The Reckless Engineer (19 page)

CHAPTER 25

Monday, October 25 — Ten Days Later

Alan greeted Sean and Jeremy at the AirWater Marine entrance in person. After a few introductions and a twenty-minute meeting with human resources Jeremy was shown to Jack’s old desk and Sean, to Jeremy’s old desk. It took Jeremy about an hour to set up the development machines so that they could also log in remotely for work. After two half hour meetings with two engineers on the electronics circuit designs, Jeremy was able to direct Sean to get started on the first task he needed done.

Alan was with one of his project managers when Jeremy went by his office. Alan quickly concluded that conversation and showed his manager out. The view from Alan’s office from the sixth floor all the way to the Portsmouth seas gently demanded their attention like a pawing kitten. It was a crisp sunny day again.

‘Holy shit, Jeremy. Now Jack has been charged with murder? Thanks for giving me the heads up last week by the way. It helped me handle the engineers here without things disintegrating into chaos again.’

‘Murder and child destruction,’ Jeremy corrected. ‘We think it’s a mistake, Alan. We
do not
think Jack did it. You have seen the newspapers. We think somebody has framed him. My friends Barrett Stavers, my friend Harry Stavers actually, is on the case. Jack knows you are in a tough spot with AirWater Imaging. So I’ve got his resignation here for you.’

Alan calmed down a little as he read through Jack’s resignation letter.

‘This makes it easier for me, Jeremy. Jack is entitled to a three month notice period because of his seniority, but he is waiving it here and giving me a month’s notice, which corresponds to the month’s paid leave I have already put him on. To be honest with you AirWater has tasked me with executing Jack’s dismissal, but I have been putting it off. We can talk about it if Jack wants to come back at the end of his trial.’

‘Jack is coming into business with me, Alan. I don’t have to worry about big conglomerate policies. It is good for you too because I shall be getting Jack’s help first hand on his Marine projects you subcontract to Radio Silicon. So you don’t have to feel bad for him.’

‘Good. I have to act like Jack’s manager here, but he was really my friend too.’ Alan sat back and relaxed. Jeremy noted dark patches and lines under his puffy eyes. He looked like he needed a day off.

‘Jack says he fired Sally because Michelle convinced him that Sally sent the anonymous letters to Caitlin and Douglas McAllen.’

‘Tell Jack that I would not put much weight on it. That woman could talk an Eskimo into buying a warehouse of ice. However, since there is an allegation that involves one of my current employees, Sally, I should look into it. Could you get copies of the two letters for me?’

‘I shall have Harry’s office send out copies to you in the post today if Jack, Caitlin, and Douglas McAllen give their permission.’

‘Good, now that I’ve freed up the salary of my top and most expensive engineer the next task I am assigning you, Jeremy, is to go and get my other top engineer, Sally, out of hospital and back into work. I want her here in Jack’s position as soon as possible. Tell her that Jack has resigned and I need her here personally filling his position. That will cure her depression. She is being held in the psychiatric unit at Portsmouth Hospital, on the third floor of St. James’ ward. I visited her last Tuesday and Thursday. You may use the company solicitors or engage a good mental health solicitor and Marine will pay all bills involved. Please get on it right away, Jeremy.’

Alan clearly had a soft spot for Sally. It could even be something more.

CHAPTER 26

Monday, October 26 — Ten Days Later

St. James’ Hospital of Portsmouth was a group of old three-storey red brick Victorian buildings with their distinctive look achieved by having the corner stones along the edges-alternating short and long bricks-and a skirting at the bottom set in silver grey stone, which gave the building the curious look of having its sides zipped up together at the edges. The seven main old buildings had been extended extensively by having larger building structure and connecting passageways built around them in modern times—also with sympathetic red brick walls zipped together in grey stone at the edges—such that the hospital was now a big connected structure with an unusual W shape when viewed from the front.

Jeremy entered through the main entrance of the building in the middle prong of the W and announced that he was a visitor for the patient Sally Trotter. It was 12:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. Having called in advance, he was expected by the attending psychiatrist.

Jeremy had called Harry and had got a brief outline of the mental health process from a legal perspective. He had then spoken to the mental health solicitors’ firm Harry had referred him to and had put them on alert that he might need to engage them to handle the release of a patient. He had also met with HR to be briefed on Sally’s personal circumstances and had approached the hospital as a direct representative of AirWater Marine.

After signing him in, issuing a visitor’s badge, and making two phone calls, the receptionist directed him to Ward D in the building at the left trough of the W where Dr. Phil Harding greeted him and led him to his office.

‘How is Sally doing, Dr. Harding?’ Jeremy asked, speaking from his heart, first and foremost as her concerned friend. Sally had been through such a tough time, some of it before his very eyes. He felt bad about not doing more to help her when it was all starting. He could have spoken to HR, or alerted Alan . . . He could have done something more decisive to make her work bearable.

‘She is improving, especially since her boyfriend’s visits last week. I understand you are representing the company she is working for. Marine Electronics, isn’t it?’

So Alan had presented himself as Sally’s boyfriend. Interesting.

‘Yes. Sally immigrated from Australia about four years ago. Almost all of her family lives in Australia. Alan, her boyfriend, and I can contact them if she signs some HR permissions forms for us. This episode happened within the work environment; we are responsible for her well-being. What can we do to help her get well, doctor?’

Dr Harding seemed to be in his mid-fifties and had a full head of luxurious silver hair and thick silver eyebrows.

‘Well, Sally was suicidal when she was brought in, with added physical injuries from several canine bites. The medical injuries are healing and are not dangerous now, but she was still suicidal and suffering from clinical depression until her boyfriend’s first visit last Tuesday. She has since improved, but I would still diagnose her as being clinically depressed. It would be irresponsible for me to release her right now, especially since she has nobody living with her. I have to keep her under secure observation. If her boyfriend and you can visit her regularly it will lift her from her depression and I can look at releasing her in due course. Certainly if you can get a family member who can live with her it could speed up her discharge.’

‘Thanks for your advice, doctor. We shall do everything in our power. So that is what is wrong with her now, just depression?’

‘Well, she seems to have also developed some obsessive-compulsive traits. For instance, she’s been asking to keep stacks of clean sheets and clean pillows in her cupboard and she has got very distressed when her stacks of supplies have depleted. Once or twice she has used and wet all of her bed sheets at night-possible episodic regressions to a time of some childhood trauma. It may be a reaction to her being brought here only in the clothes she was wearing straight from the McAllen-Connor residence and not having the comfort of the things she is used to around her. The reason may also be simply that the window in her room has become faulty and it gets cold at night. She has become attached to that room and our attempts to move her have been met with protests in great distress. Now we just close her door at night because the broken window makes it too cold for the nurses on the night watch; and we give her stacks of clean sheets, blankets, and pillows.’

‘Poor Sally.’ This did not sound like her at all. Sally had always been so, well, together. That Friday night in the pub last summer was the only time he had even seen her drunk. Was that the start of a downward spiral? He knew well from first-hand experience how low it can slip and how fast.

‘Miss Trotter is in a secure observation unit on the third floor. It is well secured because of the dangerous state of some of the patients. No one can get in or out without going through a strict security procedure outlined in this pamphlet. When you are ready, take the elevator up and show this pass to the guard. I shall get another pass issued for Alan, er, Walters, is it?’

‘Yes, thank you, doctor.’

The third floor hallway at the top of the stairs was manned by a security guard who checked Jeremy’s pass and let him in through the locked door. The nurse in the small office led him through a long hallway to a unit with a lounge and three patients’ rooms and a shared bathroom off it. An armchair was placed close to the entrance to the lounge in which a male nurse sat and kept a watch over the three patients in the unit, an alarm ready to scream at the slightest press of a button on his belt.

The whole place smelt of medicine and disinfectant. In the distant hallway he could hear a patient yelling out paranoid expletives at regular intervals, warning some imaginary uncle not to come near her. Jeremy found it tragic and disturbing.

Sally sat on one of the sofas set near the window, watching the flat screen television attached to the wall. The only other patient in the unit was playing the Black Eyed Peas song “Where is the love” over and over from her room, a recurrent and desperate cry for love and social justice.

‘This unit has a nurse on the watch 24 hours a day. The nurses change shifts and they each carry an alarm in the event of anything that might endanger the patients or the staff. At night the room lights are turned off, but the doors are kept ajar. We can see the patients asleep in the room from the glass window into the rooms from the lounge and a nurse marks a register after checking the patients’ presence through the window every half hour. You may open the outer windows, but they are secured such that they only open out about four inches. The nurses are trained to handle violent patients. The patients kept in this unit are a danger either to themselves or to others, you see, Mr. Stone. So these are the security procedures in place to protect everybody.’

Clearly this was a speech the nurse was used to giving every first-time visitor to the ward. It had that practiced monotone.

‘Only two of the rooms are occupied in this unit and the other patient is in her room. The nurse can stand outside to give Sally and you some privacy.’

Sally was dressed in a pair of tight black corduroy jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a fitted black V-neck sweater over it that she had been brought into the hospital in, her normal dress-down-Friday attire at Marine. She was barefoot and wore the top without a bra. Jeremy was amazed at how she could look so unassumingly sexy while being depressed in a hospital. Her pale and forlorn expression added to the effect. When she saw him she gave a low squeal of delight and sprang to her feet to give him a hug.

‘I am so glad to see you, Jeremy. Alan told me you are back at Marine.’

‘Good to see you too, Sally.’

Jeremy dragged an armchair over, set it at a right angle to hers, and sat down. She seemed, well,
normal.
From the doctor’s description he had expected . . . what? . . . a mad woman rocking back and forth and mumbling incoherent nonsense.

‘Jack has been as good as fired and Michelle, as you know, is dead. Alan wants you to pull yourself together, get out of here, and get back to work with us. He wants you in Jack’s position. What can I do to get you out of here?’

What do you say to a suicidal patient? He decided to start with the news her “boyfriend” thought would lift her spirits.

Sally suddenly laughed. She had dimples when she laughed. Was it he or did that laugh sound manic?
The nurse put her head in through the door, smiled, and closed the door after himself. He could still feel the nurse’s eyes on them through the glass windows in the door. Fucking male nurses everywhere. The place gave him the creeps.

‘Let us go in my room. There’s more privacy in there.’ She led her into her room through a wide wooden door with a square glass window carved into it at eye level. The room had a cupboard, a side table, a wooden armchair, and a metal bed attached to the gleaming, polished cement floor with its head against the check-through window from the lounge. Sally opened the cupboard and took out her socks and shoes–flat rubber-soled, Boreal rock climbing boots. She broke off some old dried mud off their soles into the waste bin and put them on.

‘I feel naked without shoes when I have a visitor.’

Sexy vixen, Jeremy thought. She was always so focused on her work and her sports activities that she was never aware of her own appeal. The attention of men, when it hit her long after the hints had stopped being subtle, usually took her by surprise.

The cupboard was packed with a tall stack of clean sheets, a stack of pillows, half a dozen blankets, a few clean towels, her black lace bra on a hanger, and a stack of clean hospital scrubs with a floral pattern issued to patients.

‘Could you pick up some clothes from my house, please? I should also like my laptop, the post, and some reading material.’

‘Of course I shall.’ He smiled. ‘It is cold in here.’

Jeremy walked to the window which opened out just about four inches, tried to close it properly, and failed. A metal bracket holding the double-glazed PVC windowpane attached to the metal frame had come lose at one end, and the other bracket and the hinge on the left were bent. They jammed against the frame.

‘It’s broken,’ he said.

‘Let’s go back out in the lounge then.’

‘Are Alan and you going out?’

Sally paused, tying her shoelaces, a secret smile at the edge of her lips.

‘Maybe. I dunno. He got very emotional when he first saw me in here and his hug turned into a kiss before either of us realized it. Isn’t he married?’

‘Separated, for about two years now. He has been seeing a couple of women on and off, but I don’t think he is serious about any of them.’

They returned to their former seats in the lounge. She sat cross-legged on the sofa again.

A kiss from Alan probably meant something; he had not known Alan to flirt with women. Alan may be closer to her than he knew. He had better stop prying into his client’s private life.

‘Alan feels responsible. He thinks everything that happened was due to a management failure on his part from not dismissing Michelle when she first became disruptive,’ he explained.

‘Tell me, what is going on out there with Jack?’ Sally changed the subject. ‘I couldn’t handle it, Jeremy, having Michelle on my back all the time, poisoning Jack and Alan, and Alan not being here. When they fired me it was the last straw. I just went to that house to talk to him away from Michelle; get my job back.’

He told her what was happening with Jack in the outside world, briefly and cautiously, leaving out anything that might depress her and keeping only to the public knowledge already in the news. Then he got down to the business his client had sent him here for.

‘Sally, we need to get you out of here. I can visit you and keep you company whenever I am around Portsmouth and I’m sure Alan will visit you too. Dr. Harding will only release you to a relative or a friend who can stay with you at your home right now. Is there someone in Australia that we can get out here? Can you sign a release form giving us permission to speak to your parents in Australia?’

‘Yes. They will probably send cousin Pippa. She has always wanted to visit England. It will take a little time because Pippa has to get a visa and fly out here, maybe about two weeks. I did not want them to know when I first got here because I was in a bad way. If you pick up the charger for my mobile I can call and talk to Mom myself now.’

She reached into the left pocket of her jeans and tossed Jeremy her keys, dropping a Swiss Army Knife that was tucked away in her pocket. Jeremy picked it up. In true engineering style it was a modern compact variation of a Swiss Army Knife about an inch thick, with a set of flat-head, hexagon-head, and star-head screw drivers of varying sizes off the edges, and a USB stick in the middle.

‘I remember you used to carry this around all the time. No one could get you to part with it,’ he reminisced, smiling.

‘Much like that case you carry around,’ Sally teased back. ‘Shh, give that back. We are not allowed to keep that in here. They did not think to search me when they first brought me in here because I was unconscious. That knife and my house and car keys were in my pocket. They have towed my car from Jack’s house and left it in the hospital parking lot. I need someone to drive it home for me some time.’

He looked at his watch. It was 3:15 p.m.

‘Sally, first I’m going to drive over to your house, pick up your things, and bring them over. I have to be back in my office in London tomorrow. We can take your car another day.’

‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘But give me the Swiss Army Knife. I have stuff on that USB stick I want to work on when you get my laptop. The work will keep me sane in here.’ She held out her hand.

He took the keys and tossed the Swiss Army Knife back to her. She sounded just like Jack. They all had that trait in common-it was their engineering work that gave them pleasure, kept them grounded, structured their life, and kept them sane. He had felt as lost as a homeless man during the past eight months when Radio Silicon’s work had dried up. Only tagging along with Harry and helping him had kept him distracted through his days.

‘My house will be a mess. I have no cleaners, no relatives, no one who can go in and clean it. Just step around everything. The clothes will be in my room upstairs. Thank you very much for doing this.’