Look at the Secretary of State of you
I was sat in the office the day after, pretending to do some work. One of the matrons sent a whatsapp message via another colleague, cryptically, and asked me to go and speak to her. Pretty sure that I'd done something wrong, I walked down the long back corridor into her office and closed the door behind me.
'Seeing as you were working yesterday I wondered if you wanted to meet the secretary of state.' She made a face as though she expected me to say no.
'Who's the secretary of state?'
Her face didn't change.
'Am I allowed to talk to him?'
No change.
'Am I allowed to call him a useless bellend?'
'Probably not the best career move.'
A moment of transparency - as much as I hated to admit it, I was enticed by the opportunity to meet the person who had been so influential in contributing towards general NHS misery for so long. As trivial as it might sound, I also wanted to know things like if he had a firm handshake, how tall he was, whether he would roll his sleeves up, whether he had the moral strength to maintain eye contact with a workforce which stood for everything he stood against.
I think matron was surprised when I said I'd do it. I was surprised when I said I'd do it.
'What about the others that were on last night?'
'Do you think it's a good idea leaving him alone in a room with them?' I went away feeling offended that in some way I might have a reputation as some kind of line-towing brown-noser. I was wearing a floral shirt and loose fitting pants, and was asked to change into a new set of scrubs so it looked like I was actually going to do some work that day.
We were sat in a circle in our 'Hub' - which is a posh word for a seminar room. There were surgical consultants there, anaesthetic consultants, some of the ITU nurses from the night, the medical director and other various management types who rarely came to the department. We made some light humour about how the staff had already segregated themselves into suits and scrubs, doctors and nurses milling about, management in a close huddle. I recognised almost everyone in the room, but had never met the managing director before, so introduced myself.
'So you were working last night?'
'Yeah. I only live around the corner, so I just came from home.'
'Well, thank you for coming in.'
'It's no problem. It was just like any other saturday night at work really.' It both was and wasn't.
'Hmmm. It wasn't really like any other night, was it?' Her eyes narrowed and she seemed to have lost interest in the conversation thread.
'Our response and approach to the patients was exactly the same as it would be on any other occasio- ' she'd already walked off to go and speak to someone she'd have something more in common with, someone else who wasn't there on Saturday night.
I sat with an anaesthetic consultant and some of the ITU staff. We talked about how the patients from last night were all doing, and began to make jokes about how we might be able to squeeze the term 'strong and stable' into conversation with the secretary of state.
'London Hospital prides itself on a strong and stable response to major incidents.'
'The patients have remained strong and stable on intensive care.'
'We reset his femur and we can categorically say that the femur is now strong and stable.'
Someone passed around cups of tea and biscuits.
'Strong tea and stable biscuits.’
We kept our eyes on each other as the Secretary of State walked in, united by our dislike of the man, but loathe to be the one to draw attention to ourselves by being the first one to say something defamatory. He walked in a circle with a small entourage made up of the Chief Executive (wasn’t there), Director of Ops (wasn’t there), Associate Director (wasn’t there), Director of Nursing (got there later), Matron (the other one was there), Clinical Director (was there) and as he circled the room he shook hands with each of us, saying hello. He was tall, walked with a habitual stoop, as though he were used to banging his head on working-class sized door frames. My palms began to sweat. I wanted to slowly crush his hand inside mine - look at our NHS, look how strong we are, you can cut us as much as you want but we’re still here, malnourished and neglected, but we can still tear off your hand if we wanted to. When he came to me I was disappointed to find that his grip was firm, and my hands were sweating and struggled to find the appropriate angry purchase. I stared at him and he stared back blankly. I muttered my name through my teeth and took my hand back.
We sat, and he thanked us for our efforts at the weekend. He didn't mention politics at all - I supposed he read the room on his way in. He spoke awkwardly, unsure of himself, as though sincerity did not come easily to him. We listened quietly, then the room spoke back after in polite generalities, knowing that there were enough people in the room to make life difficult for us if we spoke out of turn, or out of line. The intimations were all there, though.
‘It was lucky staff checked their WhatsApp messages and came in from home.’
‘It was lucky the department was quiet that night.’
‘It was lucky there were beds in the hospital.’
‘It was lucky we still have members of staff who have had major incident training.’
‘It was lucky it was twelve patients and not one hundred and twenty.’
Ten minutes passed, and we were all done talking. There was no cheque handed over. No promises that the government had learned a valuable lesson from this, that this was a new epoch of world-leading healthcare. There were no guarantees of improving London’s robustness in the light of increased risk. There was nothing being taken back for discussion in parliament. The Secretary of State and his hangers-on left the room first.
He visited another hospital that day. A group of patients and relatives harassed him, and he was forced to hide in a toilet for an hour and a half.