For The Death Of Me (6 page)

‘No, love, you stay here with the kids for now: it would only alarm them if we both left. If it goes bad, you'll all be over there soon enough.'

She saw the sense of that and nodded. Nobody else questioned anything: that wouldn't have been wise.

6

We were on the road inside fifteen minutes, Conrad driving the off-roader, Susie in the front passenger seat, Prim and I in the back.

‘Tell me exactly what Harvey said,' Prim asked quietly. She's a nurse.

I ran through our conversation as closely as I could remember it. ‘Does that tell you anything?'

‘He survived the trip to hospital; that of itself says something. But any number of things could have happened. He could have had a coronary thrombosis, or an aneurysm. Maybe it's an arterial blockage and they'll be able to fix it with an angioplasty, a device that restores the proper blood flow without a full-scale bypass.'

‘Does it sound good or bad?'

‘Nothing about this is good, Oz,' she pointed out gently. ‘But at least he isn't simply lying on a life-support machine, in a coma, in an IC unit. Mac's a pretty fit man for his age; strong, too. That will improve his chances.'

I took out my cell-phone. ‘I'll try calling Ellie. She'll maybe know more by now.'

She put a hand on mine, to stop me. ‘Ellen's phone will be switched off in the hospital. She'll get in touch with you if anything changes, I'm sure.'

I had to see the sense of that, but it was bloody difficult. Normally, I'm a patient guy, but crises are something else. My instinct is to solve them there and then, and if I can't I get frustrated. When the solution is out of my hands . . .

You know, physical fear I can handle. I've been in a few tricky situations in my life, including a couple in which it was actually in danger. I've dealt with them all, and it never occurred to me to be scared, not in the heat of the moment, at any rate. There's a big adrenaline rush, sure, but I've always been too caught up in the action to dwell on the consequences of failure. I've got the job done, and dealt with the fear afterwards.

But this was different: this was something that I couldn't handle personally. Other people were doing this job, and I had plenty of time to consider the consequences of their failure. I started to shake; I took a tight grip of my travel bag, trying to control it before anyone saw.

The chopper was waiting for us on the pad at the heliport behind the Columbus. Susie followed me towards it. As Conrad climbed on board, she reached up and touched my cheek. ‘Wish I could come,' she whispered.

‘So do I, honey, but it's best you stay here, especially with her around.'

‘What about Mike? Will he hang around indefinitely?'

‘That's up to him, but if he wants to do this precious deal of his, he will. If things . . .' I faltered, then steeled myself. ‘If Dad doesn't make it, I'll make other arrangements with him, but I'm refusing to think of that. I'm assuming that he'll come through this and that I'll be back here by the weekend. Don't you get drawn into it, though. Any messages that need to go to Mike, Prim can carry them. I don't want Mike involved with my family, and I don't want him in my house.'

She squeezed my arm, and gave me a half-smile. ‘Are you worried about me with my ex?'

I tried to smile back. ‘With the size of my ego? You have to be kidding. No, it's just this: he betrayed us all, back then, and you most of all. We might be glad that he's not dead, but it doesn't mask what he did. I'm no moral paragon, but I don't want my kids to have anything to do with him, anything at all.'

She got on her toes and kissed me. ‘Don't worry, big guy,' she said, raising her voice above the roar of the helicopter. ‘I feel the same way. You be on your way now: when you see Mac, tell him from me that he's not to give us all such a scare again.'

Somehow, I felt better as I ducked the rotors and boarded the Jetcopter, sliding in beside Conrad on the bench seat, and fitting a headset to my ears. ‘Buckled in, gentlemen?' the pilot asked.

‘We're set,' my assistant replied. ‘You know where we're going?'

‘General aviation, Cannes-Mandelieu airport, to connect with a Citation jet chartered from Excel Air.'

‘Fine. Let's take off.'

‘How long will it take?' I asked Conrad, through the headphones. The pilot was connected to the air-traffic system: we couldn't hear him and he couldn't hear us.

‘Less than half an hour, sir. Cannes is about fifty kilometres straight line, and this machine can travel. Audrey told the charter company to be ready to take off as soon as we get there, with a flight plan filed to the nearest possible landing point.'

‘Do you know where that will be?'

‘I'm hoping it'll be Dundee. They normally close at nine p.m. BST, but if staff are available, they can extend that by an hour. The charter company said they'd do their best.'

I nodded and leaned back in my seat, staring out of the window at the coast as we headed west, doing my best not to think the worst, and failing abysmally, until I summoned a picture of Susie's optimistic smile into my mind. That helped, a little.

7

It wasn't hard to find them: Conrad and I walked into the main concourse and there they were, in the cafeteria, each with her hands clasped round a mug of coffee. It was hard to say who looked the more exhausted, Ellen, or Mary, my step-mother. They didn't see me as I approached, trying to read their faces for any signs that might be there.

When I was three or four yards away, Ellie looked up. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open; she stood and met me half-way, wrapping me in the sort of hug she used to give me when we were kids. ‘God, brother, am I glad to see you,' she exclaimed, as she released me. ‘Harvey said you'd be lucky to get here by lunchtime tomorrow. I told him that he can't know you all that well yet. How long did it take you?'

I glanced at my watch: it showed eleven thirty, but it was still on Central European Time, an hour ahead. ‘We left Monaco three hours ago,' I told her. ‘We were lucky; they kept Dundee airport open for us because it was an emergency.' I gazed around; the place wasn't busy but there were a few people at other tables, most of them looking tired or sombre, in the same situation as us, I guessed.

‘What's the score?' I asked.

‘He's still under assessment; they haven't really told us anything.'

‘Time they did, then. Who's in charge?'

‘I don't know.'

Usually it's Ellie who's in charge, but this time she was just another helpless terrified relative, sitting on the sidelines of a loved one's peril.

‘Time we found out, then. Where was he admitted?'

‘Accident and Emergency.'

‘Take me there.' I looked at my assistant. ‘Conrad, stay here with Mary for now, and keep an eye out for media. It won't take long for someone to tip the word that I'm here.'

‘Yes, sir.' Normally Conrad and I are informal with each other, first-name terms both ways, but he's ex-military and in what he sometimes refers to as ‘operational situations' he tends to revert to type.

‘Why are you waiting here anyway?' I asked Mary. ‘This is hardly private.'

She looked at me, red-eyed. ‘There didn't seem to be anywhere else. I tried the chapel, but it's closed.'

Ninewells is a big place; I'd been there before, but I wasn't all that familiar with the layout. Ellie was, though, and she led me through a series of corridors until we spotted a sign announcing the A&E unit. Happily, things were quiet; I dare say it would have been different at the weekend, even in a douce city like Dundee, but whatever Wednesday-evening rush there had been seemed to be over.

In a thing that looked like a command unit, we saw a nurse in a dark blue uniform with a tag that gave her name as Sister Kermack. ‘She was on duty earlier,' Ellie murmured.

I approached her. ‘Are you in charge?' I asked her.

She frowned at me, appraising me, but said nothing.

‘Will I speak up a bit?' I snapped. ‘Are you in charge here?'

‘I'm the senior nurse on duty,' she replied evenly. There might have been a hint of a challenge in her tone: ‘and what do you want to make of it?'

‘Whatever I have to,' was my unspoken answer. ‘Good,' I breezed on. ‘We're making progress. My father was admitted here earlier this evening. His name's Macintosh Blackstone.'

‘Yes, and he was dealt with,' Sister Kermack responded. ‘He was sent to the cardio ward.'

She'd probably had a hard day too: no, not probably, certainly. But I'd left my consideration, and my normal good humour, back in Monaco. ‘Look,' I said heavily, ‘I know I'm being peremptory here, but I want the following, and you're the person best placed to deliver it, or set me on the right track. I'd like to speak to someone who can give me full information on my dad's condition, and I need someone to show me to a place where my step-mother, my sister and I can wait in private, for as long as I have to. I'd also like to speak to your press officer. I don't expect you to do all that stuff yourself, only to direct me to someone who can.'

She looked at me and I could tell that the name had finally clicked. ‘You're Oz Blackstone, aren't you?' I nodded, unable to summon up the usual accompanying smile. ‘And Mr Blackstone's your father?'

‘He always has been.'

‘Give me a minute. I'll phone the surgical wards and find out which one he's been referred to, then I'll get the most senior doctor there to talk to you.' She pointed to a door marked ‘Staff'. ‘That's our quiet room. You can wait in there, if you like.'

‘That's okay, you just do what you have to, as quickly as you can.'

We watched her as she turned her back to us and picked up a phone. As she spoke, I couldn't help noticing the back of her neck go pink, then red, then redder. Finally, she hung up and turned back to face us. ‘Someone's on his way to speak to you, Mr Blackstone,' she said. I could tell from her face that he would not be bearing good news. So could Ellie: she hugged me, as if for support.

‘Is he gone?' I asked her quietly.

‘Please,' she begged us, ‘wait in the staff room.'

I took pity on her and did as she said. There was a coffee machine, the kind that takes sachets. It's not my favourite, but I switched it on and set it to make a double espresso.

I had just handed the end product to Ellie when the door opened and a man in a white coat, with the inevitable stethoscope hanging from his neck, stepped into the room. He looked no more than twenty-five, and he was holding a clip-board as if it was a comforter. Maybe it was. ‘Mr Blackstone?' he began. ‘I'm Dr Oliphant, senior house officer in the cardio unit.'

I shook his clammy hand. ‘This is my sister, Mrs January,' I told him. ‘I've just arrived but she and my step-mother have been here for over three hours. What do you have to tell us about our father? Is he in surgery?'

‘Well,' the young doctor began. No, he had not brought good news, and he wasn't looking forward to breaking it. ‘The thing is . . .'

‘Yes?' My patience was totally gone.

‘The thing is, he's not here.'

‘What?'

‘He's been transferred to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We don't do the sort of surgery here that he requires.'

‘Jesus!' Ellie gasped. I laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her going into orbit.

‘I'm terribly sorry that nobody advised you of this, Mrs January, but my colleagues said they couldn't find you. They thought you'd gone home.'

‘They thought . . .' She sounded like a volcano, starting to erupt. The lad was in deep trouble, until I decided to rescue him from my sister's wrath.

‘Okay,' I said, ‘let's not get into a blaming situation. Someone fucked up and that's it. What's our dad's condition? That's all we really care about.'

‘He's critical: he's suffered a massive failure of the aortic valve, and he needs replacement surgery or he won't survive.'

‘What brought it on?'

‘Nothing. We think it's a congenital thing, a defect; the consultant who saw him described it as a time-bomb that could have gone off years ago.'

‘When was he transferred?'

‘Two hours ago. He could be in surgery in Edinburgh already.'

‘How long will the procedure take?'

‘Four hours, minimum. At least, that's what I recall from medical-school lectures. I've never seen one done.'

I ruffled Ellie's hair and gave her a hug. He was critical, but he was alive, and they don't make them tougher than Mac Blackstone. ‘Come on, sis,' I murmured. ‘Let's get down there. We'll get him some bacon rolls on the way; if I know him he'll be hungry when he wakes up.'

8

We didn't burn any rubber on the road to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; there was no need for we knew he'd be in theatre longer than it would take us to drive there. Before we left, Dr Oliphant phoned and found a colleague there, advising her that we were on our way. She promised to contact her media-relations people. It was necessary: when we rejoined Conrad and Mary we discovered that a Grampian Television crew was camped outside.

We gave them the slip . . . I'm an expert at that, when I want to be . . . and headed off in Ellie's Peugeot towards Perth and the M90.

Conrad drove, with my sister navigating: I chose to sit in the back with Mary.

‘I should have known,' she muttered, as we cruised along the A914. ‘I should have seen the warning signs.'