Pulse(23)

‘Calvin Klein boxer shorts,’ the assistant coroner replied. ‘They could have been purchased anywhere.’

Yes, I thought, but not cheaply. Add the handmade shoes, tailored suit and shirt – our dead friend had clearly not been short of a bob or two. Was that because he was a cocaine smuggler, ultimately undone by his own illegal shipment?

‘What about the whisky bottle?’ I asked. ‘Did it contain any cocaine residue?’

‘You seem very well informed, Dr Rankin.’ He made it sound suspicious.

‘I’m just interested,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘It’s not often that a well-dressed, respectable-looking man with handmade shoes dies of cocaine poisoning whilst in my care.’

But, if the truth were known, I was more than just interested – I was becoming seriously obsessed by the unnamed man, and why he had died. The obsession had been building in me ever since he had first arrived at the hospital, further fuelled by the complaint against me and the strangeness of his passing.

The assistant coroner closed his briefcase and began to stand up. As far as he was concerned the meeting was over.

‘So did it?’ I asked.

‘Did what?’

‘Did the whisky contain the cocaine?’

‘We are still waiting for all the forensic toxicology test results. That one included.’

I had the strong impression that he wouldn’t have told me even if he knew, as if his own position of importance would have somehow been diminished if he couldn’t withhold some snippet of crucial information from those he considered to be lesser mortals.

I shrugged as if I didn’t care.

How I had moved on in only a couple of weeks.

Only ten days previously I would have shouted and screamed at the silly man and probably found myself being sedated by the hospital staff with a jab in the backside.

Was I really getting better?

An examination of the complaint against my medical competence took place three weeks and two days after my admission and, as a courtesy to my situation, had been held in the dining hall of Wotton Lawn.

I protested that, as a hospital inpatient, I obviously wasn’t well enough to defend myself against the charges and I’d had insufficient time to brief a lawyer to act as my counsel.

However, I was advised privately by the Medical Director to let the proceedings go ahead as the complaint against me was to be dismissed as being without foundation, and it would not be considered as a disciplinary hearing.

‘How come?’ I’d asked him.

‘The nurse is now saying that she would have likely done the same thing as you in similar circumstances and her support makes all the difference.’

‘But wasn’t it her who complained about me in the first place?’

‘No. It was a junior doctor. It appears that he didn’t like getting shouted at by you in front of everyone so he complained about your competence. He has now been persuaded of his error.’

Little shit, I thought. He’d been responsible for everything.

But had he?

This disaster had been brewing for some considerable time. If it hadn’t been his complaint that had tipped me over the edge, something else would have done.

The hearing took just a few minutes to complete and neither the nurse nor the junior doctor was present. The Medical Director acted as the chairman of the panel of three, and he was the only one who spoke.

‘After further consideration of the events surrounding the death of an unknown man at Cheltenham General Hospital, this panel finds that there is no case for Dr Christine Rankin to answer in relation to a complaint made against her. Hence, this panel hereby lifts the suspension from duty previously imposed on Dr Rankin, and no report of the circumstances relating to this matter shall be forwarded to the General Medical Council.’

The Medical Director may have lifted my official suspension but he made it perfectly clear that I was, instead, placed on long-term sick leave and it would need his personal approval for me to go back to work at Cheltenham General.

So I was not suspended, but I was.

I still couldn’t do my job.

Did it make a whole heap of difference why?

It seems it did to the horseracing authorities.





9


In all, I had spent five and a half weeks in Wotton Lawn, coming out just before Christmas.

My official status had improved from being ‘dangerously ill’ to ‘stable’ and I had even managed to put on a few pounds. Not that I necessarily felt better for it.

Grant had collected me in the late afternoon and drove me home across the Golden Valley and through the centre of Cheltenham.

I’d been struck by the beauty of the Christmas lights.

Everything in the hospital had been designed as being functional rather than aesthetically pleasing. And functional also meant that it could not be used to assist a suicide – shower heads were built right into the wall, towel rails were held up by magnets and, in the wardrobe, there wasn’t a proper clothes rail, just a solid ledge for hooking hangers over. There had to be nothing from which patients might be able to hang themselves. Even the meagre curtains were held in place by Velcro, ready to give way if a human body weight was applied.

The twins had made a huge banner for my arrival at the house, hung between two of the upstairs front windows, with Welcome Home Mum emblazoned across it in big black letters.