The image of the boy's face exploded into nothingness as Fenton realised something. It was not the boy himself who was familiar it was what he was wearing! He had been wearing coloured plastic bands round both wrists…hospital name tags!
Fenton shook Jenny hard in his excitement and coaxed her into wakefulness. She covered her eyes from the glare of the bedside lamp.
"Think Jenny think! Did you give any hospital name tags to Jamie Buchan?"
An overture of confused sleepy noises gave way to silence as Jenny considered the question. "Yes, yes I did." Her eyes cleared with the recollection. "I had a bunch in my uniform pocket. I gave them to Jamie to play with."
Fenton stared at her without saying anything.
"All right, so you were right, I did give him something, I gave him a few name tags but surely you are not going to suggest that he ate them and poisoned himself are you?"
Fenton conceded that he was not but he was not going to be ridiculed either. He took both Jenny's hands in his and said, "It's a start and what's more it's a connection, a connection between Jamie and the Princess Mary. What else did you give him?"
Fenton's surge of confidence overwhelmed any argument that Jenny might have considered. She thought deeply before answering. "No, I'm quite sure this time, nothing else."
"Good, make some coffee will you."
Jenny's eyebrows arched but Fenton was deep in thought and didn't notice. He sat on the edge of the bed staring into space, his right thumbnail tapping rapidly against gritted teeth. Jenny made coffee and brought it through. "Your coffee oh wise one."
Fenton ignored the sarcasm or, more correctly, it did not register. He took the cup and said, "Well if all you gave him was a plastic name tag…that's what must have killed him."
Jenny, with less reason than anyone to scoff at suggestions which diverted suspicions from herself, was forced to do so at this one and said so in no uncertain manner.
Fenton remained adamant. "If the name tags are the only connection between the hospital and Jamie then they are the reason. It's logical, however unlikely it may seem."
"How?" said Jenny accusingly.
"I've no idea," said Fenton.
Jenny shook her head. She said, "You said that you saw Jamie's friend wearing the arm bands. He was quite healthy wasn't he?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"I don't know, but I repeat, if the arm bands were the only thing you gave to Jamie then they are responsible. Do you still say you gave him nothing else?"
"Nothing," said Jenny.
"I'm going to talk to Tyson in the morning but meanwhile…"
"Meanwhile what?"
"How long is it since we made love?"
"Quite a while," said Jenny.
"That situation is about to end."
"Do I have some say in the matter?"
"Not really," said Fenton.
"Shouldn't we discuss this first…" murmured Jenny, her body beginning to respond to his touch.
"No," whispered Fenton, "I've already decided."
Tyson listened patiently while Fenton told his tale and did not interrupt but Fenton could tell that he was failing to convince. Tyson's eloquent silence diluted his enthusiasm until the implausibility of what he was saying loomed up at him like guilt for some long past sin. Tyson cleared his throat and began to speak. Fenton could tell that he was editing what he had to say in the cause of politeness. "What you are really saying is that Saxon plastic kills people. Frankly, that is ridiculous."
The words, coming from Tyson, carried the weight of a punch. Fenton tried to defend himself. He began, "I know it sounds a bit…"
"Not a bit, a lot. It is just plain ridiculous. Saxon plastic has been through every test in the book and passed with flying colours. Do you know what tests any new health product must pass before it ever gets near a hospital?" Fenton did not but he could guess.
"Saxon plastic is safe. It is non toxic, non poisonous, non inflammable. It is safe when you heat it; it is safe when you freeze it and safe if you are stupid enough to want to eat it! Now I know that you have been under great strain but this kind of nonsense is dangerous. We have enough trouble in this hospital without a law suit from Saxon Medical. Understood?"
Fenton sat in his lab silently licking his wounds. Nothing Tyson had said had made him change his mind; he clung to his belief like a bull dog gripping a rag. The only thing now was he would have to prove it all on his own.
Fenton's lonely war was waged on a battlefield of paper as he read and re-read every scrap of information he could find on Saxon Medical and their new product. He examined all the graphs and tables from the original trials and re-plotted the data in what turned out to be a fruitless search for flaws. Quite simply, there were none, a fact that he had to come to terms with after a week of silently preoccupied evenings during which Jenny had plied him with coffee and kept, what politicians liked to call, a low profile. As he conceded defeat and put down his pen to rub his eyes on Friday evening he heard the sound outside of an ambulance siren floating above the wind and rain. It made him wonder if its occupant was bound for the Princess Mary. She was.
The week had been special for Rachel Morrison because it had been her eighth birthday on Wednesday, a day she had been looking forward to for weeks because of an anticipated bicycle. As her father had promised it had been waiting for her at the foot of her bed when she had woken on Wednesday morning, all red, white and shiny chrome. Her happiness had been complete, well almost complete for the weather had been so bad that she had been unable to take it outside to ride it, but it was there and she could touch it and that was the main thing.
After school several of her friends had come to the house for a special birthday tea and they had laughed and played and eaten ice cream and meringues till they were exhausted. Rachel ate so much that she got a pain in her stomach, at least that was what her mother had said, but the pain had become worse as the evening had progressed until, finally, her tears had convinced her mother and father that the doctor should be called.
By the time the doctor arrived the pain had moved down and to the right so that he had had no difficulty in diagnosing acute appendicitis and summoning an ambulance. There was nothing to worry about; appendicectomy was probably the simplest and most routine operation in the book. On the following day Rachel Morrison died in the Princess Mary following a massive haemorrhage.
The fact that Rachel Morrison and Jenny Buchan had never met and that Rachel had been admitted to the Princess Mary during Jenny's suspension ended that suspension and freed Jenny from suspicion. Although it had not been discussed, both Fenton and Jenny had been aware that the deaths had appeared to cease after Jenny's suspension. Now they spoke openly about it. Jenny was prepared to construe the pause as an unfortunate quirk of fate, just her luck, but Fenton read more into it.
It now seemed obvious to him that there would be a pause in the deaths for a pause would be bound to occur when all the susceptible people had died leaving a stable immune population. No one else would die until a susceptible person appeared on the scene again, a new member of staff perhaps or, much more likely in the case of a hospital, a new patient. He blamed himself for not having predicted this earlier.