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Following the passing of Abigail Roberts, a national newspaper runs a story attributing the death to mysterious events that followed. Adam Green is dispatched to find out the truth.
Following the death of an elderly patient on St. Dunbarton's Intensive Care Unit, mysterious events begin to happen. This is the story of St. Dunbarton's, the people that worked there, and the media circus that ensued.
My name is Adam Green. I am an independent investigative journalist specialising in medical scandals. Over the past 20 years I've worked for CNN, Reuters, the BBC and The Guardian, covering a variety of stories, from the happy to the sad to the downright bizarre.
But nothing compares to the story of St Dunbarton's Hospital. This is the story of Dunbarton Magical.
Chapter one - 24, 48, 72
May 25th, 2022, 1:02AM. Dr Kirupakaran is on a night shift covering two ICU wards and working as the Emergency Medicine on-call for A&E. ICU is, in her words, “more boring than you would expect”. Despite the condition of the patients admitted to ICU, and the constant looming risk that any one of them could require split-second decision making to save their life, ICUs can be quiet.
Tonight, the various monitors connected to the patients were beeping, humming and generally providing the naturally reassuring response of being uninteresting. ICUs usually enjoy a high staff to patient ratio, for obvious reasons. Nursing staff shuffle back and forth checking displays, occasionally touching or prodding patients, or changing drips or feeds.
Dr Kirupakaran walks nearly silently through the halls. An ability she developed by wearing socks over the trainers she opts for during shift. The newly laminated floors of St Dumbarton's partially refurbished wards would cause a squeak against the soles of her shoes. A squeak which was drawn to her attention by a belligerent elderly repeat patient.
In our first meeting shortly after the story first broke about St Dunbarton’s Hospital, Dr Kirupakaran admitted that - in the immediate annoyance that followed that altercation - she considered making sure her shoes squeaked past his door every night.
The soft brush of the sock fabric against the floor followed her as she proceeded to check The Amulet. The Amulet was a name that the ICU nurses had given to a woman in her 90s, who wore a necklace older than she was and insisted it not be removed in her final days.
Lifting the eyelid of the woman and reaching into her breast pocket to extract a small pen torch, she proceeded to inspect the pupils therein for movement - to no avail. Returning the torch and shuffling on in search of the coffee she had placed down at the nursing station, the monitors around the recently inspected patient began to beep and chirp.
The elderly woman was going into cardiac arrest. With little, if any fanfare, the ICU nurses move about repositioning the displays and trolleys around the bed to grant access to the crash cart as Dr Kirupakaran removes the gown of the patient granting access to the chest. The amulet - never properly attached by the nurses - is quickly pulled off.
Pads are applied to the patient whilst Dr Kirupakaran performs CPR. Within seconds the Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is replaced with defibrillation and a number of shocks are applied in a vain attempt to restart the patient’s heart.
By 1:08 AM the team accepts the loss and the higher tempo reduces, the regular volume replaced with a quiet hush. The ICU stepped back down to the more calm rhythmic motions of a night shift. Covering the patient, an ICU nurse prepares the body to be taken down to St Dumbarton's morgue.
Returning to the nurse's station to retrieve her coffee, the doctor begins to fill out a death certificate for Abigail Roberts. Little did Dr Kirupakaran realise she was filling out the last death certificate at St Dumbarton's Hospital.
A fact that would become clear in the proceeding 24, 48 and 72 hours.
****
The story of St Dunbarton's Hospital first broke three days after Abigail Roberts' passing. My editor at the time - Carmen Wislow - called me into her office shortly before midday. Carmen was a busy woman, she was also curt. Being summoned to her office fell it one of two decidedly opposite categories - good or bad.
As a hack who had come up in a pre-digital era, Mrs Wislow had a penchant for printed material and as I stepped into the office, sat on the desk was a printout of the hospital’s website, a clipping of the original mail article that broke the story and a credit card all paper-clipped together.
“Take, go, be back in three days” she said looking over her glasses at the screen as she continued to type - without even the slightest slow down as I entered, received the assignment and left the office.
I sat on the Central line out to White City reading the clipping I’d been given. “Daughter claims Wiccan mum’s death reason hospital has no death in 3 days”. In an impressive feat, the paper had managed to find Kaya Roberts, the daughter of the last patient to die at St. Dunbarton’s before the start of its zero death streak. The data was leaked from the Department of Health and Social Care, and - seeing it as a fluke - the correspondent had chosen to write a fluff piece with the aid of a quote from a grieving relative. It was the kind of hatchet piece I expected it to be.
It did beg the question as to why I was being dispatched. My mind traced back to that previous thought walking into Carmen’s office. Maybe this is a punishment assignment for some slight against her. Perhaps I didn’t hold the elevator or she suspects me of scratching her car.
As I stepped off the tube I began searching my contact book for a single member of staff I knew working at the small regional hospital. I struggled to find a single name I even tangentially recognised. This is not necessarily uncommon, the NHS is - after all - one of the largest employers on the planet and the largest health employer in the world.
I returned home to pack. It was only three days up north to investigate a statistical anomaly, or a misreporting, or simply a lie. Speaking to my partner shortly before I left, we realised that a friend of hers from High School was working at St. Dunbarton's. Telephone number in hand I called as I drove up the M1 on the four-hour drive.
I managed to get through to the doctor around 3PM in the afternoon. I stood on the side of a motorway asking if she was free for dinner as the draft of passing cars made the call a shout. That evening, myself and Dr Kirupakaran met for dinner.
Up until this point, I was unconvinced by stories that had been floating around the various clucking hens of Fleet Street. There are WhatsApp Groups and Facebook chats between various reporters at different publications. British press media is nothing if not incestuous - a revolving door of publicly educated Oxbridge types who would be just as well suited to a knitting circle as news journalism. The tabloids and gossip rags love a good sensationalist story, even if the fundamentals have no basis in reality.
Sipping on the glass of house white that I was drinking at Carmen’s expense, I finally asked the question that I had been sent here to ask, smiling across the table at the middle-aged woman who had so kindly agreed to give me one of her evenings off.
"So, have there really been no deaths at St. Dunbarton's for 3 days?"
As I looked into her eyes with a smile that was trying to convey that I knew it was a silly question, her expression shifted, almost uncomfortably as if even saying what she was about to say might somehow jinx it. She stayed quiet for a few seconds, reached across the table for her glass, lifted it carefully to her lips as her eyes briefly looked into the blonde pool of liquid and took a brief sip. A moment of stalling before offering the confirmation I was not expecting.
"Four", she said as her lips parted with the glass and her hand returned it to the table. The levity instantly returned as she let the single word go.
“Four deaths?” I asked challenging for confirmation.
“Four days”.
I smiled, returning to the food and cutting a small parcel. I could have pressed for more, but with three days ahead of me at the time, it seemed impertinent.