Peter Anghelides - Another Life

‘You don’t have to. And if anyone asks, you can say it’s a new pervasive device that you’re trialling for me.’

They went into resus. Majunath and another doctor were attending to one of the other patients from the RTA, and waved away Megan’s offer of assistance. ‘Thank you, but no,’ Majunath said. ‘I think we may be on the final cycle here, anyway. One more, I think, Doctor Wilkins.’

Owen nudged Megan. On the opposite side of the room was the body of another road traffic accident victim, waiting to be portered away to the morgue. A blood-stained white sheet had been drawn up over the face. Megan was about to pull it away, but Owen indicated that she should leave it. He helped her position the scanner to one side of the corpse, and the photorealistic image of the sheet slowly melted away to reveal the hairy skin of the victim. ‘Through the epidermis to the dermis.’ Owen narrated the scan like a medical lecture. ‘Look at that, you can make out the individual blood vessels, the nerves… he’s a bit of a bear, isn’t he, so look at those hair follicles… and through the subcutaneous adipose layer… and now that we’re through the basement membrane, we can see the muscle and bone…

‘Look there!’ Megan pointed excitedly, trying to keep her voice down and avoid alerting the doctors working on the other side of the room. ‘The sternal end of the fifth rib is split.’

‘Sternum bifidum, very good,’ breathed Owen. ‘That’s quite a rare neuroskeletal anomaly. If this poor bloke was still alive, we might be able to explain why he sometimes got respiratory difficulty. Bit late for him now.’ He studied her reaction. ‘Not too late for some of the others.’

‘I think we should stop, if everyone agrees?’ Across the room, Majunath had abandoned the resuscitation. ‘Time of death, 8.46 a.m. Thank you everyone.’

Outside resus, a young nurse hurried up to Megan. She was a short, thin girl, and her neatly pressed uniform and eager manner marked her out as a new starter, late teens at most. Her badge told Owen she was Roberta Nottingham. ‘Can you come through to eight, Megan? Mrs Boothe is a bit distressed.’

‘OK, Bobbie, I’m right with you.’ She moved off after her, explaining to Owen as they walked: ‘Pregnant woman, mid-twenties, also in that RTA. Date of confinement is next Thursday.’ She paused before Owen pulled back the curtain, and whispered to him: ‘That was the driver we just saw in resus. Her husband.’

In cubicle eight, a small woman in a blue surgical smock watched them with frightened eyes. ‘I can’t feel him moving, doctor. Is he going to be all right?’ Her fingers splayed out protectively over her pregnant bump.

‘OK, Leanne.’ Megan moved across to hold her hand and smooth the hair from her pasty white forehead. ‘We’ll see. They’re going to have a bed for you in maternity really, really soon.’ From Megan’s expression, a pleading look at Nottingham over the top of the pregnant woman’s head, Owen could tell this was unlikely to be true. Nurse Nottingham frowned discouragingly, with the smallest of head shakes.

‘Non-stress test?’ Owen asked.

‘This is Dr Harper, Leanne. He’s come to offer a second opinion.’

Nurse Nottingham said to Owen: ‘Excellent foetal heart rate. Two accelerations in twenty minutes, both at least fifteen beats above the baseline heart rate, and both lasted for least fifteen seconds.’

Leanne looked panicked. ‘What’s wrong? Was the baby hurt in the accident? And where’s Barry? What’s happened to my husband?’

‘The ultrasound showed no sign of any problems with the baby, Leanne. Let’s concentrate on you and the baby for the moment. Don’t worry, try to stay calm.’

Owen said to the nurse: ‘Can you go and check on that maternity bed please, Bobbie? Thanks.’

The nurse stepped out of the cubicle, pulling the curtain back into place as she left.

Owen took the Bekaran device from Megan’s pocket. He ran it over the pregnant woman, without removing or lifting her smock. He indicated to Megan that she should study the scanner image. The blue-patterned smock material vanished, then the mother’s skin, muscle, and suddenly the baby was visible.

By adjusting the resolution, Owen was able to show the position of the baby’s limbs, the head, the placenta, the mother’s bones. He gave the mother a running commentary of reassurance as he did so, while all the time checking for Megan’s reaction to what he was showing her.

‘That’s just amazing.’

‘I’ve been so worried,’ Leanne told them, unable to see the image on the scanner. ‘I could hardly go in a car since the last accident, and now I’ve gone and got in another one.’

‘The last accident?’ asked Megan. ‘When was that?’

Leanne heaved a great sniff, and then an equally large sigh. ‘About ten years ago. I was only about thirteen or fourteen. My mum’s car got rearended on the M4.’

‘That’s a long time ago, Leanne. Were you or your mum hurt?’

‘She was all right. I was in the back, where the truck smacked into us. Broke my pelvis. I was off school for a month.’

Owen indicated the scanner image. ‘There’s where the pelvic fracture was, can you see? It’s healed completely. And now look at the baby’s head…’

He stood up, and gestured to Megan to come with him. ‘Should be fine, Leanne,’ he said as they stepped through the curtain. ‘Back in a minute.’

The staff-room was empty. Owen sat down at the coffee table, and played back the scan images on the Bekaran device. ‘Can you see the distortion in the pelvic bones? Not something you might have picked up before the birth.’

Megan stared. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Cephalo-pelvic disproportion,’ said Owen. ‘I don’t think her pelvis is big enough to let the baby through the birth canal.’ He switched off the image. ‘As if she hasn’t got enough to cope with, after losing her husband tonight.’

Megan took the Bekaran device from him. ‘This is just astonishing.’

‘I told you.’

‘This could speed up diagnosis for the whole department. Owen, they’re stacked up in rows out there in reception, a night like this. We could get them through twice as fast. No, faster , I bet! Just by having these for triage. And the whole idea of waiting forever to get an MRI or an X-ray…’

‘You’re missing the point,’ sighed Owen. She looked at him, baffled, and he continued: ‘It’s not this technology that’s important. It’s where it comes from. What it implies about other alien tech. This is the good stuff, right? This is what can make things better. Us having this is like a group of chimpanzees having a digital camera. If they work out what the buttons do, even by accident, well they can take nice pictures and look at them. They might not be David Bailey, but it’s better than scratching shapes in the dirt with a stick. Thing is, it’s not going to do them any harm if all they want to do with this thing they’ve found is to wipe their arses on it.’

He could see from Megan’s widening eyes that she was beginning to understand. She’d stood up and walked to the window now.

‘What if the chimps found a hand grenade?’ she said.

Owen nodded. ‘What if they found a grenade launcher? What if they found a flamethrower? What if they were given a box full of anthrax spores?’ He leaned forward. ‘And what if they weren’t just chimps?’

Megan shivered, as though there was a draught at the window.

‘Torchwood’s not just about potential benefits,’ said Owen. ‘It’s about real and present danger.’

Megan stared out of the staff-room window, into the storm. After a very long pause, she faced him again. ‘I want to see the rest.’