Bacchus and Sanderson (Deceased) (2 page)

“Sorry people; this one’s a dud. Nothing we could have done.” Returning to her normal voice, she continued, “He’s so up himself. ‘Sorry people’? He’s from Sunderland, not San Francisco.” She looked down at the body on the table with undisguised distaste.

“
Well, here we are again. You, a corpse and me. I won’t be sorry when my six months in A&E ends.  Chloe in HR hates me. First I got Geriatrics, then A&E. Do you know where they’re sending me next? Oncology.”

              April shook her head in resignation and turned towards the trolley. She had heard it all before, never quite the same. Whatever tasks she was given to do, you could be sure Donna would have something to say about them. Death was this week’s topic; last week had been bodily waste. Commodes, urine bottles and vomit bowls. She had been convinced she was the ward’s shit shoveller. If it came from an orifice, it was hers. She was an exceptional nurse, which went some way to explained why Sister Blacken accepted her brash over confident attitude and forgave her idiosyncrasies.

              They had met and become friends on their first day of training. Donna wanted to have a good time whenever the opportunity presented itself. Nursing gave her access to a steady stream of young, bright doctors. She considered herself an important part of their on going education. Why waste years of conscientious study into the workings of the human body? She ranked the various specialities according to their ability to put their theoretical knowledge to a more practical use. Top of her list this week were surgeons but she had high hopes for the gynaecologist she was dating at the weekend.

“What would you prefer to do? Mr Sanderson or his belongings.”

“You can have the corpse, I’ll double glove then start on his effects.”

              Ten minutes into the task, they heard an unusual noise. The sound of cymbals crashing and cannons firing combined with the buzz of vibration, reverberated around the silent resus bay. Shaken, Donna looked at April and said,

“What is that?”

“The 1812 overture I think.”

“What?”

“The 1812 overture, Tchaikovsky.”

Hissing in reply, Donna said,

“Where’s it coming from?” She looked at the pile of clothing she had been inventorying and said,

“Oh shit, his trousers are moving.”

“His phone. It’s his phone, in his trousers.”

Sliding a hand into the pocket of the folded trousers, she looked down at the glowing screen of the iPhone.

“Thrasher, Thrasher & Braebourne. Who gets calls at four thirty in the morning from a solicitor?”

“Quick, answer it, before they ring off.”

Donna looked at the screen, looked up at April who signalled her to hurry up and then pressed the green button to answer the call.

“Hello?”

A cultured well-spoken voice snapped a reply,

“Who are you? Never mind, get me Ernest Sanderson.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible he’s …”

“I don’t care what he’s doing. Interrupt him, and put him on this telephone.”

Her voice was cold as ice, brittle with anger.

“I really can’t …”

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough for you. He did always favour simple companions.” Continuing in a sarcastic tone and speaking with extreme care, as you would speak to a young child or someone who was especially slow, she said,

“Ask Ernest to come to the telephone, better still give him a message. Tell him that actions have consequences, and these consequences will affect his longevity.  Tell him that now would be a good time to leave my family alone. Whatever he thinks he has, is nothing, and he will never get to use it against me.”

Before the woman could hang up, Donna blurted out,

“He died, earlier this evening. He’s dead, a heart attack”

All that Donna could hear was shallow, regular breathing, and then a quiet, unpleasant, chuckle.

“That was quick; his longevity has already been affected.”

              When she was sure the phone had been disconnected Donna ran to the workstation, grabbed some paper and a pen and began transcribing the message that the woman had given to her for Ernest Sanderson.

“What did she say? What are you writing?” Waving her hand at April to silence her, she stared into space and then began writing everything she could remember. Once she had written as much as she could recollect, she handed it across to April.

              After reading it for a few moments, she asked,

“She really said all of that? The threats to him?”

“She was as mad as a hatter, raving about him looking into her business; intimating she would kill him and then in the end how he had saved her a job.”

“Are you OK, you’ve gone a bit pale?”

“I’m fine. Let’s get finished, get this poor chap to the morgue, and contact his relatives to let them know what’s happened to him. I’ll finish searching through his effects and then we can move him.”

              April removed the last tubes and needles and draped a sheet over his face as a mark of respect.

“Done, I’ll call the morgue and ask them to collect him. Have you found anything?”

“Nothing, not a thing. Just a business card for the same firm of solicitors with the name of one of the partners on, Gerald Thrasher, and his mobile number. The card itself just has the company name and the number for the solicitor on it. Nothing else. His wallet has sixty pounds, a couple of credit and debit cards, and he had a key ring in his jacket with four keys on it. Nothing with an address or phone number for him, just the solicito
r’
s card. When they open in the morning we’ll have to call them. Mr…” she looked down at the card to remind herself of the name,

“Mr Thrasher can notify the family.”

              April had started pacing around the room, muttering to herself in a distracted fashion.  She stopped by the stretcher with Ernest Sanderson on it. Removing the sheet, she began examining his body in minute detail. Confused, Donna asked,

“What are you doing?”

              Ignoring her, April continued to do a detailed search of Ernest’s body, looking between his fingers and toes, under his nails and even behind his ears.

“April, what are you looking for?”

“Needle marks, other than the ones he would have received from us or the paramedics during his treatment. How many times while you have been training as a nurse have you had a telephone call like the one you answered tonight? Let me answer for you, never.  He won’t be autopsied he died of natural causes. But they didn’t hear the phone call you heard. That’s why we have to try and find something. Otherwise, by the time we come on shift tomorrow he’ll be ash at the bottom of the furnace.”

Donna considered what April had said before answering.

“A registrar I dated said that if you had a history of heart disease in the family stay clear of cocaine, as that can induce a heart attack in the right circumstances. So can adrenaline and that’s almost impossible to prove, as your system would be flooded with it anyway.  We don’t know who called for an ambulance; we don’t know where he was brought in from. If we can’t see anything on the body, then we have nothing but an angry woman, voicing empty threats, and our over active imaginations.”

              They stood looking at the body trying to work out if they had missed anything.

“I’ll put his clothes in a bag then we had better move him to the mortuary, so we’re ready for the next patient.”

“Donna, give me a syringe and a needle.” Without hesitating, Donna passed her a ten-millilitre syringe and a sterile needle from the tray. April fitted the needle into the syringe; she placed the point of the needle against a vein in his arm and slid it into the vein. “OK, take the blood and then we can get him down to the mortuary. I’ll send the sample to John for a tox screen; we should have a result by the time we’re back on shift. I’ll make sure he knows it’s for our eyes only.”

“I’ll leave a note for the day shift to contact the solicitor and let him know about Ernest Sanderson’s death.”

Ernest Sanderson lay motionless, afraid to move. Most mornings, he woke up, groaned and then attempted to get himself out of bed without gasping in pain. This routine was invariable and often supplemented by an overwhelming urge to go to the toilet, which could prompt a turn of speed only understood by the elderly with continence problems. Ernest reflected he was glad that he hadn’t got to the stage of his life where the continence issues were trumped by mobility issues. He wasn’t looking forward to being a Tena man.

              With care, he flexed the muscles in each of his arms, legs, his neck, torso and then he scrunched the muscles in his face. He bent and rotated his joints, the usual stiffness from arthritis wasn’t there. He felt supple, sinuous. Relieved, he concluded that everything was working. Working rather better than he had expected; odd.

              Taking his time; he raised himself into a semi upright position, resting his weight on one arm and his hip. He felt fine. No, better than fine he felt great. Why then was he overwhelmed by a feeling of … He struggled for a moment to verbalise his concerns. Why was he panicking? He didn’t panic; he dealt with problems, sought solutions and applied them. Today was different, but he didn’t know why. The way he was behaving was out of character. Why had he thought that his body wouldn’t be okay? He had a vague indistinct feeling that something wasn’t as it should be, something he should remember. He couldn’t put his finger on it.

              He turned to pour his first cup of tea. His teas-made machine was where it should be, the tea as hot and disgusting as normal. Why he clung to using the antiquated machine he didn’t know, but his day couldn’t start without a wet, warm cup of disappointment. Once he had sat by the window and suffered for the ten minutes it took to drink the tea, his day could begin. A throw back to his wife’s insistence on tea in bed before she set a foot to the floor. It was her treat, as his treat was good whiskey before bed.

              He looked around the room, nothing out of the ordinary.  He could see that he was in his own bedroom. His bed, dressing table, wardrobe, armchair, all where they always were. The wallpaper was floral, chosen by his wife, he hadn’t had the time or perhaps the inclination to change it. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers repeated in miniature on each drop.              

              He had always trusted his instincts. People, situations, he could judge the veracity of actions, knew when he was being lied to and had a sixth sense if something was not right. He knew with absolute certainty that something was missing but what? The chair he was sitting in was the problem, he realised. Not the chair itself but what he could see as he sat in it and looked out of his bedroom window. Yesterday morning when he woke up he had sat in the chair as he did every morning with a cup of horrible tea and looked out of the window. It gave him a beautiful view over the square in front of his apartment and beyond to the mediaeval abbey.  Today, as he looked out, he was looking at a transposed image of his usual reality; a static transposed image. Nothing was moving. Not cars, not people, not leaves on the trees. Nothing. He reached up from his chair and tapped the glass. He heard the dead thud or a solid wall rather than the ping of glass. The view was a picture, a good picture, a mirror image of what he should have seen.  Whoever had put him in here didn’t want him to look out. Now he knew why he had woken up in such a panic. His subconscious knew it was wrong; his conscious self needed time to catch up.

              Had Felicity Cortez lost all reason? He doubted he had posed such a threat to the Cortez family that they had opted for direct action? It seemed unlikely, he was no closer to knowing anything than he had been a year ago, or was it just about money? He was wealthy, very wealthy and known as reclusive. His reclusiveness was fuelled by a desire for privacy and personal space. He still entertained and family came to his apartment, although on his terms. He had yet to achieve the obsessive compulsiveness of Howard Hughes. He had received a small number of threats from the harmless unhinged and one serious threat from a former employee who Ernest had sacked for theft. Was this a kidnapping? 

              He climbed out of bed and walked across the bedroom to the door. Listening with his ear close to the oak panelled door, he strained to hear any sounds from the room beyond. Nothing. He bent down to peer through the keyhole, but all he saw was blackness. He held the door handle with a light pressure, as he expected it was cool to the touch. He increased the pressure and began to twist the handle in an anti-clockwise direction to open the door. The instant he increased the pressure on the brass door handle, the handle vanished and his hand disappeared through the door. He stared down, rigid with shock. His arm appeared to have had the front twelve inches amputated leaving a neat scar-less stump. Heart thumping, he jerked his hand back into the room and the door handle reappeared as it had been before; a shiny brass globe.

              He sat heavily into the leather wing back chair next to his bed, struggling to control the panic rising in his chest. The chair stayed solid and held his weight. Leaning back, he closed his eyes.  Door handles don’t disappear; hands can’t pass through solid objects. Of course he was dreaming, the only plausible explanation.