DAY 1—MR. GARRETT
Rhoda watches as the situation unfolds.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about him at first, just another patient sleeping three beds down from Rhoda and her patient. He woke and shuffled awkwardly up to sitting, under the covers, his bleary eyes taking in the ward around him, perplexed.
A young nurse along the ward noticed him waking too; her eyes flicked out toward the corridor, apprehensive, before she made her way over to the waking man.
Rhoda watches as the young nurse places a gentle hand on her patient. He frowns. “Where is she?” Rhoda hears him ask the nurse, his eyes scanning the beds around them. “Where’s Claire?”
Rhoda doesn’t hear the young nurse’s reply but she recognizes the expression on her face as she quietly speaks to the older man.
Rhoda knows that bereavement notice needs to take place in a private consultation suite, with a doctor or with a member of the bereavement care team. You can’t give it on the ward. The young nurse will be asking her patient to wait for the doctor to arrive.
“I don’t need the doctor.” His voice is tight and hoarse, a trill of panic running through it. “I just need to know where my daughter is.”
Rhoda remembers his details from the Triage board last night. A car accident. A drunk-driving collision. The drunk driver had walked away with only bruises, but this man and his teenage daughter had sustained severe injuries. Rhoda’s eyes float up to the name on the whiteboard above his bed. Mike Garrett.
Although she can’t hear the nurse’s words, it’s clear to Rhoda from the nurse’s body language that the daughter didn’t make it. Rhoda feels a deep ache in her chest. The worst news to give, the worst news to get.
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me where she is, you can tell me. For God’s sake, just look on your system or something. You can tell me that, can’t you?” A few more eyes swivel onto the scene. “I want to know where my daughter is! Do you understand? I DON’T CARE IF THE DOCTOR’S ON HIS WAY!”
Hearing a raised voice, the duty nurse pops her head around the ward doorway and quickly makes sense of the scene. She makes a decision and calmly heads over to join the young nurse at the red-faced Mr. Garrett’s bedside.
“Can I help, Mr. Garrett?” she asks, her tone kind, delicate.
“Yes, I want to know where my daughter is.”
The duty nurse takes a breath and looks down, and when she looks up at him again his breath catches in his throat. Finally, he sees in front of him what Rhoda sees, two impotent nurses trying not to tell him that his daughter died from her injuries.
“Oh God. Oh God.” He tries to choke back the sobs, wild eyes unseeing. “She’s gone, isn’t she? My God.”
The duty nurse gives the younger nurse a look and starts to curtain off the bed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett. I’m so sorry. If you can just wait until the doctor gets here, we can—”
But Mr. Garrett is already pulling back his sheets. He staggers up out of bed onto unsteady feet.
“No, no, no. I wanna know where the bastard is. Tell me where the guy is who did this to her. Where is he? Is he here?” Mr. Garrett turns around, taking in all the patient-filled beds on the ward. “You wouldn’t be stupid enough to put him here, would you?”
Everyone on the ward is watching now.
“Mr. Garrett! I’m going to ask you to return to your bed, or I’ll have to call security.” The duty nurse throws a look to the young nurse behind her, who turns to leave.
“Don’t you dare! If you do, God help me!”
A sharp burst of fear shoots through Rhoda. Her eyes widen, pupils dilate, her breath catches and holds, her posture stiffens. This is the thing that the quiet man lying next to her in his hospital bed notices. He turns his eyes away from the scene and back to her.
But Rhoda does not notice. Rhoda is transfixed by the scene playing out as the hospital-gowned man strides farther into the ward toward their end, his wild eyes gliding over patients.
Rhoda’s gaze flicks back to the young nurse’s face. She’s biting her bottom lip, eyes furiously calculating her options. Rhoda can see it coming before the young nurse knows herself. She’s going to make a break for it. She’s going to run for security.
Her body tenses and then she bolts. She flies out into the corridor, around the corner and out of sight.
The man spins at the movement and yells out after her but she’s gone. Suddenly vulnerable and feeling the exposure of his situation, he looks around him for the closest thing he can use to protect himself when security arrives. He lunges toward the nearest patient bedside cabinet and grabs a ribbon-festooned gift bottle of whisky. He grasps it tight, knuckles whitening as he raises it like a club, its warm caramel liquid gleaming as it sloshes inside.
The duty nurse takes a step back. “Please, try to stay calm, Mr. Garrett….If we could just—”
But Mr. Garrett turns from her, disinterested. He steps farther into the ward, squinting intently to read the small whiteboards above the beds. Looking for a specific name. Rhoda shifts forward ever so slightly in her chair. Somebody should call out. Shout for help. Perhaps she should, but that could just escalate things. She darts a glance out into the hall, for someone, anyone.
She needs to act, she thinks. She takes a breath and starts to rise from her chair—but a movement comes from the bed next to her. Her patient is sitting up; he looks at her not panicked, not concerned, and shakes his head. No. Not you.
She frowns. He is telling her not to intervene.
Mr. Garrett has reached their end of the ward. He scans the names, the faces below them. Rhoda and her patient look to each other as his gaze falls on them. Rhoda’s patient looks her serenely in the eyes and she doesn’t move. She heeds his advice and Mr. Garrett turns away. He turns and starts to walk away.
Suddenly someone breaks through the small crowd of people by the door, a young male nurse, making a run at the armed man. Other bystanders move back to clear his path. Mr. Garrett’s eyes flare and unthinkingly he reaches out, snatching at the nearest body, a man in his seventies, frail, wearing a Fair Isle sweater many sizes too large for him. The whisky bottle crashes to the floor, shattering, splashing glass and richly scented alcohol across the ward. The old man drops his shiny new magazine with the shock of it and it lands with a loud slap on the wet hospital linoleum. Mr. Garrett holds him roughly in front of him as a kind of shield, and the approaching male nurse stutters to a halt.
“This isn’t what I wanted, you know,” Mr. Garrett tells the ward. It comes out shakily, off-key. “I just, I just want—argh!” He squeezes his eyes shut hard to think. “He killed my little girl. She was fifteen,” he tells no one in particular. He’s crying now, fat wet streaks down his anguished face. The old man trapped in his arms scans the surrounding faces searching for a clue to his fate, still held tight in the hold.