Kim knew her colleague was referring to Dawson, who was happy to remain at Westerley as the first point of contact for both the staff and the tech experts as they began to arrive.
During the Crestwood investigation eighteen months ago, Dawson had been stationed at site and had done an exceptional job. Kim didn’t believe in fixing things that were not broken.
Bryant drove and talked. She had already told him where she wanted to go.
‘So the doc is staying on then?’
‘Bloody hell, nothing gets past you, does it?’ she said.
‘You mean like the smile that you were trying to hide when you walked back in?’ he observed.
‘That’ll be because I won,’ she admitted.
‘Won what? I didn’t realise there was a prize on offer.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said.
‘You do know he likes you,’ Bryant stated.
‘And you do realise that this is not high school and there’ll be no need for you to pass notes between us.’
Bryant glanced her way.
‘And I’m sensing you like him just a little bit too.’
Kim ignored him. That wasn’t strictly accurate. To state that she liked him was a little exaggerated. She just disliked Daniel less than a lot of other people.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said as they entered Russell’s Hall hospital. The car park already looked fit to burst.
The super hospital was an amalgamation of three local hospitals that had either been closed down completely or their A&E departments removed. Unfortunately the parking had not been increased pro rata with the expansion.
Bryant spotted a space at the furthest point from the hospital and parked quickly.
‘Wait here – I won’t be long. Just want to see how she is.’
Bryant grumbled.
She ignored him and headed in through the maternity entrance, up the stairs and across to the Surgical High Dependency Unit. This ward, together with ITU, provided the critical-care element of the hospital. High dependency normally took emergency surgical patients and was staffed on a ratio of one staff to two patients. ITU provided care on a one-to-one basis.
She spoke at the intercom to gain entry.
As she pushed the door open she was again struck by the absence of chatter or daily noises. No televisions hummed quietly. There was no clink of the tea trolley doing its rounds. No conversations that travelled from bed to bed to fill the hours before visiting, no occasional moans of discomfort and pain.
None of that was present in this unit. This area was reserved for the sickest people in the building.
Kim held up her badge and smiled at the ward sister named Jo. She was late thirties with blonde hair that fell in a short but shiny bob around a plump face.
Jo took a good look at her identification and nodded.
‘A woman was admitted last night.’
‘Head injury?’ Jo asked, turning to face the whiteboard behind.
Kim nodded.
‘No identification, so for now she’s Jane.’
Many facilities had now adopted the American procedure of labelling unknown victims John or Jane.
‘She’s in bay two, bed three,’ Jo said.
‘Is she…?’
‘Conscious?’ Jo asked and shook her head. ‘She’s in an induced coma. Her brain has taken a battering.’ She leaned over the desk and looked up and down the corridor.
‘Doctor Singh is still on his rounds. I’ll ask him to come and have a word.’
Kim nodded her thanks and headed around to bay two.
Jane lay in the top-left corner closest to the window.
Kim suspected that the rich chestnut hair that had been matted and tangled with blood and dirt was now gone, leaving a bald, shaved head beneath the bandages.
The index finger on her left hand was being clutched by a white plastic pulse oximeter measuring the oxygen saturation in her bloodstream and her heart rate. The results, along with her blood pressure, were being transmitted on the screen to her left.
Her right hand was covered in white plaster holding down the intravenous cannula. Blood had seeped through the tape, indicting they’d had trouble accessing the vein.
Kim’s eyes travelled to the woman’s left wrist and the circle mark she knew so well. She wondered if Jane would still rub it for years after the mark had disappeared. Would she now and again just feel, for a split second, like it was still there? The mind could be cruel that way.
Kim’s hand fell and touched the red band. This woman had moved her wrist considerably to try to free herself. There were the telltale marks between her wrist and her knuckles where she had tried to force her hand through. Just like Jemima. And Kim herself, many years ago.
The memory of her own six-year-old hand scraped raw by her numerous attempts to free herself was sudden and painful. Kim pushed it away and rubbed gently at the skin of the girl nicknamed Jane as though trying to erase it from her flesh.
Her thumb passed over an area of raised skin. She rubbed her thumb back and forth a couple of times, frowning.
She turned the wrist over gently and saw what she would not have been able to see last night. Four very definite lines of scar tissue ran across the wrist. This girl had attempted suicide, and she hadn’t been messing about.
‘Officer…?’
Kim turned to an attractive dark-skinned man she presumed to be Doctor Singh. His white coat was unbuttoned and revealed plain black trousers and a white shirt. There was a kindly smile in his eyes.
Kim briefly wondered how long it would take the NHS to knock that out of him.
He stood at the end of the bed and picked up Jane’s chart.
‘Our patient here suffered a depressed cranial fracture and was in surgery until six this morning.’
Kim heard a slight trace of his Indian accent but only on certain words. His voice was caring and warm, and she liked him instantly.
Kim knew that depressed meant that the injury had caused the skull to indent or extend into the brain cavity.
‘There are many types of fracture but only one cause,’ he explained.
Kim knew the only cause was a blow to the head strong enough to break the bone.
‘The surgeon has released the pressure on the brain, but she has scored six on the Glasgow Coma Scale.’
Kim frowned. It wasn’t something she’d heard before.
‘It is a scale used to assess head injuries from a score of three to fifteen. A score of three is the most severe, but any score between three and eight reflects that the patient is in a comatose state.’
‘What’s that?’ Kim said, pointing to a wire leading from the back of Jane’s head.
‘Intracranial pressure monitor. It is monitoring the space between the skull and the brain. It will alert us to any changes in the pressure inside the skull.’
‘Will she survive?’ Kim asked, adjusting her voice to match the doctor’s soft, gentle tone.
He took a few steps away. ‘We don’t know. Really she should not have survived the injury, but somehow she managed to hold on. We must hope she continues to be strong.’
‘Can she hear?’ Kim asked, realising he had stepped away to speak.
He shrugged. ‘I like to be sure, especially when discussing chances of survival.’
Kim understood. ‘Do you have any idea how long…?’
The doctor was already shaking his head. ‘I can’t answer that. The brain is more complex than any of us can comprehend. People we expect to survive often don’t and then others…’
His words trailed away and Kim got his point.
‘And if she does wake?’
‘Inspector, you are asking me every question that I cannot answer.’
His voice was still kind but with a hint of amusement.
Kim smiled at his easy manner. It was a bit like her conversations with Keats, the pathologist – only this doctor was pleasant.
‘Well, thank you for your help… oh, actually there is one more thing,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘There is something I need to check on her body but I wouldn’t…’
He nodded his understanding. She would never handle Jane’s body without seeking permission.
He stepped back towards the bed and drew the curtain around him. ‘Where?’
‘The back of her legs.’
He lifted the sheet and gently moved the woman slightly onto her side.
‘May I?’ Kim asked.
He nodded.
Kim gently lifted the bottom of the hospital-issue nightgown.
The marks were there.