Anne Fraser - Top-Notch Men!

Joel hadn’t expected to sleep but when the phone rang beside his bed at three a.m. he realised he’d been in a deep dreamless slumber that took some effort on his part to come out of. He reached blindly for the phone and answered it groggily, ‘Joel Addison.’

‘Dr Addison, it’s Brian Willis, I’m on night shift for the unit. We’ve got one hell of a problem here. I thought I should tell you about it now instead of when you come in the morning.’

Joel rubbed his face and sat up. ‘What problem? What’s going on?’

‘It’s Mrs Lowe,’ Brian said. ‘Her ventilator has been tampered with and she had a respiratory arrest.’

‘What?’ Joel leapt off the bed, his pulse accelerating. ‘What the hell do you mean, her ventilator was interfered with? Interfered with by whom? Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, Dr Addison. It’s all back under control here, but the nursing staff are very shaken. Judy Newlands was looking after her and raised the alarm. If she wasn’t as organised and level-headed as she is, it could have been a total disaster,’ Brian said. ‘Someone had switched off the ventilator alarms and switched oxygen and nitrous oxide inputs to the ventilator—she was breathing a 50-50 mix of nitrous and air.’

‘That’s impossible, Brian, the connectors are different. You can’t screw an oxygen supply to a nitrous inlet, or vice versa.’

‘I know that, but that’s not how they did it. They cut the tubing and used clip-on joiners to switch the tubing. Nitrous comes out of the wall, and halfway along the tubing it changes into the oxygen tubing input of the ventilator. And the opposite for the oxygen supply.’

‘This is serious, Brian. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Have hospital security and the police been notified?’

‘The place is crawling with them right now, Dr Addison, and somehow the press has been informed. There are at least two newspapers here already and security tells me there’s a TV news van setting up a satellite dish out the front.’

Joel let out one sharp expletive. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

A group of journalists approached Joel as soon as he headed for the front doors of the unit. ‘Dr Addison? You’re the new director of Melbourne Memorial’s innovative new ICTU. Do you have any comments on Kate or Tommy Lowe’s condition? Has this incident or accident in the unit involved either of them?’ one of them fired at him.

‘I’m sorry but I am not at liberty to discuss patient details with anyone other than close family members,’ he said, and made to brush past.

‘Dr Addison, there are rumours that Kate Lowe tried to kill herself and her son, and there are rumours that an attempt was made on her life in the early hours of this morning in your unit. Do you believe there is a major weakness in security in the new unit? Could anyone just walk in and interfere with patients?’

‘Is the public safe in your unit, Dr Addison?’ another journalist persisted.

‘Please, get out of my way,’ Joel said, swiping his pass key to enter the building.

He located Brian Willis and almost frog-marched him into his office. Once there, the door shutting behind them with a snap, he asked Brian to fill him in on events of the night in detail.

‘Whoever did this didn’t realise about all the other separate alarms,’ Brian said. ‘The first thing to go off was the alarm on the pulse oximeter. Then the heartrate alarm went off at the desk. We were a bit short on staff, and had a one-to-three nursing ratio for about fifteen minutes down that end of the unit. Judy had gone to mix an antibiotic dose for Tommy, I was in the office. Judy heard the first alarm and came back in. The ventilator seemed to be working fine, she saw the alarms were off and switched them back on, and of course they all started sounding off. Oxygen sats had dropped to 70 per cent, so Judy just disconnected Mrs Lowe from the ventilator and hand-bagged her. Her obs came back to normal. She then reset all the ventilator settings and reconnected her, but within a minute all the alarms went off again.

We decided the ventilator was faulty. We bagged her while one of the unused machines was brought across by Chris Farmer, the orderly. We set her up on it on its bottle supply and it worked fine, so we disconnected the wall supply, moved out the old one, moved in the new one, connected the wall supply to the new one, then all the alarms went off on the new one. We knew the wall supply must have been OK because it’s driving every other ventilator in the unit. It’s just didn’t add up. Then Chris found the connectors and switched-over tubing—one loop of it, with the connectors, was concealed under the equipment trolley in the corner of the cubicle.’

‘This is not just sabotage, Brian, this is attempted murder,’ Joel said.

‘I agree. The police think so, too. They’re interviewing Judy and Chris now. I gave a statement a while ago. They want to talk to you at some point.’

‘Were there any relatives in the unit?’

‘There were people coming and going earlier in the night, up till pretty late actually,’ Brian answered. ‘You know what it’s like in here sometimes, we allow relatives as much contact as possible. That boy that came in the other day—you know, the spinal injury? His parents have barely left his bedside. I think his sister and girlfriend have been in, too, but it’s impossible to keep track of everybody in a unit as big as this.’

Joel ran a distracted hand through his hair. ‘I know … it’s hard to tell people to stay away when it could be the last time they see the patient.’ His hand fell to his side. ‘Has Mrs Lowe’s husband been informed?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was his reaction?’

‘Apparently pretty cold and dismissive about it,’ Brian said. ‘Quite frankly, I don’t think he’d care if someone pulled the plug on his wife.’

Joel frowned. ‘Was he in the unit at any time during the night?’

‘I’m not sure, I’d have to check with the nursing staff. Do you think he did this?’

‘It’d be a pretty stupid thing to do under the circumstances,’ Joel said. ‘The finger of blame would point straight at him.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. But he must be extremely cheesed off about it all the same. The kid isn’t doing so well. Mr Lowe will probably lose it if his son doesn’t recover or if he’s left permanently brain-damaged.’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be permanent,’ Joel said, at the same time as his phone rang.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Brian said and made his way out.

‘Joel, it’s Patrick Naylor here,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘What the hell is going on in the unit? I just had a call from Switchboard that the press and the police are crawling all over the place.’

‘There’s been an incident in ICTU with a patient,’ Joel explained, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers to release the tension he could feel building behind his eyes. ‘It’s under control now but the press will expect a statement from one of us—if it’s me, I want you to clear it before I make it. You’d better come in and I’ll fill you in with the details.’

‘For God’s sake, man, it’s four a.m.!’ the CEO said. ‘Can’t it wait until morning? I normally don’t get in till eight-thirty.’

Joel dropped his hand and rolled his eyes, actively forcing himself to remain polite. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘Good. I’ll see you in my office at eight-thirty. And get Security to get rid of the press. I don’t want to be harassed by journalists getting from my car to the lifts.’

‘Fine, but if it’s going to be eight-thirty I can’t be held responsible for whatever unenlightened speculation appears on the front of the Melbourne papers,’ Joel said, but the CEO had already hung up.