed to make the hordes of the uninformed flee for the longboats.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Trying to be,’ Laidlaw said.

‘This is an Intensive Care Unit.’

‘I didn’t think it was a café. And I’m in a hurry.’

She stared at Laidlaw, presumably reassessing him: not just your average idiot — Nuisance Grade One. In such cases it may prove necessary to provide a façade of minimal facts, preferably incomprehensible.

‘We’re preparing to use a ventilator. Dialysis may be required.’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘Not coherently.’

‘But conscious.’

‘For the moment.’

‘Well,’ Laidlaw said. ‘He wants to see me. It must be important to him. It’s what he wants and I assume he still has rights. So. If you don’t want me to go in, you’d better find a way to stop me.’

He walked past her. She caught up with him before he reached the double doors.

‘Wait here, please,’ she said and went in.

In a few moments she came back out and collected a hospital gown from a pile of freshly laundered ones neatly stacked on a shelf. She enjoyed watching Laidlaw trying to work out how it went. Having seen the right films, he managed to decide that it was worn back to front. She didn’t offer to help with the tie-strings, so he followed her with his hands behind his back, feeling he was infringing the Duke of Edinburgh’s copyright.

Once beyond the second double doors, she said, ‘Wait here, please.’

The room was dim. Down the right-hand side there was a row of glass-partitioned cubicles, from some of which came muted sounds. You got the sense that life was lived on tiptoe here. A couple of nurses moved almost soundlessly around, vestal virgins of this inner sanctum.

The god appeared to be technology. Across a television monitor ran three recurring serrated lines. In the middle of the room, like an altarpiece, was the only patient Laidlaw could see. He lay terrifyingly still, plugged into a ventilating machine, an aerated corpse. Watching him, Laidlaw understood something he had heard somewhere, that if such patients aren’t oiled and turned every two hours, they develop bedsores.

From where he stood now, Laidlaw saw the people in casualty as extras with delusions of grandeur. Their declarations of their nature seemed outrageously crude. Their stridency was apprentice stuff. This man bore witness to all of us without melodrama. He was honed to the act of breathing. He made no further claims, his humility was absolute. Pull a plug and he died.

Some sounds were coming from the first cubicle on the right. Laidlaw assumed that was where his man must be. Sure enough, the sister who had treated him like bacteria was now beckoning him into the cubicle.

Coming round the partition with some trepidation, he experienced the shock you feel when you see death engaged with someone you know. All the past confident moments count for nothing. You realise that you want death always to be anonymous. Otherwise, it’s got a fix on you.