Ken McClure - Pandora's Helix

The boy tried to say ‘fire engine’, but the words were malformed by the pressure of the tumour on his mouth. Eve pretended he had said it anyway and repeated the words. She got down on her knees to admire the toy and wheeled it back to him. There was a pause while the boy appraised the stranger then he giggled and pushed the toy towards Eve again. The game continued until a nurse came in and interrupted proceedings.

“Time for your sweeties, Neil,” she announced. “Are you going to be a good boy and eat them all up?”

Neil gave a slow silent nod and got to his feet. The nurse fed him his medication and praised him with a cuddle when it was over.

Neef indicated to Eve that it was time to go. “See you later, Tiger,” he said to Neil and ushered Eve out of the room.

“Bye, Neil,” said Eve, looking backwards.

Neil made a gurgling sound.

“Why did you do that?” demanded Eve through gritted teeth as soon as they got outside the ward and were standing on the landing.

“Upset you, did it?”

“I was thinking of the boy,” retorted Eve. “I wasn’t prepared for it. He must have seen the reaction on my face.”

Neef paused for a moment before saying, “Well that’s something in your favour. It was his feelings you were concerned about, not your own.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” insisted Eve.

“You came to see me about a patient called Tracy Torrance,” said Neef.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t call her that did you? You constantly referred to her as, ‘little Tracy’.”

“Well, that’s what the readers of the paper have come to know her as.”

“Thanks to you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I mean you and your paper have been hitting the cuddly bunny button from the word go and you knew exactly what you were doing.”

“I accept that there’s been a certain emotional aspect to...”

“What about kids like Neil or should I say, ‘Little Neil’ or maybe, ‘Baby Neil’. Do you think he’d fit the bill?”

Eve Sayers became uncomfortable as she searched for an answer.

“Maybe not,” Neef continued. “Neil doesn’t have a mother to call the papers on his behalf and he doesn’t look very pretty, does he? He’s been in care since he was two years old, ever since his mother’s boyfriend threw him at a wall when he dared to cry through a televised football match. And now he’s got a tumour that’s going to kill him before he’s five. Not much of a life, Ms Sayers. Not much of a crowd pleaser?”

Eve Sayers shook her head. “Surely there’s something that can be done for him?” she said. “If it’s a question of money perhaps it might be possible to...”

“And the others?” interrupted Neef, with a wave of his arm in the general direction of the children behind him.

Eve shrugged her shoulders but didn’t say anything.

Neef waited a moment then said, “Well, we’ve established that your paper has limited resources just like my unit and we both have to make decisions. I make mine on medical grounds while you and your paper prefer cuddly star quality. Tracy Torrance did not get a further course of treatment because I and my colleagues thought it medically inappropriate. The Press, in the form of your paper, have decided she will get it because she looks adorable and will appeal to their readers. They, like you, can conveniently ignore all the other children. I and my staff cannot. We have to do our best for all our patients in this unit, Ms Sayers, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot to do.”

Eve Sayers turned on her heel and left without saying anything further. Her heels clicked on the stairs as she descended to the main corridor and gradually faded off into the distance as she followed the exit signs. Neef stood for a moment on the landing, pretending to look out of the window at the courtyard below. He felt no sense of satisfaction over what had happened, just a kind of numb sadness. He returned to his office where he sat down at his desk and rested his arms in front of him. Ann Miles came in and put down a cup of coffee in front of him. “I thought you might need this,” she said.

“Thanks,” said Neef.

“Can I take it Ms Sayers has gone?”

Neef said, “Yes.”

Ann Miles sensed Neef’s demeanour and said, “Things didn’t go well?”

“I lost my temper,” said Neef.

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear, indeed,” sighed Neef. “Now we’ll have to wait and see how much damage she’s going to do to us.”

“You think she will?”

Neef shrugged uncertainly. “She came to do a cuddly bunny story about Tracy Torrance. You know the form, penny pinching doctor condemns baby to death. Local paper rides to the rescue accompanied by the cheers of its readers.”

“I hate when they do that,” said Ann Miles. “Surely they can’t really believe that anyone would allow a child to die to save money.”

“I don’t know what they really believe,” confessed Neef. “Maybe they do it without thinking. I don’t know.”

Ann Miles looked at the clock on the wall and said, “You’re not going to thank me for reminding you but you have a meeting with management at four.”

“Jesus,” sighed Neef. He saw that it was three minutes to four.

The monthly hospital management meeting had become an unpleasant fact of life as far as Neef was concerned. Administrators seemed to have blossomed like weeds after rain over the past few years. This was partly due to changes in political philosophy but mainly down to the fact that the hospital had taken NHS Trust status under government guidelines. They were now responsible for their own finances. Individual Consultants had to fight their corner in order to achieve the funding they needed for their own units but tended to form alliances against the ‘suits’ — non-medical managers brought in from outside to run ‘the business’ of purveying medicine to the sick. The situation often reminded Neef of the constantly warring factions of Renaissance Italy.

“Ah, Michael,” said Tim Heaton, the hospital chief executive as Neef entered and saw that he was the last to arrive. As always, Heaton was dressed immaculately, dark suit, dazzlingly white shirt and trendily patterned silk tie. This always made Neef aware of his own sartorial shortcomings. The mere sight of the man made his suit feel uncomfortably old and his trousers more than a little baggy. Another thing that Neef noticed was that, at whatever time of day one met Heaton, he always looked as if he had just shaved. His perennially tanned skin never betrayed a hint of stubble. He had come to the Trust from the business world, having been chief executive of a large engineering firm with extensive overseas contracts. Although loathe to admit it at first, Neef had come to concede that the man had ‘people skills’. He was a good administrator.

“I think we’re all here now,” said Heaton.

Neef took his seat at the table with ten others including Heaton. He smiled briefly in the general direction of everyone and gave a special nod to Frank MacSween. Relevant papers for the meeting had been placed in front of him. Neef noticed that this appeared as a minor triumph of desk-top publishing. Laser printed text and a brand new logo for the hospital — healing hands lightly holding a dove, done in pastel blue — had taken over from the Xeroxed, typewritten, much-Tippexed scripts of the past.

Heaton turned to his left and said, “I’m going to call upon our finance director to make his report, just in broad general terms if you would, Phillip?”

Neef gave silent thanks for the ‘broad general terms’ rider. Phillip Danziger had an accountant’s love for figures that he found hard to share. In the red or, in the black, was really all he wanted to know.