Ken McClure: Crisis

Bannerman had countered by declaring, as he had so often in the past, that he and Stella were just old friends. It was true but then Stella was the only woman he ever mentioned at home. Some five years before there had been a romantic element to their friendship but it had not come to anything and had been abandoned in the cause of their continuing friendship. Occasional liaisons with members of the nursing staff were usually short-lived and seldom mentioned at home for fear of maternal probings worthy of the Spanish Inquisition.

Bannerman took a deep lungful of smoke and rested his head on the back of his chair to wonder why he had never married. He liked women and they seemed to like him well enough. But there had always come a point in relationships when he had backed off, unable to make a final commitment. He closed his eyes for a few seconds reflecting on the irony of never being able to make clear decisions about his own life when he made so many about other people’s with no apparent trouble at all.

If he were to be honest with himself he would have to admit that there had been a string of women in his life with whom he had formed affectionate relationships but nothing more. Stella had once pointed out that there was a difference between wanting someone and needing them. A woman liked to feel needed. Was that it, he wondered. Was he so self-contained that he didn’t need anyone? An island?

Bannerman stubbed out his cigarette and decided that he had had enough of self-analysis for the moment. He checked his schedule for the afternoon and saw that he had a post-mortem to perform on a patient who had died of a brain tumour. He had also promised to be on call for any emergency analysis that theatre required during a breast operation that was being carried out by John Thorn, a surgeon colleague of Stella’s for whom she had particular regard. ‘The lump is in an awkward place,’ Thorn had said. ‘If I get it wrong the patient won’t have a second chance.’

The operation was due to begin at three-thirty. It was five minutes to two. Bannerman decided that he would start on the PM and leave a message that he was to be called if any section analysis was required by the theatre team. He clipped his bleeper to his top pocket and started out for the mortuary.

His prompt arrival at two o’clock took the mortuary attendant by surprise. The man was sitting at a small wooden table in his office with a newspaper in front of him. A sandwich with a bite taken out of it lay on some greaseproof paper and a thermos flask with its lid off stood beside it.

‘I was a bit late in getting off for my lunch,’ explained the man. ‘Doctor Leeman took longer than he thought this morning.’

‘Just when you’re ready,’ said Bannerman.

‘Who is it you’re doing Doctor?’ asked the man, getting up from the table and wrapping the paper round his half-eaten sandwich.

‘Thomas George Baines from ward eight; he died on Sunday night.’

The attendant checked a wall chart which depicted the refrigerated body vault. The names on it were written in pencil so it could be used indefinitely with the aid of a dirty eraser that lay on the table below. ‘Baines, number five,’ he said to himself.

Bannerman moved back to allow the attendant to exit from the room and then followed him to the body vault. This was located in a long, white-painted room, one side of which was entirely taken up with a series of tall doors, each secured with a heavy metal clasp. The doors were numbered from one to eight. The attendant opened one and revealed three sliding trays, one on top of the other. He checked a label on the middle one and said, ‘Here we are, Thomas Baines.’

The man pulled an adjustable trolley into position and locked it in position before winding up the platform to match the height of the middle cadaver. With a practised tug he slid the body of Thomas Baines out onto it and unlocked the trolley to swing it round in a semi-circle before slamming shut the door of the vault. ‘Table one all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ said Bannerman.

The man manoeuvred the body on to the post-mortem table and removed the shroud. He turned on the cold water supply to the slab and water started to gurgle down the gulleys. Bannerman himself turned on the overhead light and switched on the extractor fans.

‘Do you want the air freshener on?’ asked the attendant.

Bannerman shook his head. ‘It’s a head job,’ he said. Bannerman loathed the smells of pathology as much as the next man but found the scent of the air freshener almost as bad in terms of pervasiveness. It would cling to him. There would be no need to open up the chest cavity of Thomas Baines. The examination would be confined to the head so he would do without the air freshener.

‘Want me to open the skull?’ asked the attendant.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Bannerman. ‘Go finish your sandwiches.’

‘Cheers Doc,’ said the man.

Bannerman donned a pair of Wellington boots which he selected from the row standing along the back wall and took down one of the green, plastic aprons from a clothes peg above. He fastened the ties behind him and snapped on a pair of surgical gloves which he took from the box marked ‘Large’. Using a power tool he trephined around the skull of the corpse on the table, pausing at intervals to rinse away the accumulating bone grit and allowing the smell of burning to subside. When he had cut right round, he lifted off the cap of Thomas Baines’ skull as a complete unit and laid it beside the head. Changing to surgical instruments he removed the brain and placed it on a metal tray on an adjoining table.

Bannerman weighed the brain then examined it visually from several angles. ‘Doesn’t take too much to see what killed you my friend,’ he murmured. A large tumour was protruding from the left side of the excised brain. It was a livid red colour against the greyness of the normal brain material. Bannerman removed the tumour and placed it in a glass specimen jar for removal to the lab. He placed the brain back in the skull cavity and told the attendant that he was finished.

‘Right you are Doc,’ exclaimed the man. ‘I’ll put his “hat” back on, eh?’ He broke into a cackle of broken laughter.

Bannerman did not join in. Gallows humour was not his thing. ‘You’ll do it respectfully,’ he said.

‘Of course Doctor,’ said the man, realising he had made an error and wiping all trace of amusement from his face.

Bannerman stripped off his gloves and threw them into a plastic bin. Walking over to a large porcelain sink he levered on the taps with his elbows and took pleasure in sluicing the liquid soap and warm water over his hands and forearms. As he dried his hands he watched the attendant fitting the skull cap back on to the body. The man was whistling quietly as he did it, checking the fit on all sides as if he were a plumber changing a tap washer.

Bannerman had to concede that the attendant had achieved a far greater degree of ease with his job than he himself had ever managed. There were still times when he found himself vomiting in the bathroom over certain aspects of his work. It didn’t happen nearly as often as it once had but it still happened. It was something he had never confessed to anyone, not to Stella in their closest moments, not even to his own father, also a doctor. He didn’t like to think about it too much. The bleeper went off in his pocket and stopped him thinking about it now.

‘I’ll be right up,’ he said in response to the information that theatre had requested an urgent biopsy examination. The door to the PM room shut with a loud echo as he swung it closed behind him and ran along the tiled corridor to the base of the stairs leading up to the lab. The technicians had already processed the tissue by the time he got there and one of them was examining a slide of it under a Zeiss binocular microscope.