Jul. 19th, 2009

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Mr and Mrs Smith had fallen on bad times. Once a highly successful chemist, Mr Smith had lost his job several years ago, and with his wife unable to make ends meet as a cleaner, they found themselves destined for the Farmeade estate.

They had each other, and they had their son Bradley, and they knew they would pull through somehow.

It was one of the neighbours who found out Bradley was in a gang, when the Devil Horn Gang smashed a car up. They'd tried to talk him out of it, punish him, but he wouldn't listen - the gang were his mates, and they couldn't keep him locked up.


Mr and Mrs Smith faced the possibility that one day they wouldn't be able to keep him safe, and prepared accordingly.

***

It is a warm Tuesday evening, still just about light. Guppy steps out of the hospital, tucking his stethoscope into his bag as he starts to walk home. As he does so, a distressed woman comes running up to him.

"Please, you're a doctor, aren't you? I need you to help my son, it's an emergency!"

Guppy, while he might have been suspicious of a youngster, follows after the woman of about forty five. He becomes nervous when she reaches the border of the Farmeade estate, but they reach the house before he can stop her to ask questions.

"Have you called an ambulance?" he asks, racing up the stairs to where a man is bent over a lad of about eighteen, with a knife sticking out of his leg. The lad is unconscious, and there's a lot of blood.

"Yes, please, help us!" the father begs, as Guppy gets to work quickly.

"What's his name?"

"Bradley." the woman says, sobbing into her hands. "We just found him like this."

Guppy tries to keep the lad stable, knowing that the ambulance shouldn't take long to get there. He gets the father to put pressure on the wound, gets a line in and starts giving fluids.

"Where's that ambulance?" he asks. "How long ago did you call?"

"Can't you help him?" the father begs.

"He needs an operating theatre. I only have a basic kit here."

"Please, use what you have here and help him."

"Call the ambulance back, ask them how long it'll be."

"We didn't call the ambulance." the mother whimpers. "No authorities, if the gangs find out, we're all dead."

"If you don't call an ambulance he's not going to make it!" Guppy yells.

"No, you can fix him." the father says, holding up a device that looks something like a television remote control. "Make him better, I don't care if it's legal or ethical, you do the surgery here, now, or... or pieces of Farmeade go sky high. We don't want to hurt anyone, but we'll do anything to protect our son."

Guppy stares at him in disbelief. But he can't take this as a bluff.

"That is a terrible, terrible plan." he says.
guppy_sandhu: (Default)
"Okay, let me get this straight." Guppy says, putting on his rubber gloves. "You don't want to go to hospital or contact the police because you're scared that the gangs will come after you, and to protect yourselves you have instead produced a set of cunningly hidden explosive devices in order to blackmail me into helping you?"

"Pretty much, yes." Mr Smith says, standing next to his fallen son. "It might sound ridiculous to you, but when you live in Farmeade you have to do what you can. And I know as a doctor you couldn't do this operation in here unless I was blackmailing you."

"Because your son's at great risk." Guppy says. "Bradley needs to go to an operating theatre to have this knife pulled out of his leg. He could just bleed out right here in front of us!"

"Then give him a transfusion." Mrs Smith insists. "I'm his blood type."

"Can you do that?" the father asks.

"Well, yes, but at risk of death." Guppy says. "Given his chances aren't good right now, it might still improve them."

He prepares the transfusion of blood between the two, and is glad when the patient doesn't immediately die. With that, he gets down to the surgery, as best as he can in such terrible conditions. He somehow removes the knife, ties off the arteries, and does what he can.

"He's still dying." he says to the father. "He still needs hospital care. That wound will probably get infected and he may have other injuries."

He notices movement, and watches the boy return to a slightly better level of consciousness.

"You can give him antibiotics." Mr Smith says, still clutching the remote that he claims is attached to the explosives.

"Not without knowing what bacteria are in there." Guppy says patiently. "It's true I have a small amount for emergency meningitis patients, but that may well not help him."

"Look out of that window." Mr Smith says, pointing to a window where there is a view of a park bench. "Is there anyone on that bench?"

"No..."

Guppy jumps in alarm as the man presses the remote and the bench explodes. A couple of bystanders scream.

"Okay, not a bluff. Antibiotics it is."

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