St Helen's Hospital
St Helen's Hospital was a hospital in Cardiff. Its location, close to the Cardiff Rift, meant that it was often first to take in the victims of alien incursions. It was regularly visited by members of Torchwood Three.
Layout
The vehicular entrance was connected via a sweeping approach road to the main hospital car park. Located at the front of the hospital, the car park was on several levels and spread over a wide area, each level separated by bushes, young trees and pedestrian walkways.
Automatic doors in the glass frontage at the main entrance of the hospital led from the car park into Reception - part of the main foyer. This was a waiting area, which contained rows of metal-framed seats and at least one vending machine. The lifts were located across the main foyer from Reception.
Located on one of the upper floors was the intensive care unit. It was for authorised personnel only. Through the doors to the unit was a wide corridor with an orange floor and subdued lighting. Half way along the corridor was a desk, which was to be manned at all times, with a scatter of paperwork, a laptop and a desk lamp with a green-bulb. Flanking the corridor on both sides were rows of glass fronted intensive care cubicles, each large enough to contain a hospital bed and any items of medical equipment a patient required.
The maternity unit was located on the fifth floor, just across the corridor from both the lifts and an open stairwell, and through a set of double doors. Immediately through the doors was the nurses' station. The maternity unit comprised of a wide central corridor with birthing rooms on one side and a series of ten-bed wards on the other. It more closely resembled a hotel than part of a hospital, designed with comfort and reassurance in mind. The intensive care unit, or Ward 5, contained four beds, each within it's own self-contained cubicle. Opposite the door were four waist-high windows which looked out over the hospital car park. (PROSE: Bay of the Dead)
History
On 26 March 2005, people injured by a fire at the Manor Rest Hotel were taken to St Helen's Hospital. (AUDIO: One Rule)
Death went here to kill thirteen people to enter the physical world completely, but failed because of Owen Harper. (TV: Dead Man Walking) After that Angela Connolly, a doctor at the hospital, trapped a Hoix in the basement of the hospital. Owen helped her tranquillise it. (TV: Exit Wounds)
Hywel Roberts's father was a patient at St Helen's. Hywel attempted to call the hospital from Traveller's Halt. (AUDIO: Deadbeat Escape)
In 2009, Nina Rogers visited St Helens to receive stitches after having put her foot through a plate-glass window. She, along with hospital staff and visitors - including midwife Rianne Kilkenny, found herself trapped inside by a horde of "zombies" which appeared to be guarding the building. Andy Davidson attempted to take his police partner, Dawn Stratton, to St Helen's at this time, but was unable to do so. Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones attempted to get through the hospital car park in the Torchwood SUV. They were unable to do and had to be rescued from the roof of the vehicle by Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams in a Coastguard helicopter. Accessing the hospital from the roof, Torchwood Three made their way to the intensive care unit where they discovered Leet, a symbiont, inhabiting the comatose body of Oscar Phillips. With the "zombies" having now broken into the hospital, Leet awoke Oscar, and Oscar jumped from the window, renouncing his control over the creatures. (PROSE: Bay of the Dead)
In September 2009, following a brief visit by Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones to pick up a "hitchhiker" from Mr Williams' dead body, Jack returned to investigate Mr Chow Lee Jee's cause of death and was fatally shot by secret British government agent Rupesh Patanjali. Patanjali himself was shortly afterwards shot to death by Johnson so he might not suspect the real reason that Patanjali sought help from Torchwood. (TV: Children of Earth: Day One)
In 2011, the Miracle Day phenomenon caused overcrowding as people with fatal conditions no longer died. A crowd of people massed by the hospital and some even worshipped the doctors. St Helen's had representatives visiting another, abandoned hospital to examine its possible use as storage for the overflowing ICU patients. (TV: Escape to LA)
Gwen Cooper was forced to leave hiding to visit her father in the hospital after suffering from a series of heart attacks. Gwen's husband, Rhys Williams, and her baby daughter, Anwen, accompanied her. (TV: The New World)
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