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find out the rent he’s asking…’
    ‘No problem,’ Patrick started to say, when Karen put down the phone and interrupted them, her cheeks slightly pink as if she’d heard something of interest. She looked around, making sure no one was listening.
    ‘Mr Vernon’s just been on to me about a patient he’s been looking at in the small theatre,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘He was picked up by the police outside a pub earlier this morning and taken back to the station on a drunk and disorderly charge. Evidently he’d had a bit of a fracas with some young lads…but it’s rather a delicate situation.’
    ‘So far normal,’ murmured Jandy. ‘So why is it a delicate situation?’
    Sister flicked a look at her and said impressively, ‘I think you’ll know what I mean when you see him—it’s Leo Parker, the agony uncle who does that chat show on television.’
    Jandy raised her eyebrows. ‘Wow! Leo Parker, the Voice of Reason? The press will be interested, won’t they?’
    ‘Exactly!’ Karen pursed her lips. ‘I don’t want a word of who this patient is to get out—I can’t bear those journalists running all over the place, disrupting the department, questioning everybody. If they get a whiff of this, it’ll be bedlam.’
    ‘Better prepare for bedlam, then,’ Jandy said under her breath. ‘This place is like a sieve when it comes to gossip!’
    She heard Patrick chuckle as they filed into the cubicle. ‘Sounds familiar…’ he murmured.
    ‘Mr Parker was just about conscious when he was brought in,’ explained Karen. ‘The police were concerned that it might not be just drink that’s affecting him and that he could have had a crack on the head.’
    ‘Are his X-rays clear?’ asked Patrick.
    ‘Not a sign of anything. Mr Vernon has already had a look at his skull plates—quite normal. But he’s in and out of consciousness, so something’s wrong. We’re waiting for his bloods to come back, but I’d like him closely monitored. Give me a shout if you find anything.’
    Leo Parker lay on the bed, the impressive head of thick grey hair, which was his trademark, matted with blood from a gash on his forehead. He shifted restlessly from side to side, moving his limbs and muttering incoherently. Jandy was struck by how ordinary he looked, just as vulnerable as every other patient who came in to A and E reduced to helplessness by their condition.
    ‘Poor man—not quite the towering TV personality at the moment,’ murmured Jandy, looking at the trace on the graph over the bed giving his oxygen levels and pulse rate. ‘Heart rate’s accelerated and his BP’s quite low.’
    ‘He’s right out of it at the moment,’ commented Patrick, bending over the man and shining a small torch into the pupil of each eye. Then he bent the patient’s legs, striking below the knees sharply. ‘His reflexes seem OK. What about his plantar reflex?’
    Jandy took a pencil out of her pocket and drew it across the base of the man’s foot, which curled in response.
    ‘Nothing wrong there…’ She bent forward and sniffed the man’s breath. ‘Nice and beery—he’s obviously had a few bevies,’ she remarked. She frowned and sniffed again. ‘Wait a minute…there’s something else…Funny smell…acetone, I think.’
    Patrick leaned close to the man and nodded back at her, touching the man’s face. ‘Absolutely right—he’s sweaty as well. Alcohol-induced hypoglycaemia,’ he added almost to himself. ‘I don’t suppose he checked his blood-sugar levels after having a bit to drink. That’s why his speech is so garbled—his glucose levels will be very low.’
    ‘If he’d been left in that police cell, it could have been curtains.’
    ‘Yup—he’s lucky they brought him in when they did. We’ll give him fifty grams of glucose intravenously. I take it the packs are in the cupboard up there?’
    Jandy handed Patrick one of the pre-packed syringes and they both watched the patient after he’d been