there in a minute.’ After all, she thought bleakly, she wasn’t going to be doing anything else when she went home—not even making plans for a wedding any more.
* * *
Denniston Vale Infirmary was a sprawling Victorian Hospital with modern additional wings tacked onto it in random fashion, their pockmarked walls contrasting oddly with the magnificent stonework of the original building. It stood on a hill at the edge of Denniston town, an imposing clock tower rising from the centre of the building and impressive stone steps leading up to the front entrance, although the ambulances went round the back where the casualty department was situated.
As Frankie’s car swung round the corner to the staff car park, they could see three ambulances lined up, with patients being lifted out on trolleys then being pushed through to the unit. Two police cars were parked to the side of the ambulances, their blue lights still flashing, and a harassed-looking plump nurse with a clipboard was watching the proceedings.
‘Looks a biggy,’ groaned Corey. ‘My feet are killing me already at the thought of it.’
‘Come on,’ said Frankie. ‘You won’t notice your feet once you get going.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ retorted Corey. ‘And look who’s on duty—fusspot Sister Kenney. That’s going to make my day.’
She jumped out of the car and they began to trot towards the entrance.
‘What did I tell you?’ she murmured, as the nurse stepped towards them and wrote something on the clipboard. ‘Evening, Sister Kenney.’
The woman nodded to her, a brief smile replacing her worried frown for a minute. ‘Thank you for coming in—I’m really grateful.’ She waved vaguely towards the bustle of ambulances and stretchers. ‘As you can see, we’re very much stretched at the moment. We’ve got Mr Burton from Orthopaedics helping to deal with the injuries from the collapsed wall and I’ve managed to persuade the senior nursing officer to loan us some nurses from Medical.’
‘That must have taken some doing,’ murmured Frankie.
Sister Kenney allowed herself a small triumphant grin. ‘It’s about time they helped us out. Now, please, would you look at a woman with chest pains in the end cubicle? She’s a Mrs Jepson, just come in while all this brouhaha was going on, and all three theatres and the emergency room are in use. She needs her vital signs monitored—I’ll leave you to do that, Dr Lovatt.’
It took just a few minutes to scramble into their hospital greens and make their way to the large central area surrounded by cubicles. A large woman lying propped up on a bed in the end cubicle looked at Frankie and Corey with frightened eyes. She had the familiar expression of many patients who found themselves in a totally alien situation with people they didn’t know, surrounded by sights and sounds they probably associated more with television dramas than their own life. She was clutching the hand of a small man sitting by her side.
‘Am I having a heart attack?’ she asked tremulously. ‘I’ve got these awful pains, and my husband thinks it could be a myocardial….’ She looked helplessly at the small man.
‘Myocardial infarction,’ he said rather smugly.
The woman’s voice had started to rise on the edge of panic, her mouth trembling, and Frankie put a reassuring hand on her arm, trying to calm her patient and reduce her stress levels. As usual, she found herself using well-worn platitudes, which nevertheless were soothing in their familiarity, comforting phrases that the woman would have known all her life.
‘It’s Mrs Jepson, isn’t it?’ she said kindly. ‘Now, please, don’t worry—I want you to try and relax. We’re going to run a series of tests that will help to tell us what’s causing these pains. It could be a variety of things and we mustn’t jump to conclusions. But you’re in the right place to find these things out.’
The small man nodded sagely. ‘That’s what I told her, Doctor. I said it could also be indigestion—she had chips and sausages just an hour ago, and an apple pie, didn’t you, love?’
‘So you are Mr Jepson?’ asked Corey, attaching a monitor to the woman’s arm that ran a trace of the patient’s blood oxygen sats and blood pressure on a screen.
‘I am indeed,’ said the man. ‘We were going to the cinema—just paid for the tickets as a matter of fact when she was took bad.’
‘This came on quite suddenly, then?’ asked Frankie, watching the screen monitor.
The woman shifted restlessly. ‘Well, I’ve not been feeling quite myself for a few days—had this horrible pain near my heart.’ She indicated an area in the centre of her chest. ‘But it’s got worse and worse this evening.’
Mr Jepson looked at her indignantly. ‘You never said, Norma. I didn’t know you’d been feeling off…’
‘Didn’t want to worry you,’ his wife said, rather sullenly.
‘Well, your blood pressure’s OK,’ said Frankie. ‘Have you had an operation lately, or an injury that’s kept you in bed?’
Mrs Jepson shook her head, and her husband leaned forward eagerly. ‘You thinking of a blood clot on the lungs, Doctor? Could it be that?’
His wife gave a start of horror and Frankie’s eyes met Corey’s in a brief exasperated glance. Mr Jepson seemed intent on alarming his wife as much as possible, and making a nervous patient even more apprehensive. If he wanted to send his wife’s blood pressure sky high, he was going the best way about it, thought Frankie, hiding her irritation by smiling winningly at him.
‘We’ll be some time examining your wife, so why don’t you go and have a coffee from the machine in the waiting room while you can? When you come back, we may have more news to tell you.’
The man looked hesitant. ‘Surely it’s better that I stay and keep Norma calm?’
‘It’ll be best to sit with your wife when we’ve finished our assessment. These cubicles are small and it gets a little crowded in here, as you can see…’
The man stumped off unwillingly, only turning back at the door to comment to his wife, ‘If it’s a heart attack, you’ll be in here for days, you know.’
Norma looked mournfully at Frankie. ‘We were going on holiday next week—looks like we’ll have to cancel it if I’m going to be here for ages.’
‘You may be feeling much better soon,’ said Corey brightly. ‘Wait until we’ve had the results of your blood tests…’
‘And we’ll run a cardiac trace to check your heart,’ added Frankie.
The phone rang at the main nurses’ station and Corey left to answer it. Frankie leant forward to listen to the woman’s chest through her stethoscope. When she put the stethoscope on the area of skin below her breasts, Mrs Jepson flinched.
‘Don’t touch me there—it’s absolute agony, that!’ she gasped.
Frankie looked more closely at the area she’d just touched and frowned. ‘Did you know you’ve got a rash here…quite a distinctive rash?’
‘There wasn’t anything there yesterday.’
Frankie
