They went from the heat of the car park into the cool of the hospital.
The familiar antiseptic smell caused a nauseous surge of fear in
Doreen’s stomach. Green plastic chairs were ranged around the walls, and
a desk was placed centrally, opposite the entrance. Doreen noticed a
small boy nursing a glass cut, a young man with his arm in an improvised
sling, and a girl with her head in her hands. Somewhere nearby a woman
moaned. Doreen felt panicky.
The West Indian nurse at the desk was speaking into a telephone. They
waited for her to finish, then Doreen said: “Have you had a William
Johnson brought in here this morning?”
The nurse did not look at her. “Just a minute, please.” She made a note
on a scribbling pad, then glanced up as an ambulance arrived outside.
She said: “Would you sit down, please?” She came around the desk and
walked past them to the door.
Jacko moved away, as if to sit down, and Doreen snatched at his sleeve.
“Stay here!” she commanded. “I’m not waiting bloody hours-I’m stopping
here until she tells me.”
They watched as a stretcher was brought in.
The prone figure was wrapped in a bloody blanket. The nurse escorted the
bearers through a pair of swing doors.
A plump white woman in sister’s uniform arrived through another door,
and Doreen waylaid her. “Why can’t I find out whether my husband’s
here?” she said shrilly.
The sister stopped, and took the three of them in at a glance. The black
nurse came back in.
Doreen said: “I asked her and she wouldn’t tell me.”
The sister said: “Nurse, why were these people not attended to?” “I
thought the road-accident case with two severed limbs looked sicker than
this lady.”
“You did the right thing, but there’s no need for witticism.” The plump
sister turned to Doreen. “What is your husband’s name?”
“William Johnson.”
The sister looked in a register. “That name isn’t here.”
She paused. “But we do have an unidentified patient. Male, white, medium
build, middle-aged, with gunshot wounds to the head.”
Jacko said: “That’s him.” Doreen said: “Oh, my God!”
The sister picked up the phone. “You’d better see him, to find out
whether he is your husband.”
She dialed a single number and waited for a moment. “Oh, Doctor, this is
Sister Rowe in Casualty. I have a woman here who may be the wife of the
gunshot patient. Yes. I will … we’ll meet you there.” She hung up and
said: “Please follow me.
Doreen fought back despair as they trod the linoleum corridor floors
through the hospital. She had dreaded this ever since the day, fifteen
or more years ago, when she had discovered she had married a villain.
She had always suspected it; Willie had told her he was in business, and
she asked no more questions because in the days when they were courting
a girl who wanted a husband learned not to come on strong. But it was
never easy to keep secrets in marriage. There had been a knock at the
door, when little Billy was still in nappies, and Willie had looked out
the front window and seen a copper. Before answering the door he said to
Doreen: “Last night, there was a poker game here: me, and Scotch Harry,
and Tom Webster, and old Gordon. It started at ten, and went on till
four in the morning.” Doreen, who had been up half the night in an empty
house, trying to get Billy to sleep, had nodded dumbly; and when the Old
Bill asked her, she said what Willie had told her to say. Since then she
had worried.
When it’s only a suspicion, you can tell yourself not to worry; but when
you know your husband is out there somewhere breaking into a factory or
a shop or even a bank, you can’t help wondering if he’ll ever come home.
She was not sure why she was so full of rage and fear. She did not love
Willie, not in any familiar sense of the word. He was a pretty lousy
husband: always out at night, bad with money, and a poor lover.