Ken McClure: White death

Carlisle Royal Infirmary

March 2007

‘Dan? It’s Keith, he’s been taken ill. He’s really bad. Can you come?’ Marion Taylor’s voice broke and she gave in to sobs.

‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes, love. Hang on.’

Dan Taylor descended from the scaffolding he had been working on like a man possessed. He ran across the building site to his van, shouting to his foreman on the way. ‘The lad’s poorly; got to go.’ He threw his hard hat in the back of the van and cursed as it took him three attempts to start the engine. When it finally caught, the wheels sent up a cloud of sand and gravel as they scrabbled to find grip on the loose surface, causing workmen crossing the site to seek protection for their faces behind hands and elbows.

‘Bloody loony,’ mouthed one.

‘It’s Dan Taylor. His kid’s been taken bad.’

‘No reason to have my bloody eye out.’

True to his word, Taylor was at the hospital in thirty minutes having contravened most of the Highway Code on the way and collected the flashes of at least two speed cameras to mark his passing. He compounded his list of offences by parking on a double yellow line outside A amp;E and rushing inside to ask where his son was, drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk while he waited for the answer.

He found his wife sitting in the corridor just inside the door of the ward. She was holding a wad of tissues to her face. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘So, what happened, love?’

‘He came home from school at lunchtime, saying that he wasn’t feeling well.

‘I thought he was having me on at first and I half expected him to say he was feeling better after half an hour and asking if he could go down to the arcade but I was wrong. He was sick a couple of times and his temperature seemed way up so I put him to bed. Things just seemed to get worse though. He was sick again and then he started talking nonsense. I was frightened. I couldn’t get any sense out of him, then he tried to go to the bathroom but he fell flat on the floor when he came out and I had to help him back into bed. I called the doctor and some silly cow in Reception told me I should bring him in. Can you believe it? I gave her a piece of my mind and told her I’d be writing to my MP if she didn’t pull her finger out and tell the doctor it was an emergency. When he got to the house, he just took one look at him and called for an ambulance. I phoned you as soon as we got to the hospital.’

‘So what’s wrong with him?’

‘The doctor didn’t say, just that the hospital would have to carry out tests.’

‘Was this our doctor or the hospital one?’

‘Ours. No one here’s come to speak to me yet.’

Taylor shook his head. ‘Surely it can’t be rejection after all this time. He’s been right as rain for the past year.’

Keith Taylor had been the recipient of a bone marrow transplant nearly a year before after contracting leukaemia. It had been touch and go at the time but he had made a good recovery and seemed to be in every sense a normal thirteen-year-old. He was perhaps more susceptible to minor ailments than his peers — because of the immuno-suppressant drugs he had to take to stop his body rejecting the transplant — but his energy levels were more than a match for his pals and he was a willing participant in the scrapes they got themselves into.

‘The doctor didn’t think it was rejection either. He thought it looked like some kind of an infection.’

A young doctor appeared in front of them, white coat flapping open, stethoscope slung round his neck and pushing a wayward flop of fair hair back from his forehead. ‘Mr and Mrs Taylor? I’m Dr Tidyman. I’m afraid your son’s very ill. We’ve had to put him on a ventilator and transfer him to intensive care while we try to establish just what’s wrong.’

Marion Taylor found this too much. She broke down in tears. ‘Oh dear God.’

‘Have you no idea at all what’s wrong with him?’ asked Dan.

‘I’m afraid not at the moment. We’re waiting for information and data to come back from the lab.’

‘You know he had a bone marrow transplant last year?’

‘We’re aware of that but, if it’s any comfort, we don’t think that’s anything to do with his current problem.’

‘The leukaemia’s not come back?’

‘No, nothing like that. He seems to have picked up some kind of infection that appears to be coursing through his body. Hopefully the lab’ll be able to tell us just what’s causing it and we can start fighting it.’

Taylor felt a strange conflict of emotions inside him — relief that the leukaemia hadn’t returned but quickly followed by fear about the infection. ‘This ventilator thing you mentioned…?’

‘It’s a machine that’s doing Keith’s breathing for him. We’ll keep him on it until he is strong enough to take over again for himself.’

‘Can we see him?’

‘Of course, but I have to warn you that people often find it distressing to see wires and tubes seemingly coming out of just about everywhere in their loved ones but try to remember that it’s for Keith’s own good. We have to know what’s going on inside his body. This is why we monitor everything we can electronically.’

Dan Taylor nodded and helped his wife to her feet. He kept his arm round her shoulders as they followed the doctor to a small room with a large viewing window into the Intensive Care suite. He gave her a squeeze as they looked at their son lying motionless and unaware while the ventilator clicked and hissed and the monitors beeped their messages. Green spikes chased each other across an oscilloscope, encouraging Dan to think positive thoughts. He’d seen enough TV medical dramas to know that spikes were good. Flat lines were not.

‘I want to hold his hand,’ murmured Marion.

Dan Taylor looked at the doctor who shook his head apologetically. ‘It’s for Keith’s own good that we keep everyone outside right now. We don’t want him having to cope with any more infection.’

‘When will you get the lab results, Doctor?’

‘We should start getting the first within the hour.’

‘We’ll wait… Can we stay here?’

‘Of course. I’ll get you a couple of chairs.’

Dan and Marion sat, holding hands in silent vigil, on moulded plastic chairs for at least thirty minutes before either spoke. Marion said, ‘Look at the skin on his face… It looks… strange.’

‘I suppose it’s the infection, love,’ said Dan, but he saw what she meant. The skin on what they could see of Keith’s face behind the mask and tubes seemed to have an unhealthy pallor.

The doctor returned with a clipboard in his hand. ‘Good news and bad news I’m afraid.’

‘For God’s sake, tell us the good,’ said Marion as if approaching the end of her tether.

‘There’s no suggestion that the leukaemia has returned and we’ve ruled out meningitis which was a major concern at the outset.’

‘And the bad?’ asked Dan.

‘We still don’t know what’s causing the infection. The lab has drawn a blank so far but let me say quickly that that’s just from examination of direct specimens. The chances are that they’ll have a much better idea in the morning when the overnight cultures have grown up.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sometimes there are too few bacteria to find when we look at samples directly under the microscope,’ explained Tidyman. ‘So we spread them on artificial culture media and leave the bugs to grow and divide overnight in an incubator.’

‘So we wait,’ said Dan with a sigh in his voice.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Tidyman sympathetically.

‘Doctor, have you seen his skin?’ asked Marion.