Sister: A Novel Part 15

I'd been to St Anne's before but it had been refurbished beyond recognition with a shiny new foyer and vast art installations and a coffee bar. Unlike any hospital I'd been in, it felt like it was a part of the world outside it. Through the large gla.s.s doors I could see shoppers strolling past and the foyer was flooded with natural light. It smelled of roasting coffee beans and brand-new dolls just opened from their boxes on Christmas day (maybe the cafe's new shiny chairs were made of the same plastic).

I took the lift up to the fourth floor, as instructed, and walked to the maternity wing. The shininess didn't extend up that far and the smell of coffee mixed with brand-new dolls was smothered by the usual hospital smell of disinfectant and fear. (Or is it only we who smell that because of Leo?) There were no windows, just strip lights glaring onto the linoleum beneath; no clocks, even the nurses' watches were upside down; and I was back in a hospital world with its own no-weather and no-time in which the aberrant crises of pain, illness and death were Kafka-like turned ordinary. There was a sign up demanding that I wash my hands using the gel provided and now the hospital smell was on my skin, dulling the diamond on my engagement ring. The buzzer on the locked ward door was answered by a woman in her forties, her frizzy red hair tied back with a bulldog clip, looking competent and exhausted.

'I phoned earlier. Beatrice Hemming?'

'Of course. I'm Cressida, the senior midwife. Dr Saunders, one of the obstetricians, is expecting you.'

She escorted me into the post-natal ward. From side wards came the sound of babies crying. I'd never heard hours-old babies cry before and one sounded desperate, as if he or she had been abandoned. The Senior Midwife led me into a relatives' room, her voice was professionally caring. 'I'm so sorry about your nephew.'

For a moment I didn't know who she was referring to. I'd never thought about our own relationship with one another. 'I always call him Tess's baby, not my nephew.'

'When is his funeral?'

'Next Thursday. It's my sister's too.'

The Senior Midwife's voice was no longer professionally caring, but shocked. 'I'm so sorry. I was just told that the baby had died.' I was thankful to the kind doctor I'd spoken to earlier that morning for not turning your death into pa.s.s-the-day-away gossip. Though I suppose the subject of death in a hospital is more talking shop than gossip.

'I want her baby to be with her.'

'Yes, of course.'

'And I'd like to talk to whoever was with Tess when she gave birth. I was meant to be with her, you see, but I wasn't. I didn't even take her call.' I started to cry, but tears were completely normal here, even the room with its washable sofa covers was probably designed with weeping relatives in mind. The Senior Midwife put her hand on my shoulder. 'I'll find out who was with her and ask them to come and talk to you. Excuse me a moment.'

She went into the corridor. Through the open doorway I saw a woman on a trolley with a just-born baby in her arms. Next to them a doctor put his arm around a man. 'It's customary for the baby to cry, not the dad.' The man laughed and the doctor smiled at him. 'When you arrived this morning you were a couple and now you're a family. Amazing, isn't it?'

The Senior Midwife shook her head at him. 'As an obstetrician, Dr Saunders, it shouldn't really amaze you any more.'

Dr Saunders wheeled the mother and baby into a side ward and I watched him. Even from a distance I could see that his face was fine-featured with eyes that were lit from the inside, making him beautiful rather than harshly handsome.

He came out with the Senior Midwife. 'Dr Saunders, this is Beatrice Hemming.'

Dr Saunders smiled at me, totally unselfconscious, and reminded me of you in the way he wore his beauty carelessly, as if unacknowledged by the owner.

'Of course, my colleague who spoke to you earlier this morning told me you were coming. Our hospital chaplain has made all the necessary arrangements with the undertakers and they are going to come and get her baby this afternoon.'

His voice was noticeably unhurried in the bustle of the ward; someone who trusted people to listen to him.

'The chaplain had his body brought to the room of rest,' he continued. 'We thought that a morgue is no place for him. I'm only sorry that he had to be there as long as he did.'

I should have thought about this earlier. About him. I shouldn't have left him in the morgue.

'Would you like me to take you there?' he asked.

'Are you sure you have time?'

'Of course.'

Dr Saunders escorted me down the corridor towards the lifts. I heard a woman screaming. The sound came from above, which I guessed to be the labour ward. Like the newborn baby's cries her screams were unlike anything I had ever heard, sc.r.a.ped raw with pain. There were nurses and another doctor in the lift but they didn't appear to notice the screams. I reasoned that they were used to it, working day in, day out in this Kafkaesque hospital world.

The lift doors closed. Dr Saunders and I were pressed lightly against each other. I noticed a thin gold wedding ring hanging on a chain just visible round the neck of his scrubs top. On the second floor everyone else got out and we were alone. He looked at me directly, giving me his full attention. 'I'm so sorry about Tess.'

'You knew her?'

'I may have done, I'm not sure. I'm sorry, that must sound callous but . . .'

I filled in, 'You see hundreds of patients?'

'Yes. Actually we have over five thousand babies delivered here a year. When was her baby born?'

'January the twenty-first.'

He paused for a moment. 'In that case I wouldn't have been here. Sorry. I was at a training course in Manchester that week.'

I wondered if he was lying. Should I ask him for proof that he wasn't around for the birth of your baby and for your murder? I couldn't hear your voice answering me, not even to tease me. Instead I heard Todd telling me not to be so ridiculous. And he'd have a point. Was every male in the land guilty until one by one they could prove their innocence? And who said it had to be a man? Maybe I should be suspicious of women as well, the kind midwife, the doctor I'd spoken to earlier that morning. And they thought you were paranoid. But doctors and nurses do have power over life and death and some of them have become addicted to it. Though with a hospital full of vulnerable people what on earth would make a healthcare professional choose a derelict toilets building in Hyde Park to release their psychopathic urge? At this point in my thoughts Dr Saunders smiled at me, making me feel both embarra.s.sed and a little ashamed.

'Our stop next.'

Still not able to hear your voice, I told myself, sternly, that being beautiful does not mean a man is a killer - just someone who would have rejected me in his single days without even being aware that he was doing it. Coming clean, I knew that this was why I was suspicious of him. I was just pegging my customary suspicion onto a different - and far more extreme - hook.

We reached the hospital mortuary, me still thinking about finding your killer rather than about Xavier. Dr Saunders took me to the room they have for relatives to 'view the deceased'. He asked me if I'd like him to come with me but, not really thinking first, I said I'd be fine on my own.

I went in. The room was done out thoughtfully and tastefully like someone's sitting room with printed curtains and a pile carpet and flowers (fake, but the expensive silk kind). I'm trying to make it sound OK, nice even, but I don't want to lie to you and this living room for the dead was ghastly. Part of the carpet, the part nearest to the door, had almost worn through from all the other people who had stood where I was standing, feeling the weight of grief pressing down on them, not wanting to go to the person that they loved, knowing that when they got there they would know for sure that the person they loved was no longer there.

I went towards him.

I picked him up and wrapped him in the blue cashmere blanket you had bought for him.

I held him.

There are no more words.

Mr Wright listened with focused compa.s.sion when I told him about Xavier, not interrupting or prompting, allowing me my silences. At one point he must have handed me a Kleenex because I now have it, sodden, in my hand.

'And you decided at this point against a cremation?' he asks.

'Yes.'

A journalist in one of yesterday's papers suggested that we didn't 'allow a cremation' because I was 'making sure evidence wasn't destroyed'. But that wasn't the reason.

I must have been with Xavier for about three hours. And as I held him I knew that the cold air above a grey mountain was no place for a baby, and therefore, as his mother, it was no place for you either. When I finally left, I phoned Father Peter.

'Can he buried in Tess's arms?' I asked, expecting to be told that it was impossible.

'Of course. I think that's the right place for him,' replied Father Peter.

Mr Wright doesn't press me on the reason I chose a burial and I'm grateful for his tact. I try to carry on, not letting emotion slip out, my words stilted.

'Then I went back to see the Senior Midwife, thinking I'd meet the person who'd been with Tess when she gave birth. But she hadn't been able to find Tess's notes so didn't know who it was. She suggested I come back the following Tuesday when she'd have had time to hunt for them.'

'Beatrice?'

I am running out of the office.

I make it to the Ladies' just in time. I am violently sick. The nausea is uncontrollable. My body is shaking. I see a young secretary look in then dart out again. I lie on the cold tiled floor, willing my body back into my control again.

Mr Wright comes in and puts his arms around me, and gently helps me up. As he holds me, I realise that I like being taken care of, not in a patriarchal kind of way, but simply being treated with kindness. I don't understand why I never realised this before, brushing away kindness before it was even offered.

My limbs finally stop shaking.

'Time to go home, Beatrice.'

'But my statement . . .'

'How about we both come in tomorrow morning, if you're up to it?'

'OK.'

He wants to call a taxi for me or at least walk me to the tube, but I politely turn down his offer. I tell him that I just need fresh air and he seems to understand.

I want to be alone with my thoughts and my thoughts are about Xavier. From the moment I picked him up, I loved him for him and not only as your baby.

I get outside and tilt my head up towards the pale-blue sky, to stop the tears from spilling out. I remember the letter you wrote to me about Xavier, the one that in your story I haven't yet read. I think of you walking home from the hospital through the driving rain. I think of you looking up at the black pitiless sky. I think of you yelling 'Give him back to me.' And that no one answered you.

I think of you phoning me.

11.

Sat.u.r.day.

There's hardly anyone up and about at 8.30 on a Sat.u.r.day morning, the pavements virtually deserted. When I arrive at the CPS building there's only one receptionist at the front desk, informally dressed, and when I get into the lift it's empty. I go up to the third floor. There's no Mrs Crush Secretary here today so I walk straight past the reception and into Mr Wright's office.

I see that he's lined up coffee and mineral water for me.

'You're sure you're up to this?' he asks.

'Absolutely. I feel fine now.'

He sets the tape whirring. But he is looking at me with concern and I think that, since yesterday, he sees me as somebody who is far more fragile than he'd realised.

'Can we start with the post-mortem report? You'd asked for a copy.'

'Yes. Two days later it arrived in the post.'

Mr Wright has a copy of the post-mortem in front of him with lines highlighted in yellow pen. I know which the yellow lines will be and I'll give you them in a moment but first there is a line that won't be yellow but is highlighted in my memory. At the very beginning of your post-mortem report the pathologist makes a promise 'on soul and conscience' to tell the truth. Your body wasn't treated with cold scientific a.n.a.lysis; it was afforded an archaic and more deeply human approach.

Department of Forensic Medicine, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London I Rosemary Didcott, Bachelor of Medicine, hereby certify on soul and conscience that on the 30th January two thousand and ten at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital Mortuary and at the instance of the Coroner, Mr Paul Lewis-Stevens, I dissected the body of Tess Hemming (21), of 35 Chepstow Road, London, the body being identified to me by Detective Sergeant Finborough of the London Metropolitan Police and the following is a true report.

This was the body of a white Caucasian female of slim build and measuring 5 feet 7 inches in height. There was evidence of having given birth two days before death occurred.

There were old scars, dating from childhood, on the right knee and right elbow.

On the right wrist and forearm was a recent laceration ten centimetres in length and four centimetres in depth bisecting the interosseous muscle and damaging the radial artery. On the left wrist and forearm there was a smaller laceration of five centimetres in length and two centi metres in depth and a larger laceration of six centimetres in length and four centimetres in depth, which severed the ulnar artery. The wounds are consistent with the five-inch boning knife that was found with the body.

I could find no evidence of any other bruising or scars or marks of any kind.

There was no evidence of recent s.e.xual intercourse.

Samples of blood and body tissues were collected and referred to the public a.n.a.lyst.

I estimate that this young woman died six days before the dissection, on the 23rd of January.

From this dissection I am of the opinion that this young woman died of exsanguination from the lacerations of arteries in her wrists and forearms.

London 30 January 2010.

I must have read that doc.u.ment a hundred times but 'boning knife' remains as vicious as it did the first time, no mention of Sabatier to blunt it a little with domesticity.

'Were the results from the public a.n.a.lyst included?' asks Mr Wright. (These are the results of the blood and tissue tests, which were done after the initial post-mortem at a different laboratory.) 'Yes, they were attached at the back and had the previous day's date on them, so they'd only just come through. But I couldn't understand them. They were in scientific jargon, not written to be understood by a layperson. Fortunately, I have a friend who's a doctor.'

'Christina Settle?'

'Yes.'

'I have a witness statement from her.'

I realise there must be scores of people working on your case, taking concurrent statements.

I lost contact with my old friends from school and university when I went to the States. But since your death old friends have been phoning and writing; 'rallying round' as Mum calls it. Among the rallyers was Christina Settle, who's a doctor now at Charing Cross Hospital. (She's told me that over half my Nuffield biology A level set are pursuing a scientific career of some sort.) Anyhow, Christina wrote a warm letter of condolence, in exactly the same perfect italic writing that she had at school, ending, as many of the letters did, with 'if there's anything at all I can do to help, please let me know'. I decided to take her up on her offer and phoned her.

Christina listened attentively to my bizarre request. She said she was only a senior house officer and in paediatrics not pathology, so she wasn't qualified to interpret the test results. I thought she didn't want to get involved but at the end of our phone call she asked me to fax her over the report. Two days later she phoned and asked if I'd like to meet her for a drink. She'd got a pathologist friend of a friend to go over the report with her.

When I told Todd I was meeting Christina he was relieved, thinking I was venturing back into normal life by looking up old friends.

I walked into the bistro Christina had chosen and was punched by the normal world at full volume. I hadn't been in a public place since you'd died and the loud voices and laughter made me feel vulnerable. Then I saw Christina waving at me and was rea.s.sured partly because she looks almost exactly as she did at school, same pretty dark hair, same unflattering thick gla.s.ses, and partly because she'd found a booth for us, closeted away from the rest of the bistro. (Christina is still good at bagging things first.) I thought she wouldn't have remembered you very well - after all, she was in sixth form with me when you started at boarding school - but she was adamant that she did. 'Vividly, actually. Even at eleven she was too cool for school.'

'I'm not sure that "cool" is how I'd-'

'Oh I didn't mean it in a bad way, not cold or aloof or anything. That was the extraordinary thing. Why I remember her so well I think. She smiled all the time; a cool kid who laughed and smiled. I'd never seen that combination in someone before.' She paused, her voice a little hesitant. 'She must have been a hard act to compete with . . . ?'

I didn't know if it was nosiness or concern, but decided to get to the purpose of our meeting. 'Can you tell me what the report means?'

She got the report and a notebook out of her briefcase. As she did so, I saw a sachet of Calpol and a baby's cloth book. Christina's gla.s.ses and handwriting might not have changed, but her life clearly had. She looked down at her notebook. 'James, the friend of a friend I told you about on the phone, is a senior pathologist so he knows his stuff. But he's anxious about getting involved, pathologists are being sued all the time and minced by the media. He can't be quoted.'