Anger flashed in Bryant's eyes. 'Let's not take the game
too far, Doctor,' he hissed.
'It's not a game to her,' whispered Avedissian equally
angrily. 'You do anything to harm her and I'll bring the
whole house of cards tumbling down and screw the con
sequences!'
For a moment their eyes were locked in a contest of wills
then Bryant relaxed and assumed a smile. 'All right,
Doctor,' he replied. 'Five minutes, no longer, I promise.'
With that he closed the door and Avedissian turned to face a
puzzled nursing staff who were obviously wondering what
had been going on.
'Bloody bureaucrats!' he murmured.
'You sound just like Dr Harmon,’ said one of the nurses.
True to his word Bryant came out of the room after five
minutes. He seemed very pleased with himself as he
approached Avedissian and the nurses melted away. 'Well,’
he said, 'Christmas has come early this year and Santa Claus
has just been very good to us indeed.'
Avedissian waited for Bryant to explain but he did not.
Instead he said, ‘The O'Neill woman will have to be trans
ferred out of here.' Avedissian opened his mouth to protest
when Bryant stopped him. ‘For her own good,’ he said,
'and for the good of the hospital. What do you think the IRA
would do if they found out that Kathleen O'Neill was lying here shooting her mouth off to the British? Or do you think
that the fact that it's a hospital would put these bastards
off?' Bryant gave a mirthless laugh and said, 'We'll send
someone for her. She'll be looked after.'
Kathleen O'Neill was moved from the hospital at two in
the morning. It was done quickly and quietly as if she had
never been there, and too impersonally for Avedissian's
liking. He stopped the attendants as they wheeled the
trolley to the door and asked Kathleen O'Neill how she was
feeling. Her deep green eyes were frightened but she said,
with what Avedissian thought was great courage, 'I feel
much better, Doctor. Thank you for your help.' Avedissian
gave her hand a little squeeze and let her go.
The little convoy, sirens mute and roof lights in darkness,
stole off into what was left of the night to the
accompaniment of a clap of thunder and a jagged flash of
lightning. The humid weather was coming to an end.
Avedissian watched from the darkened doorway of A & E
as torrential rain began to bounce off the pavements and
tumble into the gutters. Some deity had decided to wash the
city clean. All Great Neptune's oceans, he thought.
Avedissian was reading the morning paper on Friday when
his attention was caught by an article headed, Top Civil
Servant in Death Plunge'. Sir Michael Montrose, a senior
official at the Home Office, it was reported, had fallen to his
death from the top floor of a building in Belgravia. Foul play
was not suspected.
It was not so much the story that captivated Avedissian as
the photograph that accompanied it. Sir Michael Montrose
was the man who had headed his interview team at
Cambridge. Avedissian remembered how little love lost there had been between him and Bryant and how Bryant had openly
appeared to ridicule the older man. But why should he have
taken his own life?
Avedissian found that he had little time to consider the
possibilities before all hell broke lose. At the height of the
morning shopping period an enormous bomb was detonated in
the Shamrock Shopping Precinct. Although it was nearly a mile
away from the hospital Avedissian and the others felt the
ground shake beneath their feet and a trickle of plaster fell from
the ceiling of the treatment room. One of the nurses crossed
herself. Harmon cursed loudly.
Avedissian, like many of the others, stood stock still in the
unreal silence that ensued, mesmerised by the thought of the
aftermath of the event before the wail of distant sirens broke
the spell and sent them all into frenzied activity.
A radio call was broadcast to recall all staff from leave and a
request made for blood donors to stand by. Nurses prepared
trays of dressings and instruments and stacked them in neat piles round the room. From another part of the city the sound
of gunfire reached them and everyone knew that the truce was
over.
Avedissian had never seen such terrible injury to human
beings before on such a scale. The nearest had been a train crash
many years before but even that paled into insignificance
beside the horror before his eyes. Dreadfully mutilated people
bled to death in the ambulances before reaching hospital, while
others, half stupefied by shock but still with the misfortune to be conscious, stared at their own insides through gaping blast
wounds in their stomachs. A boy with no legs tried to get up
and run from the stretcher that brought him through the doors.
A woman with no face left screamed continually through a
gaping, misshapen orifice that had once been her mouth. The
sound was like nothing Avedissian had ever heard before.
Avedissian worked on as if caught up in a nightmare. He
felt icy cold and, at times, almost on the verge of det
achment from reality as his mind baulked at accepting what
his eyes were seeing. The thing that kept him going more
than any other was the sight of Harmon, very much in
control, talking to the nurses, encouraging them, deciding priorities, keeping everything on a cool professional level.
Avedissian already knew that Harmon could be an
emotional man for he had heard him speak of this very kind
of situation with passion. But here, in the midst of the real
thing, he was in complete control of things, an inspiration to all around him. At that moment Avedissian admired
Harmon more than any other man he had ever known.
As the time passed some kind of order started to emerge
from the carnage and chaos. The dead were removed by the
porters to the hospital mortuary, those stabilised for surgery
were taken out on trolleys to join the queues outside the
theatres while the remainder were still held in A&E on life
support pending removal to Intensive Care.
Avedissian had lost all track of time. He was still desper
ately trying to stop the bleeding on a young boy whose arm
had been severed too near the shoulder for standard pro
cedures when the radio announced that two gunshot
victims were on their way.
The new patients arrived in a convoy of police and army
vehicles and were afforded scant respect by their attendants.
Several dead bodies were in the trucks. Harmon and
Avedissian verified that they were dead before they were taken away. 'And now the other side,' said Harmon as they
came back into the treatment room.
'What do you mean?' asked Avedissian.
'This lot are the
IRA,'
replied Harmon, indicating the men
lying on the tables.
One of the soldiers who had heard what had happened at
the shopping centre lost control and raised his weapon to
fire at one of the wounded men. He was manhandled out of
the unit by an NCO amidst shouting and chaos.
'What's been going on?' Harmon asked a police inspector.
'It looks like the
IRA
and the
INLA
tried to pull a joint operation. The
IRA
attacked the shopping centre while the
INLA
raided a number of banks in the city.'
'What happened?'
'Apparently it all went wrong. The diversion didn't work
and the INLA were wiped out.'
Harmon looked around him at the pools of blood and
pieces of human tissue that had still to be cleared up and
whispered, 'A diversion . . . this was a
...
diversion?'
'I think you had better come,' said one of the nurses who
had been attending one of the men on the trolleys.
The duty sister had cut away the man's blood-soaked
clothing to reveal the extent of the damage. He had been hit
twice, once in the shoulder and once in the left thigh. In
both cases the bullet had splintered the bone but had still managed to exit.
'Army weapon,' said Harmon. 'If you're hit you go down
and you don't get up.'
Avedissian attended to the other gunshot victim who had
been less seriously hurt in that the one bullet that had
struck him had done so at an angle and gouged out a
channel of flesh from his left calf. But the severe bruising about his face and body said that he had been subject to a
'difficult' arrest.
When the place had finally been cleared Harmon sat
down slowly on one of the benches and lit a cigarette. He
offered one to Avedissian who declined and they both sat in
silence before the duty sister came over to them with cups of tea. 'Will you marry me, Sister?' said Harmon, accepting the
cup as if it were the Holy Grail. 'Join the queue,' said
Avedissian.
Next day the newspapers found it difficult to strike the right
balance in their reporting of the news, for the triumph of-
the security forces over the
INLA
had been so violently offset
by the tragedy of the Shamrock Shopping Centre.
Seventeen people had died, five were still on the critical list
and forty-three had been injured, some destined to carry
the scars and mutilations for the rest of their lives.
Church leaders made renewed pleas for an end to the
violence but, as always, the men who would heed such
pleas were not those who perpetrated it. Hardline Pro
testants threatened revenge for what they called the 'bloody
outrage' and politicians said whatever suited them best
politically. As usual the man in the street was confused and
angry. Everything was back to normal in Northern Ireland
after a lull in the proceedings.
Avedissian was off duty and alone in his room when there
was a knock on the door. His invitation to whomever it
was to come in met with no response so he got up and
opened the door himself. Paul Jarvis was standing there.
'I don't believe it!' exclaimed Avedissian, both surprised
and delighted.
'Life is full of surprises,' grinned Jarvis.
Avedissian invited him in and asked him to sit down on
the one chair in the room while he himself sat on a corner of
the bed. 'It's not much but it's home,' said Avedissian,
looking around him.
'Not for much longer,' said Jarvis.
'Something is happening?' asked Avedissian.
'We are to meet with Bryant tomorrow. Your time here is
over. That's what I came to tell you.'
Avedissian nodded and accepted the news with mixed
feelings for, after his initial feelings of apprehension, he had
come to enjoy working with Harmon. He had almost
allowed himself to believe that he had returned to
practising medicine again. 'I'd better tell Dr Harmon,' he
said.
'I think you'll find that he has been informed,' said Jarvis.
'He had to be warned so that a replacement for you could be
found.'
'Of course,' said Avedissian quietly. 'Have you come from
Wales or your base?' he asked Jarvis.
'Neither, I was given three days' leave. I spent it in
Edinburgh with my girlfriend.'