John Pritchard - Night Sisters

‘Shit! Try the one in my office.’ She hurried to do so, and I stumbled after her. I was more or less steady on my feet by the time I got there – but the expression on her face as she looked up from the phone was enough to stop me short.

‘Same again – it’s interference or something. Now I can’t get a dial tone …’ ~

‘Oh my God …’ I couldn’t believe it: not another switchboard failure, not now. And that crazy woman with a knife was on her way up to a sleeping ward – and about to arrive without warning …

Mike had come up behind me, and was about to echo my disbelief when I turned and grasped his coat. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go after her.’

He nodded, and we began to run. It was sheer instinct that prompted me to relinquish my keys, and I swung back round to toss them towards Karen; behind me, getting further away by the second, I heard Mike shouting, ‘Danny. Where’s Danny? Someone find the lazy sod!’ And then I was racing after him, down past the treatment rooms and Suturing and Minor Theatre, and on into the dimly-lit corridor that led to the lifts.

Six

In that claustrophobic tunnel, the noise of our footfalls on the linoleum floor swelled and rebounded and echoed around us, effectively masking any sound from up ahead. Maybe she’d already reached the lifts, of course, or was fast approaching them; but perhaps she’d paused, and was lying in wait for any pursuers – especially ones as reckless as us. That thought occurred to me just before we reached an angle of the corridor, where it bypassed the plant room, but I was going too fast to stop now, and with the breath rasping in my throat I couldn’t even voice a warning. Mike went round the corner first, and the adrenaline surged through me as I lost sight of him. But a moment later I’d followed suit, and had him back in view, still running, his white coat-tails flying – and beyond him a straight stretch of empty corridor, with the lift area at its end.

We ran for it, reached it, and skidded breathlessly to a halt, our eyes scanning the indicator lights. There were four lifts serving this end of the building, and two were still on our level, empty and unused. The third was out of order, which was par for the course.

The fourth was on its way up.

The indicator still showed our floor, but that was just the mechanism catching up. Even as we watched, it clicked up to the next level. Mike swore, and made for one of the waiting lifts; but I already had the door to the main stairway open, and turned to shout.

‘Stairs! Come on, it’s quicker!’

It is, too. This end of the building might be relatively modern, but the lifts are fast approaching the end of their natural, with a tendency to judder and grind and stop at floors you have no wish to visit. Whenever I’m in a hurry, I take the stairs.

So up the stairs we went: clattering, panting, grasping the banister rails to swing ourselves around the corners; passing the doors to the first floor, and going faster all the time. Reaching the second floor, we fairly burst through the fire-doors into the deserted reception area – and saw the lift we’d been racing standing empty before us. As we stood there, gasping to refill our lungs, the door slid smoothly closed again, an automatic function that seemed almost mocking.

‘Oh … sod ,’ I murmured, ‘she’s up here.’

Mike walked quickly to the set of doors leading through into the central corridor, and pushed them open. The thoroughfare beyond was in semi-darkness: just doctors’ offices and storerooms, all deserted at this hour. To left and right at this end, more fire-doors sealed off the access corridors to the first two Medical wards, Harvey and Radcliffe. Likewise at the far end, for Lipscomb. And Jenner.

I moved up to follow him through; still a bit unsteady on my feet after our sprint up here. Still short of breath, too – but I struggled to keep my panting as shallow as possible as I peered into the gloom ahead of us. Where nothing stirred.

We went on down the corridor, quickly and quiet. The door to the seminar room was slightly ajar, and Mike paused and pushed it open; I watched with my heart in my mouth as he reached in to switch on the light and survey the room – but it was empty. We hurried on.

Welcome to Jenner Ward said the sign over the closed double doors that came up on our right. Through their wired glass panels I could see on down the dark passageway, dimly-lit beneath the tubular hoods of the night-lights; past bays and side-rooms asleep in shadow, to the single desk lamp at the nurses’ station. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Warily, I pushed the doors open, and we slipped through.

With no idea of which bay our would-be suicide was in, we made straight for the desk; drawn also, instinctively, by the warm glow surrounding it, for the dreaming darkness of the ward was unsettling; unquiet . I heard ragged breathing in the gloom, and coughs and mutters; the ghostly respiration of the sick. Of course I’d worked my share of night shifts on inpatient wards and was familiar with the atmosphere. But I’d never quite got used to it, and always found it eerie. Tonight, with the prospect of a deranged intruder with a knife lurking somewhere in the shadows, the restless dark was positively scary.

We reached the station without incident, having glimpsed nothing untoward in the bays we’d passed, nor in the sluice room either. I reached over for the nursing cardex, a ringbinder of notes on all the ward’s patients, and had started leafing through it before realizing I’d forgotten her name. ‘Bloody hell … Jones … ?’

‘James,’ Mike prompted calmly, still glancing round. ‘Angela James.’ He’d obviously been browsing through our admissions register as well. I quickly found the relevant entry, and saw she’d been put in one of the side-wards, the four single-bedded rooms back near the doors. We’d already passed her by, without knowing it. I had the sudden, sinking feeling that her pursuer might not have overlooked her so easily.

We turned to retrace our steps, and one of the nurses was just emerging from the end bay, pushing a commode. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Hi … can I help you?’

I hesitated for a moment; then, trying not to make it sound too melodramatic, I said: ‘We’ve had a patient-emergency down in A&E … think she might have found her way up here. She was talking about one of your patients, Angela James, and … er … she’s got a knife.’

That took the colour out of her cheeks somewhat, but she retained her composure admirably. ‘Have you bleeped the porters?’

‘Not yet – none of our phones were working …’ And no fault of mine, but I still felt myself flush at her disbelieving look. She went over to the desk and turned the phone around towards me. ‘You’d better do it now, then.’

Smarting, I moved to do so – while Mike turned to the distinctly unimpressed-looking Staff Nurse. ‘I think we’d better check that Angela’s okay, right now,’ he suggested evenly, and the two of them set off down the corridor. I watched them go, tucking the receiver under my chin as I punched in the number. There was a crackly pause; then the dull whine of number unobtainable. Fuck , I mouthed, and tried again; frowning in disbelief as I got the same result. It seemed the phones were playing up everywhere. I slammed the receiver down – belatedly realizing there were people trying to sleep all around me – and was wondering what to do next when there came a rustle of movement from right behind me. I spun round.

The girl who stood there looked about fifteen – though she must have been older, or they’d have put her on the kids’ ward. She was wrapped in an overlarge hospital dressing-gown that made her seem even frailer than she was. Her face was pale, with dark shadows around the sunken eyes, and her fair hair hung in strings. She looked as if she was feeling really awful.