The Doctor

‘I am right in saying that no one has ever been woken yet?’ a man asked sceptically.

‘That’s correct,’ Owen said, unfazed. ‘No human at least. But we know the process works. Embryos have been frozen successfully for years using this method.’

Amit slowly raised his hand.

‘Yes, sir, your question.’

‘Do you always need the consent of the person to be preserved or do you accept the consent of their next of kin?’

‘We always need the consent of the person,’ Owen replied. ‘The decision to be preserved is made in life, unlike organ donation that can be made by the next of kin after death.’

‘And there is no way round it?’ Amit asked. ‘I mean, supposing the person is too ill to make the decision or not of sound mind?’

‘Then it would be a matter for the court to decide.’

Amit was about to follow this up with another question when Owen’s phone bleeped. ‘Excuse me,’ he said and read the message, then addressed the audience. ‘That was to let me know a new patient is on their way. A fifteen-year-old boy from England. We have time for a quick tour, then the operating theatre will need to be prepared for his arrival. I’ll answer any further questions as we go.’

Chapter Four (#ulink_4d196cd6-0fc8-5872-b932-0ed6226f39a4)

‘Not again!’ Amit shouted as he read the delivery card Alisha had left on the hall table. ‘I told you a parcel was coming for me today! Couldn’t you have answered the fucking door?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, anxiously watching him from the far end of the hall. ‘I was upstairs and couldn’t get down in time. They only ring once and then rush off and leave it with the neighbour.’

‘That’s the third time in two weeks, you silly cow, and that woman next door is fucking nosy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Alisha said again. ‘I’ll serve your dinner so it’s ready when you get back.’

Amit threw open the front door and went down their garden path, seething at her incompetence. He didn’t ask much of his wife but got even less! Couldn’t she do anything he asked?

Latching their garden gate behind him, he paused and breathed in the fresh air. He couldn’t turn up next door in a rage. Others weren’t as forgiving as Alisha.

At seven o’clock it was still light, but the air had an edge to it, a reminder that autumn wasn’t far away. Amit liked the seasons, the changes, the cycle of nature, that spring came after winter with the promise of new life. It was a metaphor for his plans, he thought as he began along the pavement. Alisha had refused to sign up to ELECT, but that wasn’t the end of it, oh no, not by a long way. He could – and would – succeed. Maybe not the first time; it would take trial and error, but he would practice until he got it right. Thanks to the internet, he could buy virtually everything he needed online, but it was worrying that his parcels kept being delivered next door.

He continued up the neighbours’ drive. They didn’t have a gate; their front garden and drive were open plan. Ben Johnston and Emily King; they weren’t married. He seemed OK and was content with ‘good morning’ and a few words, but she wanted to talk and kept inviting Alisha in for a coffee. He’d warned Alisha to stay away and he knew she wouldn’t disobey him. He’d seen Emily King looking at their house, scrutinizing it as she walked by or drove past in her car. He doubted she suspected, he was too careful, and had given her no cause for suspicion. She’d do well to concentrate on her baby and housework. The elderly couple on the other side weren’t a problem, but he couldn’t ask them to take his packages, they were frail and took longer to answer their door than Alisha did.

Pressing the doorbell, he took a step back and waited. Their cat appeared from around the corner and meowed loudly, wanting to be let in. Amit detested cats or any domestic animal. As far as he was concerned, they served no useful purpose and just cost the owner money.

The door opened, the cat shot in, and even before he’d had a chance to say good evening, she was inviting him in.

‘Come in while I fetch your parcel,’ Emily said, smiling.

‘Thank you, but I’ll wait here.’

‘You always say that,’ she laughed and disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open. Why didn’t she have his parcels ready in the hall? There was always this palaver and she knew he collected them on the day they were delivered.

Ben appeared. ‘Hi, how are you?’

‘Well, thank you.’

‘Em won’t be a minute. She puts your parcels upstairs for safekeeping. Robbie is crawling now and into everything.’

Amit assumed Robbie was their child and managed a polite smile.

‘Here we go,’ Emily said, reappearing and handing him the shoebox-sized package.

‘Thank you,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been troubled again.’

‘No problem. How is Alisha?’ she asked.

‘As well as can be expected,’ he said tightly.

‘Please tell her I’d love to see her for coffee. If she isn’t up to coming here, I could pop in with Robbie.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ he said, with no intention of doing so. Saying goodbye, he returned down their drive and the front door closed behind him.

The irritation he felt at Emily’s bouncy cheerful personality was quickly replaced by excitement. He knew what the package contained: another vital piece of equipment. As soon as he’d had dinner, he’d go to his workshop and continue.

Half an hour later, leaving Alisha at the sink washing the dishes, Amit let himself out the back door, briefcase in hand and the package under his arm, and went down their garden path. The sun was setting now, elongating the shadows of the house and trees across the lawn. He preferred this time to the harsh light of day, which seemed to highlight flaws and imperfections. At the end of the path, he unlocked the padlock on his workshop, switched on the light and, going in, bolted the door behind him. No one could see him now. Blackout blinds were permanently down at all the windows, and he’d covered the glass in opaque film. It was pure luck the house had come with this substantial outbuilding, built by the previous owner as a recording studio. Already soundproofed, well insulated and with electricity running from the house, it hadn’t taken much for him to adapt it for its present purpose.

With a growing sense of pride and a little apprehension, Amit carefully took the bottle of anaesthetic from his briefcase. Opening one of the metal cabinets that stood against the wall, he placed the bottle on the top shelf with the other bottles of solutions. Drugs such as these were the only items he needed that couldn’t be bought legitimately from the internet as they required a special licence. Doubtless he could have bought them illegally, but there would be no guarantee they were pure and hadn’t been watered down or mixed with something to give the supplier more profit. The wrong or inferior drugs would be disastrous, and besides, no one at the hospital would notice the drugs were missing. As the anaesthetist, he was responsible for signing the drugs in and out of the operating room, and he took them one at a time.

Returning to the workbench, he slit open the package and took out the bag valve mask. It was in a sealed sterile package and was used for manually pumping air into a patient’s lungs. It would be crucial that Alisha’s brain received oxygen while he lowered her body temperature. He’d already bought a portable heart-machine. He’d use the manual pump as he transported her body from the house down the garden to his lab and then hook her up to the machine.

Retrieving a pen from the bench, he flicked through his list of essential items and ticked off the bag valve mask. He placed it in the cabinet on the second shelf. The shelves were nearly full now: bottles, tubing, scissors, forceps, scalpels, speculums, retractors, wound dressings, and so on. Items he would need to operate. Not a standard operation of course. He’d do what ELECT were doing: drain the blood from the body and replace it with preservation fluid. Then he’d store Alisha in liquid nitrogen at minus 190°C until a cure for her condition could be found. He’d be at the forefront of medical science, making a name for himself, and finally his parents would be proud of him.

Taking his laptop from his briefcase, Amit set it on his bench and perched on the stool. He brought up the bookmarked web page and ordered an aluminium tank large enough to hold a body. He’d been surprised at just how easy it had been to find what he needed online, partly due to the trend in cryotherapy – a treatment where otherwise healthy people paid to stand in a tank at minus 90°C for two minutes. It was being used to treat minor conditions, including sports injuries and skin conditions, as well as supposedly generating a feeling of youthfulness and well-being.

Having entered his card details to pay for the tank, he arranged a delivery date, then went to another website and ordered half a dozen white mice. He’d only get one chance with Alisha, so he’d practice the procedure on small animals first, until he was confident he had everything right, just as any reputable scientist would.

His mobile phone rang, making him start. He took it from his pocket and saw the call was from the house. It would be Alisha. Reliant on him, she phoned if she needed him urgently. Irritated at being interrupted, he pressed to accept the call.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘I need your help quickly.

He sighed. He had to go. ‘I’m coming.’

Leaving everything as it was – he’d return later – he let himself out of his workshop.

The sun had set now and the lights were on in his and his neighbours’ houses, including Ben and Emily’s bedroom window. Emily was standing at the window looking out, watching him, as he’d seen her do before. His anger flared. Didn’t the nosy cow have anything better to do! Standing there brazenly. She must know he could see her. Drawing his head in, he hurried down the path to the back door. She needed to be careful, if she knew what was good for her.

Chapter Five (#ulink_7c7a9e75-5823-5ec1-b9e1-0a75c7e81573)

While the surgeon, Mr Barry Lowe, worked on his patient’s abdomen, Amit sat by her head and monitored her vital signs on the screen. Heart rate and rhythm, breathing, blood pressure, body temperature, oxygen level and body fluid balance were all normal. It was a relatively minor and straightforward procedure – an appendectomy – on an otherwise healthy thirty-year-old, so he didn’t envisage any problems. In operations like this, once the patient was under there was little for him to do but monitor the green and blue lines that ran across the screen.

Being an anaesthetist was a thankless job, he thought now as he often had before. Anaesthetists were at the bottom end of medicine. A branch you went into when you didn’t really want to be a doctor or didn’t make the grade. He’d been forced into medicine by his pushy parents who saw it as the gold-standard career. That or being a lawyer, which had appealed even less. Having a doctor or lawyer in the family gave his parents respect in their community, and he hadn’t had the guts to stand up to them. So with no calling to medicine or the law, and achieving poor grades at med school, he’d become an anaesthetist. Thankfully it involved very little contact with patients and required no bedside manner as they were unconscious, which suited him fine.

He watched Barry Lowe snip the infected appendix clear of the intestine and, with a sigh of satisfaction for a job well done, drop it into the stainless-steel bowl. He began closing the wound.