George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (5 page)

Not that she, as a modern woman, gave a damn about such displays of male jealousy. If she wanted to be interested in other men, she damn well would be. But the trouble was, her real interest was Gus. So, there she was: not for a moment wanting to hurt Gus’s career by clinging to him, but missing his company. Not being naturally self-sacrificing, but behaving so. It was a bitch of a situation to be in.

She began to walk towards the car park on the far side of the courtyard, stepping out sharply to warm herself against the cool breeze, as she made herself pay more attention to her surroundings than to her own thoughts. There must be some sort of panic on somewhere, she thought. There was the penetrating wail of ambulance sirens, not an unfamiliar sound here but particularly urgent tonight, it seemed, and one or two people were running across the courtyard. Without
intending to, she quickened her own steps until she too was almost running. Maybe there
was
a panic and extra pairs of medical hands would be needed? It did happen occasionally, and she lifted her chin as she ran, trying to hear more.

But all there was in addition to the continuing siren squeals was a drift of shouting voices that became a little louder as she reached the way out of the courtyard, between the pharmacy and her own path. lab, and she hurried through hard on the heels of a little flutter of nurses who were running too, their blue check skirts flying over black tighted legs. She managed to catch up with them as they reached the far side of the corridor and the double doors that led to the nurses’ and doctors’ residences and the car park beyond.

‘What’s happened?’ George panted. One of the nurses looked back over her shoulder and George recognized her as one of the senior staff nurses from A & E and was grateful. It was always easier to get sense out of people she knew.

‘No idea,’ the nurse called back. ‘Someone said a car had got into trouble in the car park and I want to see if mine’s OK.’ Then she and the others ran on with George, coming up behind them, now very alert on her own behalf.

There had been a couple of robberies in the hospital in the past few weeks; nothing new for so large and accessible a site encircled by a series of main roads. The half-dozen or so points on the periphery at which people could get into and out of the hospital were impossible to police without very expensive security staff which the Trust couldn’t afford, so the management felt themselves to be in ceaseless battle with the forces of wrong-doing, regarding themselves as serving a community made up entirely of thieves and muggers. Not true, of course, but they undoubtedly had more problems with petty and sometimes grand larceny than most establishments had suffered. Twice cars in the car park had been robbed of their wheels in full daylight, and several had been broken into and had radios and stereo systems removed. Now most people had fitted their vehicles with alarms, including
George. But all the same she ran to see if her own beloved if battered and elderly Citroën had been tampered with.

The sirens had ceased at last, but the sound of shouting voices was even louder as she came round the corner into the crowded car park. Then she stopped short in horror.

It was a small area for such a large staff and every corner of it had been marked out to take as many cars as possible. Getting in and out took a great deal of driving skill and tonight the place was even more tightly packed than usual. And on the far side, about halfway along, there were, George could see, flames leaping. Very close to the place where she had parked her own car.

She found her muscles operating again, as she ran even faster now, along the sides and round the edges. It was impossible to get between the cars and go straight across; some of them left hardly any space for drivers to get in and out when their doors were open, so the long way round was the swiftest.

To her shame her first reaction when she got to the site of the flames was relief. There, beyond the little cluster of firemen who were directing the jets of creamy foam over the affected vehicle, she could see her own car just where she had left it, a couple of spaces up from the affected one. And she bit her lip at the shabby flood of gratitude that it was someone else’s property which was in trouble, not her own. She moved forwards quickly, as though she could leave the shabbiness behind, pushing her way to the front of the little crowd that had collected.

‘What —’ she began and again stopped. There, lying on the ground, was a figure with people leaning over it, and she became aware of an ambulance trolley sitting alongside the little group and the ambulance itself at the entrance to the car park, alongside the fire engine from which the foam hoses snaked their way.

‘It just caught fire,’ someone said. She turned and looked and it was Zack.

‘I came to get my car,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d drive round the outside to the front and pick you up in the street. I saw it all.’

‘Who is it?’ George asked, as the cluster of bodies around the supine figure shifted and rearranged itself. ‘Is it any one I-’

‘Sheila Keen,’ said a voice on her other side, and she whirled to look. It was the staff nurse from A & E. ‘I just found out. It seems she was —’

But George didn’t wait to hear. She pushed her way through the ambulance staff, calling loudly above the hubbub, ‘Let me through. I’m Dr Barnabas. This is one of my staff. Let me through, will you?’

The crowd shivered and parted and she stopped beside the trolley as the paramedic in charge strapped the blankets in place. They’d already set up an emergency IV line and had wrapped Sheila in a foil cover. There were nylon tubes feeding into her nostrils and she looked ghastly, with a deep pallor and smudged shadows in her cheeks. But her eyes were open and she managed to blink up at George.

‘Missed,’ she said. Her voice was thick and clearly painful to use. ‘Didn’t mean to —’ She began to cough and the paramedic glowered at George, putting a hand on Sheila’s shoulder and saying, ‘Slowly now, love. Just breathe slow and easy. No talking. Your throat’s been damaged. No talking.’ He looked up at George again. ‘Sorry, doc, but we’ve got to get her round to A & E soon as poss. I reckon she’s OK but there’s a bit of damage what needs looking at.’ And then he was gone as they wheeled Sheila away and loaded her stretcher into the back of the ambulance.

The firemen had stopped using their jets now, for the flames had gone. Where there had been a car there was a snowdrift of foam which had spattered the surrounding cars liberally, but nothing of the affected vehicle could be seen at all.

‘What happened?’ George was stricken with remorse.
There she’d been complaining bitterly about Sheila’s absence from the Professor’s party and all the time she had been in some sort of trouble here. It was a shameful thing and she needed time to come to terms with it. While she was asking questions she gave herself room to find that time.

One of the firemen looked at her and grimaced. ‘A nasty one.’ He said. ‘Electrics fire, I reckon. You could smell it as soon as we got here. Great plumes of smoke coming out of the car and the driver struggling to get out.’ He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t easy, poor thing. I mean, look at the amount of space there is there to open her door. Bugger all! This place is lethal, you know. And in a hospital an’ all! Shouldn’t be allowed. You could have had the fire spread — the whole lot could have gone up, and with all these petrol tanks it doesn’t bear thinking what might have happened to the rest of the hospital!’

‘I can imagine,’ George said grimly. ‘But what
happened
? Cars don’t just catch fire like that, do they? There has to be a reason.’

The fireman shrugged. ‘Electrics, most probably, like I said. They can short for all sorts of reasons. You won’t know why this one did till someone’s had a look and even then, p’raps not. You’ll need an expert. The state the car’s in under that, it won’t have much to offer.’

‘What’s happened to Sheila?’ George turned to Zack who was still standing beside her, though most of the other watchers had drifted away by now, reassured that their own cars were safe. ‘Was she burned?’

It was the fireman who answered, a little reprovingly, clearly feeling he was the one to be consulted first. ‘I was telling you, madam —’

‘Doctor,’ Zack said, hearing the fireman’s tone. The fireman flicked a glance at him and then at George and relaxed.

‘Well, yes, doctor. The thing is, when the electrics go, the first thing you get is this awful smell. Really acrid and thick. And it gets worse if the damage is affecting all the car’s
wiring. It sends out choking smoke after a while. Now, that’s bad enough — does nasty things to the throat and lungs — but the worst bit is that the whole thing can go up. Like this one did.’

He looked mournfully at the snowy heap, which was now drooping sluggishly and looking less pristine than it had.

‘If the driver’s got time to get out, well, that looks good. Just a bit of breathing damage done. That’s what happened here. She got out, and she’s got her skinniness to thank for that, I can tell you. Some of us wouldn’t have managed it’ — he looked briefly at Zack — ‘but she did. And rolled away just in time. Someone saw what was happening and called us. Don’t know who. We got here just as the flames went up. So we pulled her away and did the necessary. Hope she’ll be OK.’

‘I’m sure she will,’ Zack said. ‘As long as she isn’t burned, and I don’t think she was. It’ll just be the fumes. She’ll be back on her feet in no time.’ And he closed one hand warmly around George’s elbow and pulled her back out of the way as the fireman nodded and moved off with his equipment.

‘She might have been killed,’ George said blankly.

‘But she wasn’t,’ Zack pointed out as though they were speaking of the weather or something equally banal. ‘So that’s all right.’

‘Why should a car’s electrics go up like that?’ she demanded, standing still even though she knew from the pressure on her elbow that he was trying to lead her away. ‘I don’t know much about cars — not as much as I should, I suppose. I’ve never had a case killed in an incident like this, and I thought I’d seen most sorts of violent deaths.’

‘Lots of reasons,’ he said. ‘Too much pressure on the system, so it’s overloaded — you know, CD players and stereos and all that. Neglect, or damage or —’

‘Neglect? Sheila’s car? Never. She loved it like a mother. You’d have thought it was a sentient being, the way she fussed over it. I just don’t understand it.’

‘Well, the garage will no doubt sort it out when they get it in,’ he said soothingly. ‘Look, you’ve had a shock. Come and have a drink as we planned and then we can —’

She shook her head. ‘It’s kind of you, Zack, but I have to go over to A & E and see how she is. It’s such a — it’s bizarre! I can’t imagine such a thing happening to Sheila, of all people.’

‘Accidents can happen to any motorist,’ he said, and again she shook her head sharply.

‘Not to Sheila. She’s been driving for years and never had so much as a scratch, I swear. I told you, she was fanatical about this car. And now look at it. A write-off, isn’t it?’ George shook her head as she turned and stared at the now fast collapsing heap of foam. ‘It’s dreadful.’

‘I can understand why you’re upset —’ he began and she felt her face redden.

‘You think I’m going over the top, don’t you? But I’m not. She’s a member of my staff and I feel bad about her.’

‘Is she a favourite member of staff?’ he said shrewdly. ‘Or the opposite?’

She went even pinker. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is beside the point. She’s a member of my team and I care about all of them.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ She had a suspicion he was a little amused now and felt an even higher tide of embarrassment. He was right, of course. She wouldn’t feel nearly as bad over this if she hadn’t been so annoyed with Sheila before it happened. The doctor part of her mind told her that her technician was probably fine. She’d have a bit of hoarseness and breathing trouble for a few hours perhaps, but she’d escaped a much worse set of injuries. George had no need to be so uptight about her. But she was.

Could this be a fourth incident that would get Old East’s gossips going even more? she found herself thinking, and then was irritated. That was the sort of conjecture that Sheila herself would make and use as the basis for a great edifice of talk and surmise projected as almost fact. George was damned if she was going to allow herself down that path, and
she tightened her jaw. ‘Well, anyway, I’m going to go and see her,’ she said firmly. ‘Thanks for the invitation but —’

‘Oh, I’ll come with you.’ He linked an arm in hers. ‘It’s a pleasure to know someone who cares so much about the people she works with. Too many of them here are so stiff about the upper lip they don’t open their mouths for fear their lips’ll break off. They don’t know what it means to be emotionally involved with anyone but their dogs. Come on. We’ll see how she is.’

He made a determined move back towards the courtyard and George had to fall in step beside him. She was beginning to feel better. Sheila was, after all, likely to be perfectly all right, as Zack had said. She had been overreacting somewhat, and couldn’t deny it. Now she deliberately relaxed her shoulders, took a hard deep breath and then coughed. The smell was awful, acrid and ugly in her mouth.

‘It is nasty, isn’t it?’ He was sympathetic. ‘It happened to me once. I had this old Morgan, lovely car, wood frame, the lot. I was fixing it, back in the days when I wasn’t as experienced as I might have been, and the wiring went, just like that. I managed to stop the fire starting, fortunately, but it was a close-run thing. Wait till we get into the middle of the courtyard and then try a good splutter. It’ll help.’

She obeyed, standing still and coughing hard and feeling the mucus collect in her throat. After a while she nodded at him gratefully and began to walk again. But this time she kept far enough away from him to stop his holding her elbow. Enough was enough.

And no matter what he said, she decided, she wouldn’t go for a drink tonight. After she’d seen Sheila and reassured herself that all was basically well, she’d bid him goodnight, pick up the Citroën from that wretched car park and go home. And tomorrow, first thing, she’d send a very strong memo to Matthew Herne about the car parking arrangements, pointing out the danger. She felt better at the thought. She’d enjoy doing that.