Pulse(95)

I wish.

‘No,’ I said, but I was only guessing at what was or was not a lethal dose because I’d never actually tried to kill anyone with morphine.

DC Filippos should have asked Dr Harold Shipman, I mused. As one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, Shipman had used morphine overdoses to kill at least two hundred and fifty people in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and he remains the only doctor in the history of British medicine ever to have been convicted of murdering his own patients.

‘There’s more of it in her bag,’ shouted a man. ‘Look!’

I did look, up from my horizontal position. The man was one of the group standing around me and he was holding up another fully loaded syringe that he’d removed from my orange Sainsbury’s carrier.

‘Please leave that alone, sir,’ DC Filippos said, without making any impression on him whatsoever. Instead, the man went on waving the syringe around high above his head so that everyone could see it.

‘Naloxone,’ I said.

‘What?’ asked the policeman, leaning down close to my face.

‘That syringe contains naloxone,’ I repeated. ‘Antidote to morphine. Inject Forrester with it.’

He seemed to dither, looking back and forth from the syringe in the man’s hand to my face. I had clearly given the young detective a serious dilemma. For the first time since I’d known him, DC Filippos obviously didn’t know what to do.

‘Inject the naloxone into Rupert Forrester,’ I said again. ‘It will counteract the effect of the morphine.’

‘Inject it where?’ he said.

Intravenous was best but it could also be administered into a muscle.

‘Anywhere will do. Stick it into his arm or his leg.’

He hesitated.

But so would I have done in his position. He only knew that the second syringe contained naloxone because I’d told him so, and I was the person who had caused the medical crisis in the first place. He only had my word for it that the second syringe would lessen the impact of the morphine, and not simply reinforce it, maybe even enough to kill.

Fortunately for the policeman, he didn’t have to make the decision because at that point two ambulance paramedics arrived in their green uniforms.

I knew them. The same pair had collected me from Cheltenham Police Station the previous November, when my blood sugar had been too low.

I sat up and watched as the paramedics set to work on Rupert Forrester, removing his bow tie and opening his white shirt wide.

One of them glanced in my direction.

‘Hello, Dr Rankin,’ he said.

‘Hi, Derek,’ I replied.

It all seemed surreal.

‘He’s been injected with morphine,’ DC Filippos said.

‘Give him naloxone,’ I added.

They should have some of their own, I thought. Naloxone was also the antidote for a heroin overdose and ambulance crews were all too used to dealing with those.

‘How much morphine?’ Derek asked.

‘Forty milligrams,’ I said.

He sucked air in through his teeth in a manner that worried me. Maybe forty milligrams was a lethal dose after all. I hadn’t actually meant to kill Forrester, just make him go to sleep.

Primum non nocere – Primarily, do no harm.

Not actually part of the Hippocratic Oath, as some believed but, nevertheless, a maxim to which all doctors were expected to adhere.

Had I done harm? Permanent harm?

Derek dug into his large red medical kit and pulled out a sterilised pack containing a syringe and a hypodermic needle. He filled the syringe with naloxone from a small bottle and then injected the drug into a vein on the back of Forrester’s hand.

The results were remarkable.

One minute Rupert Forrester had been lying comatose on the dais, the next he was sitting up seemingly fully aware of what was going on around him.

The big question that no one had asked yet was why.

Why was I here?

Why had I stabbed Forrester with the needle?

Why had I injected him with morphine?

Why? Why? Why?

Those questions had been set aside due to concern over his welfare but, with him now seemingly well on the way to recovery, they became the main focus.

Not that I was yet in a fit state to answer.

Two more policemen arrived, this time in uniform, and they moved the crowd back from around the dais, asking them to return to their places at the tables so that a list could be made of their names prior to them being sent home.

There was anger too, with all of it directed firmly in my direction.

‘Inconsiderate bitch,’ I heard someone say.

I suppose I should be sorry for ruining their evening – the Injured Jockeys Fund was close to my heart too – but the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

One of the major effects of cocaine was that the world outside one’s ‘self’ became irrelevant. Me, me, me was the mantra of the cocaine addict, and to hell with everyone else.

Both Rupert Forrester and I were still sitting on the dais together with the paramedics and DC Filippos, while the other two policemen went to the tables to start taking down details of the guests.

And into this bizarre scene walked Big Biceps, no doubt arriving to drive his boss home.

I happened to be looking at the main door as he came through it.

Even the sight of him made the hairs on the back of my hands stand up in fear. But he hadn’t seen me because DC Filippos was still crouched between us.