Chapter Seven

Sir Roger Logmar had been at the eye of the ophthalmic storm for more than five years. Quite a lot more, in fact. It was actually closer to twelve. As the Director General of the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health, he’d seen a lot of changes over the past decade, not all of them diabetic. Under his firm, occasionally inspired, but usually predictable leadership, the Office had undergone radical changes, moving from a small two-room unit in Bristol, to the seven-storey underground tower block it now occupied in Oxford.

The upsizing had necessitated a change in name, but Sir Roger had never been comfortable with the acronym BOOH, feeling it would scare patients and make it harder for undercover operatives to quietly whisper their arrival without making their contacts jump, and revealing their presence to onlookers. He’d wanted a more awe-inspiring title for his organisation, and having looked at offices in Oswestry, he’d finally settled on a prime location in Oxford. Thus the rebranding was complete, OOOH was born, and the important work could continue.

For Sir Roger Logmar, that important work had begun decades earlier, during his years as a research chemist at Drugs R Us, one of the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies, which specialised in the production of medicines for children. Sir Roger, who was known in those days simply as Rog (the knighthood came many years later after a substantial cash donation to the government of the day), had been instrumental in the development of new forms of eye drops, safe for use on babies and toddlers. It was during this important research that he stumbled across a method of producing tropicamide drops that don’t sting.

Even as a young scientist, Rog realised the massive implications of his discovery. Routine mydriasis could be made painless, patient fear and apprehension could be eliminated, and DNA rates would reduce. But above all, retinal screeners would no longer have any fun.

Rog had spoken to the Drugs R Us customers. He’d heard about life on the front line of patient care. And he knew that for anyone involved in ophthalmology, the only thing that made dealing with difficult patients tolerable, was the ability to inflict upon them physical pain. Legally, appropriately, and with no fear of reproach. Take away that ability, remove that inalienable right, and the whole world of professional eye care would collapse. Retinal screeners and ophthalmic nurses would leave their professions in droves. Eye hospitals would close. Ophthalmology clinics would disappear from the NHS. With the inability to recruit staff at every level, rates of preventable eye disease would grow rapidly year upon year, and within a generation, we’d all be blind.

Rog knew he couldn’t let that happen. If tropicamide eye drops no longer caused stinging, burning and general discomfort, then the ocular health of an entire nation would be threatened. There would have to be a cover-up. In order to save the sight of millions, he had to bury his own discovery. More than that, he would have to ensure that no future scientist ever did the same research, came to the same conclusions and produced the same result.

With some degree of urgency, Rog looked around for support in this most crucial of endeavours, for inside help and advice, for people he could trust to join him in this vital conspiracy, and to take that secret to their graves. Those people were hard to find. Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, and not everyone was in Yellow Pages.

It took the young chemist more than six months to assemble his task force, a small rag-tag band of eye doctors, pharmacists, opticians and retinal screeners, but having done so, he set them to work in a four-pronged attack which proved devastatingly successful. To this day, few people know how they did it, or indeed that anything was done. Every member of Rog’s team continue to deny their involvement, and insist that any notion of a cover-up is merely the invention of loony conspiracy theorists who spend too much time on the internet. Pharmaceutical companies maintain that tropicamide eye drops have always stung and always will. And retinal screeners continue to enjoy their work.

Rog had saved the sight of a nation. But he’d also found its Achilles Heel. The world of ophthalmology was hopelessly unprepared, vulnerable to attack at any time, built like a house of cards on a sandy beach. And the tide could come in at any time. If potential disasters like this were to be averted in future, then the set-up had to change. Six months to prepare the ground and find a team was six months too long. Rog had been lucky, but he may not be lucky again. Ophthalmologists and eye care professionals couldn’t simply react to events as they happened, they had to pre-empt them. They needed foresight. A third eye. The ability to look to the future with twenty-twenty vision. What they needed was a special operations unit.

The way forward looked clear. If future blindness was to be averted, an entirely new ophthalmic department would have to be created. It would need to be at the heart of the NHS, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, the Royal College of Nursing, the National Screening Committee and SpecSavers. But it would also need to be unknown to them all. It would need to be there, but to go unseen, to occupy the shadows of every retinal detachment, and then appear in a flash.

This realisation would define not just Rog’s career, but his entire life. He quickly came to the conclusion that if such an organisation was ever going to exist, then he would have to be the man to create it. He could be arrogant like that. It hadn’t been easy, and it had taken years, decades in fact. Months spent learning about the role of every eye care professional, working out their strengths, finding their weaknesses, exposing their vulnerabilities with the aim of protecting their interests.

But he’d done it. OOOH was his baby. And now, years later, he stood at the podium in that boardroom in Oxford, about to deliver the most important speech of his career. A speech he’d delivered more than five hundred times before. To a succession of people who said no.

But this time would be different. He could sense it. Things had changed – not just the atmosphere in the room, but the mood of an entire nation. There was a new feeling of optimism, of empowerment, of a can-do attitude that stretched across the country from Droitwich to Cromer and back again. There was a crisis to avert, and he knew he’d found the man to do it. The man who would say yes. The man who would respond to his speech with loyalty, exuberance and a determination to succeed. Sir Roger Logmar had made one important change. This time he had PowerPoint slides.