Katherine Kurtz - Adept 02 by The Lodge of the Lynx

Author:The Lodge of the Lynx
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-09-27T22:08:32+00:00

chapter twenty-two

IT was approaching teatime late on Monday afternoon when a London ambulance pulled up outside the entrance to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, more commonly known among the local population as Jordanburn. As its driver and his partner headed around the back to open the doors, a pair of hospital porters and a motherly-looking nurse in uniform came out to meet it. The patient lying pale and motionless on the stretcher that the five of them drew out was a young girl of perhaps eleven or twelve, with a tangle of I.V. tubing emerging from underneath the navy blue blanket buckled over her inert form.

Disembarking close behind her came a worn-looking blonde woman in her mid-thirties, whose anxious demeanor made it obvious to all but the most casual of observers that she must be the child’s mother.

One far from casual observer was a hospital cleaning woman making her way across the hospital car park, headed toward the bus stop on the main road. Sandy-haired and bespectacled, of indeterminate middle years, she wore a nondescript tweed coat over her cleaner’s coverall and carried a capacious handbag clutched close to her body under one arm. The activity at the ambulance entrance would have provoked no undue interest had she not been startled to see the regular hospital staff joined by a consultant physician in a crisp white lab coat - a tall, aristocratic-looking man with dark hair going silver at the temples, the very man whose photo resided in the woman’s handbag, and whose activities she had been ordered to observe.

Her interest piqued - for senior consultants of the standing of Dr. Adam Sinclair did not ordinarily meet patients at the ambulance entrance - she checked in her stride and delved into her coat pocket for a cigarette, going through the motions of lighting up while she strained to catch the drift of the conversation.

The porters prepared to take their patient inside as the nurse conferred quietly with the driver of the ambulance and documents changed hands, but Sinclair’s voice carried musically across the frosty dusk as he came forward to greet the blonde woman.

“Good evening, Mrs. Talbot,” he said warmly. “You’ve had a long journey, haven’t you? I hope it wasn’t too wearing.”

The blonde woman glanced anxiously beyond him at the child on the gurney before summoning a brave smile.

“Not too bad, thank you, Dr. Sinclair. But I’m glad to have finally arrived.” “Well, Gillian’s bed is all ready and waiting for her,” Sinclair continued, steering the patient’s mother toward the disappearing gurney. “Come along in out of the cold, and we’ll see about getting you a nice cup of tea.” The woman in the cleaner’s coverall loitered long enough to see Sinclair and the woman disappear through the swinging doors before carrying on up the path in the direction of the bus stop. Once out of sight of the ambulance entrance, she rummaged in her handbag and dragged out a tattered pocket-sized notebook with a pencil thrust through the spiral

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