She still couldn’t believe it. She pulled the slide free from its clips, wanting to see another one. To gather more evidence. It was then that she noticed something that made her blood run cold.
A tiny dot on the corner of the slide. A marker. The kind she always used on the slides she kept for her teaching.
Time seemed to stop and yet Kate’s brain – and her hands – were moving at the speed of light. It took only seconds to confirm the worst. Somehow, one of her teaching slides had become mixed up with the new sample from Theatre.
The thirteen-year-old girl didn’t have a highly aggressive cancer at all. The tumour was benign and could be easily treated.
Kate ran to the phone and dialled the Theatre extension. The phone rang. And rang. What was keeping someone from answering? Were they all too busy? Doing an unnecessary amputation?
Kate shoved the phone at the nearest technician. ‘Wait till someone answers,’ she snapped. ‘Tell them to stop. They’ve got the wrong diagnosis.’
She couldn’t just wait. Kate ran for the door, unbuttoning her coat as she went so that she could move faster.
She was fit. Four flights of stairs would only take a minute. She would take them two at a time. Three, if she could.
This couldn’t be happening.
Not on her watch.
* * *
Connor had delayed for longer than he should have. Looking at the MRI scans again. Trying to decide just how high up they needed to go to try and get past the potential spread of the lethal cancer. He called in a paediatric oncology consultant to discuss whether to deal with the fracture and wait for Estelle to undergo a course of chemotherapy before the irreversible step of amputation.
But the decision had been made.
Connor picked up the bone saw and tested it. The whine reminded him of a dentist’s drill. Just before it hit an exposed nerve in a tooth. For a few seconds the sound had drowned out the faint ring of the telephone in the technician’s booth that nobody seemed to be in a hurry to answer. Grimly, he put the saw down and picked up a scalpel. He needed to fully expose the bone he was going to be cutting through. Scalpel poised, Connor was astonished to see the double doors leading into the theatre burst open. Someone was standing there, holding a mask to her face with its unfastened strings dangling loose. She wore a white coat.
Unbuttoned, but it was obviously Kate. Her eyes were wide and frightened and she was panting so hard she could barely speak.
‘Stop…’ she managed. ‘You have to stop.’
5
‘You can’t blame yourself.’
‘Of course I can.’ Kate couldn’t stop pacing. She was in the living room of her house, a long room that had windows and a set of French doors that led to a small courtyard and lawn bordered by the big old trees that covered the property.
It was 7p.m. but still full daylight. A lovely summery day that showed no sign of ending yet. It had, without doubt, been the longest day of Kate’s life. She groaned aloud.
‘It’s my department. With Lewis out of action I have to take full responsibility for what happens in there.’
Bella was curled up on the sofa, watching her aunt with a concerned frown on her face. ‘It wasn’t your fault there was a fire alarm and things got messed up.’
‘I should have been doing the biopsy. Mark doesn’t have enough experience. He couldn’t see that there was an anomaly. He didn’t go back and double-check.’
‘You weren’t there to do the biopsy,’ Bella pointed out. ‘It’s not as if they can keep someone under anaesthetic for hours and hours waiting for a result. You had no choice – you had to get Dr Blackman to Emergency. You probably saved his life. He is okay, isn’t he?’
Kate’s nod was almost distracted. ‘They got him up to the cath lab. He had his artery opened with a stent within a couple of hours. They say there’s minimal damage and he could be back on deck in a week or so.’
She sighed. ‘They did say he’s very lucky. He had an episode of VT just after I left, which could easily have been an arrest if he hadn’t been in the right place.’
‘There you go, then.’
Kate shook her head. ‘You don’t understand, Bella. It was a catastrophic error. A girl almost lost her leg unnecessarily. If that had happened, my career would have been over. Probably Connor’s career as well. How could anyone live with themselves if they made that kind of mistake?’
‘But it didn’t happen.’ Bella closed her eyes. ‘Thank goodness.’
Something in her tone made Kate stop pacing for a moment. ‘You were up there this afternoon, weren’t you? Did you hear something?’
