St Matthew's Passion - By Sam Archer Page 0,35
by the lapels.
‘I’ll do it myself if I have to.’
The consultant put a hand in the middle of Fin’s chest and shoved him back. ‘Mr Finmore-Gage, control yourself. Or I’ll have security remove you.’
The next few minutes were etched on to Fin’s memory with exquisite, terrible clarity. Catherine going into cardiac arrest. The staff around her working in a frenzy. Fin trying to shoulder them aside and take charge himself. Somebody large and burly appearing from behind him, locking his arms and dragging him out of the room.
Catherine was pronounced dead thirty-seven minutes after Fin had appeared in the department. The staff had pulled out all the stops to save her, had done all they could reasonably have been expected to do.
But for Fin, wracked by grief, they hadn’t done nearly enough. He hadn’t done nearly enough. He should have overridden the consultant, used the power of his reputation to impose his wishes, taken Catherine to theatre himself and operated. The fact that she had gone into cardiac arrest only seconds after he’d decided what she needed was something his crazed mind was unable or unwilling to accept.
More than that, Fin knew he’d let Catherine die by not being there for her sooner. If he’d noticed her failure to return from the shops even half an hour before he did, he might have tracked her down and been able to save her. The supermarket was only a few streets away; if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his wretched presentation, he might have heard the commotion through the open window, have at least been aware that there was some sort of to-do nearby and gone to investigate. He might have been able to help her then and there, or at least offset the damage before the ambulance arrived.
Instead he, Mr Daniel Finmore-Gage, one of the country’s leading trauma surgeons, had had to watch his wife die of traumatic injuries, ones he dealt with every day in his clinical work.
Looking down at Catherine’s headstone, Fin felt the commitment he’d made after her death solidify. It had wavered over the last few weeks, but now he felt it in his bones once more, strong and rooted. He didn’t know if it was possible to be both a great doctor and a great husband – he didn’t think so – but he was certain that it was possible to be bad at both. He’d failed Catherine as both a husband and a doctor. He wouldn’t – couldn’t – risk doing that again, to anyone. So he had to do two things. One was to double his efforts to become as close to infallible a surgeon as was humanly possible.
The other was never, ever, to allow anyone to become close to him again.
Fin remained for a few more minutes at the graveside before kneeling and touching his fingers to his lips. He placed the hand on the cold surface of the headstone and let it linger for a second. Then he straightened and headed back towards the gates.
***
It was when Melissa was emerging from theatre into the scrub room, peeling off her surgical gloves and shrugging loose the bloodied gown, that she realised something was wrong.
The man stood with his back to her, peering through the glass into the theatre opposite to the one she’d just come out of. He didn’t look like a nurse or a doctor, or like anyone else whose business it was to be in the scrub room.
‘Can I help you?’ she called.
It was New Year’s Eve, and Melissa had volunteered to do the night duty. It had nothing to do with recent events concerning Fin and with her desire to lose herself in work. She’d never been a big fan of the forced jollity of New Year’s Eve, the way every seemed to feel obliged to stay up and party till all hours, so it wasn’t as if she was missing out on anything she’d enjoy. Nine o’clock had brought in a stabbing victim, one of the casualties of a gang war. He’d needed opening up and repairing, something Melissa was by now well practised in, and she’d completed the laparotomy within an hour and a half. The internal injuries had turned out not to be as severe as they might have been. The boy had had a lucky escape.
The man at the glass turned swiftly to stare at Melissa. He was young, menacing-looking.
‘Where is he?’ he hissed between clenched teeth.
The shock nearly drove Melissa a step backwards but