Visiting Hours (audio story)

 was the thirteenth story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range by Big Finish Productions. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured Kai Owen as Rhys Williams.

Publisher's summary
Everyone's a little worried about St Helen's Hospital. In many ways it is a miracle of the modern NHS. It has plenty to offer its patients. The problem is that a lot of them keep dying of natural causes in the night. And no-one can find the bodies.

People are beginning to notice. Questions are being asked. And there are rumours — the strange whispering figures seen at the end of the corridors, the electrical buzzing, the screams.

Also, Rhys Williams has come to visit his mother. Brenda's had her hip done and is looking forward to a bit of rest and regular crumble. Rhys and his mam are in for a night they'll never forget.

Plot
Rhys visits Brenda in St Helen's Hospital twelve minutes before the end of visiting hours, but Nurse Brown gives him permission to stay for the night. Brenda, recovering from hip replacement surgery, has been given a private room after being told that the woman in the bed opposite died of a heart attack and, late at night, Rhys goes to investigate Mr Tate and Mr Nichols taking somebody away and talking about chloroform. He seems them operating on a patient through a one-way mirror and, hearing that they intend on taking Brenda next, he wheels his mother in her bed to another room.

Based on the men's discussion of the laws surrounding cigarettes, Rhys deduces that they have come from the past to steal organs for the rich. He moves a corpse from the mortuary to Brenda's room as a decoy, but they realise the deception and hunt for her and Rhys after learning that he never signed out after visiting. Rhys attacks one of the men and the other tells him that he has been promised heart surgery to save his daughter if he helps with the organ transplants, with Dr Fletcher's operation to save Prince Abdullah being his final job. When Prince Abdullah dies, Dr Fletcher returns to his own time and leaves Mr Tate and Mr Nichols, who are actually from the future, behind.

Mr Tate and Mr Nichols warn Rhys and Brenda about the Cleaners, robots who are tasked with getting rid of any evidence and witnesses. The Cleaners kill the two men and Rhys and Brenda hide in the mortuary until they leave. In the morning, Rhys learns from Nurse Brown that Dr Fletcher was a surgeon who went missing in the 1950s and promises his mother that he will not leave it so long before he visits her again.

Cast

 * Rhys Williams - Kai Owen
 * Brenda Williams - Nerys Hughes
 * Mr Tate - Karl Theobald
 * Mr Nichols - Ryan Sampson
 * Nurse Brown - Ruth Lloyd
 * Dr Fletcher - Stephen Critchlow

Worldbuilding

 * Rhys talks to Gwen over the phone and asks her to give Anwen a kiss.
 * Rhys mentions Cilla Black.
 * Brenda is sixty-three and likes rhubarb crumble.
 * Karen supposedly had a heart attack at the age of forty-three.
 * Brenda has put money aside for Anwen to be used for tuition, a wedding or a house.
 * Mary has been babysitting Anwen all week whilst Rhys and Gwen were in North Wales.
 * Brenda is on morphine.
 * Rhys plays a video game.
 * Rhys smoked wacky baccy at Banana Boat's stag night in Amsterdam.
 * Rhys has an Auntie Carol.
 * Tony Harries is operated on.
 * Twenty-five years ago, Rhys put a rugby ball through Mrs Balsam's greenhouse.
 * Brenda criticised Barry's driving when he took the family to Trecco Bay or St Fagans.
 * Prince Abdullah dies.
 * Brenda has never liked lifts.
 * Ronald Fletcher performed the first kidney surgery in the 1950s.

Continuity

 * Brenda mentions "that business with the kids". (TV: Children of Earth: Day One, etc.)