Sharon nodded, yes, a common thing. Vulnerable patients would often mistake their emotions for something more and construct a romantic attachment that didn’t in truth exist. Normally as the patient recovered their physical health the psychological disturbance resolved itself and, though the nurse, doctor or whoever was always remembered with affection, it was simply another facet of ‘that time I was in hospital’. Of course there were cases when it went further and real relationships developed but they were few and far between.
“I fended them off and managed them but there was one man, well not much more than a boy really to be honest,” she shuddered, her gaze was turned inward now, she had gone to another place. “He wasn’t terribly ill, just a small thing and it all went well but he was nervous and needed a lot of attention. When it was time for him to be discharged he came looking for me and of course made his great declaration. They can be terribly passionate, you know. They’re not used to mixing with women and they take a lot of their knowledge and information from movies and the television. Now there is the internet and they can see far more and it just doesn’t fit in with their experience of life. They are sometimes confused, especially the ones who have never been away, out of the country. Anyway I did the usual sort of stuff, you know how it goes.” She glanced up, looking for the nod of understanding. “I told him I was flattered but he would find that as he recovered he would forget about me, blah, blah, blah. He left and I assumed that was that. I became aware though that he kept turning up. I would be in the supermarket and he would be there. He couldn’t really come up to me but he would smile and watch me. Then I would see his car, when I was out with friends it would be there, or it would be parked near to where the hospital bus was and I realised that it was often following the bus when we went to work or back home. I understood, quite slowly really, that he was, well I suppose, he was stalking me. I was more worried then. I knew it was something that could cause trouble. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“Couldn’t you tell the hospital people?” Sharon asked reasonably but Fiona simply shook her head from side to side.
“It’s complicated. I doubt they would have believed me and even if they had they would have assumed that I had been to blame, a woman, you see. Also, at that point I still wanted it all to end well. I didn’t want to embarrass him or get either of us into trouble. I assumed that if I could ignore it for long enough it would all fizzle out. Then one day I went into the office and on the desk there was a single rose, a red one with a ribbon round the stem. A cliché, silly really and I just stuck it in a vase and put it out in the ward. When I went home that night I walked into my room and there was one in there. I can’t tell you how scary that was. I didn’t know whether he had somehow got in or whether he had given it to the security man to bring in but you see both were wrong, both could cause terrible trouble. Men are not allowed into the female accommodation, it is totally forbidden. I threw the flower away but there was another one the next night and the next and the next. Every night a rose on my table.”
She took a shuddering breath as the tears started anew. Silence fell again and she braced herself, visibly preparing for what was to come next. Sharon was swept by a spasm of fear. She felt cowardly, didn’t want to hear what was to come but the lid was off and this had to be taken to the end now.
Chapter 11
Fiona was still, eyes downcast and hands clasped tightly in her lap, the skin stretched taut across her knuckles. As she began to murmur, Sharon leaned in to catch the quiet words. From what had gone before she was afraid to hear what was coming, but Fiona was her friend.
“In the end,” she began, the words snaking into the quiet of the room, “I decided that the only thing I could do was have it out with him. I thought if I confronted him and made him see the silliness, and the danger of what he was doing, the problem might go away.” She paused to wipe away a tear. “I didn’t have to look for him, he was everywhere I went, so I wrote a little note. I told him to meet me in the hospital in the treatment room. I knew it was somewhere private and believed I could manage the situation there. I thought I would be strong in familiar territory. It was supposed to be an extension of my job, just another kind of patient care. The next time he was in the supermarket, just following me around, I made sure he saw where I left the paper and I watched him take it and slip it into his pocket. The look on his face made me so very sad, he beamed, so happy. Poor, poor boy.
“The next day I sneaked out to meet him in the treatment room – oh, I don’t think I can do this. Do I have to do this?” She glanced up, her eyes panicked.
“No, you don’t have to do anything but if you feel it will help then tell me. I won’t judge you Fiona, I know you. I have known you for a long time and I know that you are a good person.”
“Ha, a good person,” again she shook her head. “Okay, I should have realised that I couldn’t handle it, the cultural differences are too great, it’s simply not the same as in the West. He naturally assumed I had asked him to meet me because I wanted to, well you know. I started to explain that I didn’t want to upset him and he was too young and I wasn’t attracted to him that way. At first he simply didn’t understand. Then I saw the change. It was as if another being had suddenly taken over his body. He was so very, very angry. I think that he was hurt but he also felt he had made himself look silly, lost face. That sort of thing is so very important to young men and especially in that society.
“He lunged for me, I was taken by surprise and not really afraid, not at first. Then I realised what was happening, what was at stake.”
Fiona turned now and looked into Sharon’s eyes, “You have no idea what it is like, the terror and the disbelief that it can be happening to you. Weird, it was so weird. He had very quickly got his hand over my mouth. I never had a chance to shout for help. He was so strong. He tore at my clothes and oh it was unspeakable. I can’t say it, the things that he did, I just can’t.” Dropping her head into her hands, great shuddering gasps thundered through her body.
Sharon had moved closer and now leaned over to place an arm around her friend’s shoulder but it was shrugged aside. Fiona was in a different place now, a place that she could only ever access on her own. Sharon stayed close but made no more physical contact, although her heart was breaking for the other woman’s pain.
After some minutes Fiona gathered herself for the final assault. “In the dark, at night and even in the day, when I’m not on guard it comes back and I have to relive it all but it’s blurry, a confusion of images and fear and pain. I know that I was terrified. He was so out of it, there was no way that I could reach him, and I couldn’t speak anyway, he kept his hand over my mouth the whole time, well his hand or his arm, across my face or over my mouth. I grabbed out at the trolley to get something, anything to hit him, to stop him. By now he had got his hands around my throat, I couldn’t breathe or call out, I was losing my senses. I truly thought he would strangle me. I was frantic. The next thing the blade was in my hand. It was small, you know, one of those little suture removal blades.” She glanced up to see her friend nod. She noted the tears and the concern and laid her fingers on the skin of Sharon’s arm. “I can stop now, if you don’t hear this, you aren’t a part of it. Do you want me to stop?” A short shake of the head was the only response. She removed her hand, took herself back into her own dreadful space.
“I grabbed the knife and I hit him in the face with it, I just wanted to stop it, stop him. Now there was blood. I hit him again, and again and again, he just carried on fighting, choking me. At some point the blade connected with his eye. He fell back then, he let go of me and took some steps back. There was blood everywhere and he was squealing. Not shouting or yelling but squealing, the knife was stuck in his eye. He fell, I thought he’d fainted. At first I just couldn’t even go near to him but I knew I would have to.” She looked up now, directly into her friend’s eyes. “He was dead, oh Sharon that moment, when I realised what I’d done, what had happened. I couldn
’t believe it. I was numb, I just stood looking at him, trying to think of a way to fix him, but of course there wasn’t any way, no way at all. Then someone tried the door handle and it sort of brought me back.
“I was terrified. If it had been here in the UK, I suppose I would just have called for help. I would have been in difficulties, I know that of course, but it would have been self-defence, maybe manslaughter, I don’t know quite. There though, it’s so different. Oh, God you have no idea. I would have been thrown in jail there is no doubt and the jails there, they are nothing like what we have here.” She grabbed out now at the other woman’s hand, Sharon winced at the panicked strength of the grip. “I couldn’t do it Sharon, I couldn’t go to jail. I would have just disappeared, it’s happened before. I just couldn’t face it. I had to get away.”
Her voice changed now, it had become flat, matter of fact. It was over, the dreadful secret was out and she was drained and something in her was deadened. Some nervous tension, a fear that she had carried for all these months was gone and it left a great hole. There was no relief because nothing had changed. The thing had still happened, the boy was still dead. She was still a murderer, the only difference was that now someone else knew about it.
There was a great sense of disappointment. In her darkest moments she had wished for someone to share it with, saw it as a way to move on but it just wasn’t like that. It wasn’t better, it hardly felt any different. Looking into her friend’s eyes she saw that although she cared and was distressed, she didn’t, couldn’t, understand.
Chapter 12
Neither of them spoke, the clock ticked, and in the world outside life drifted on. Here in the little room there was a hiatus, an empty space that no words or actions could fill. Fiona was emotionally drained and Sharon had no way to express her thoughts, the shock was still rippling through her body. These things, this sort of nightmare didn’t happen to ordinary people, did they? She looked at her friend and saw only Fiona, a thin, worn out Fiona to be sure, but not a murderer, a criminal. She did the only thing that she could think of for the moment and sat holding the other woman in a loose embrace.
The evening light had faded and she rose stiffly and turned on the table lamps. “Do you want a drink or anything Fi?”
“Yeah, why not. I’m sorry Sharon, I can see that I’ve shocked you. I should have kept it to myself, I feel so bad now.”
“Do you feel any better, you know, sharing and all that?”
“Honestly?”
Sharon nodded just once.
“No, I used to think that I would, a trouble shared and all that, but it hasn’t changed much has it, nothing really is any different.”
“Can I ask you some stuff though?”
“Of course, I guess I owe you that.”
“Well how come you came back? You know, what did you do? I still don’t understand about now, the rose at your house, what is that about?”
Fiona settled herself into the cushions. “Tell you what, let’s have a glass of something eh, while I tell you the rest.”
“Red wine okay? I have got some whisky if you’d rather.”
“No that’s fine, great. Are you sure you want to hear the rest? It’s not nice, not nice at all. You may think that you’ve been shocked now but…” she took a great shuddering breath and reached out for the wine. She visibly readied herself and then with her voice calm, almost devoid of inflection, she continued.
“I knew that I couldn’t let them find out, the authorities. I was shaking and terrified and shocked. You really can’t imagine, it’s not something that you can even begin to understand, I see that now. Anyway, I took off the torn stuff, my clothes, made myself respectable, huh that’s a laugh, respectable, what a stupid word to use. There were scrubs there in the treatment room, I put those on. I dragged him onto the trolley and covered him with the sheet. I cleaned up. I suppose I was lucky,” another ironic sound escaped her, not a laugh but a loud gasp full of sadness and misery. “Because it was what it was, you know, a treatment room all the stuff was there to clean up with and get rid of the knife and such. I stayed there with the door locked for ages, just me and the body and the misery. I was so very, very scared and horrified by what had happened but something that puzzled me then and still does is that I didn’t feel panicked. Not in the way that you would have thought. I was shaky, I think I was crying, but sort of outside myself looking in and I just did what I had to.
“The cleaning up, lifting him onto the trolley, I mean how did I manage that on my own? When things quietened down in the ward, after visiting, I think I had been in there with him for about three hours – can you imagine?” She shook her head as if trying to lose the memory and toss it away. “I pushed the trolley out and through the back corridors. Oh God.” She started to shake again. The red wine sploshed unheeded onto the carpet and it seemed as though at last she would be unable to continue. Sharon took the glass from her hand and perching on the coffee table she simply grasped both of her hands and waited in silence for the moment to pass.
Fiona raised her head and looking her friend directly in the eye she carried on, “I took him to the furnace building.”
She took up the glass, gulped some of the wine, her trembling fingers spilt it onto her jeans where it soaked in, a stain akin to blood on the dark fabric. “There’s only minimum staff at night, one guy. I waited until he went for his break.” She was staring ahead now, eyes focused on a place that was so dark that Sharon did not want to follow but found herself dragged along, a party to the horror of it all. “The incinerator ticks over all the time, you know, just like the ones here. The heat when I opened the door nearly knocked me over. I singed my face. It took ages for my eyebrows to grow back.” She laughed now a ghastly croak, “I told people I had an accident at a barbecue, oh God, a barbecue.” Suddenly she was unable to continue and her body was convulsed by a violent attack of nausea. She ran to the toilet where Sharon heard her emptying the contents of her stomach until in the end she was dry heaving and sobbing. When the vomiting stopped Sharon crept into the room and bent to where Fiona crouched quivering in the corner. Drying her streaming eyes she gently coaxed her upright.
“Come on love, come on. You have spent so long with these horrible images in your mind. Finish it now.” Fiona simply nodded and followed like a sick child back to her seat on the sofa.
“I had to drag the trolley right up to the furnace door. I started to push him off still wrapped in the sheet, but of course I hadn’t thought it through and it caught fire almost immediately. I had to jump back out of the way. I grabbed a great shovel and used that. I shovelled him into the flames. I could smell him burning, his hair and the clothes. His skin blistered and popped as I tried to push him further in – the shovel went into his flesh and stuck; I had to drag it back out, it squelched, an evil, hellish sound. I could see his face, his awful face. No, I can’t go on, don’t make me go on.”
Sharon wrapped her arms tightly around her friend and rocked her, soothing and gentling her, trying to comfort her as their tears flowed and their sobbing filled the night.
“I locked the door, the trolley was ruined – all the covering was burnt of course, I had to go and dump that. I pushed it into the sewerage tanks. You have no idea, I can’t even say it was like a nightmare because even my worst nightmares are nothing compared to that.
“I have to hold them back, those thoughts, all the time, if I let them in then I know I’ll go mad. All these months they have been there lurking but I shut them out, I don’t look at them, I can’t. The organisation and running of things over there, well it’s not always as strictly controlled as it is here and, well it just worked.” She shrugged again and lifting the glass drained the wine in one gulp, I guess in a way you could say I got away with it.
Sharon covered her mouth with shaking fingers. The horror of what she had heard left her sickened. She was quite simply struck dumb, unable to find words to fill the silence until in the end compassion loosened her tongue.
“Fiona, how have you kept this to yourself all this time? How have you carried on as if everything was normal and fine?”
“I have found that if you tell yourself often enough and strongly enough that something is or isn’t a certain way then you can convince yourself that it’s true. He attacked me, he raped me. I don’t say that he deserved what happened but I still truly, truly believe that he would have killed me. I did what I had to do. I am worn out with it, you know. I have tried to carry on as normal hoping that if I did that then it would all go away and when the years had passed then it would fade. It hasn’t, not at all. I am aware of it all the time, I know what I did and I can’t wipe it out. When I’m alone it tries to come back and I have to fight it and still it’s there like a great shadow. Sometimes it is all too much and I think I won’t be able to carry on. It’s so unfair, I’ve worked so very, very hard to get what I have and it’s all been spoiled, really right from the start.
“When I resigned they were a bit surprised but it’s a transient life. All I had to do was hold things together and it all just went through – coming back here and buying the house, getting a job back in the hospital with you. I thought I could just pretend it hadn’t happened but it hasn’t worked out that way and sometimes it’s all too much.
“The rose, well I just don’t know, it freaks me out, it really does, but I don’t understand it. I thought it was my imagination, that I was finally losing it but I can pick them up, the flowers, and then they crumple and disintegrate. They are real, they are there.”
Chapter 13
“Do you think it could be blackmail, Fiona? Maybe somebody does actually know about it and this is their way of getting to you?”
“I don’t see how to be honest. There’s no sign of anyone breaking in and surely if that was happening they would have done something by now. It’s been a while, it all happened three months before I left, wouldn’t they have done it there? And I’ve been back for a bit now and in the house for two weeks. Uh, when I think about working my three months’ notice I don’t know how I did it. I was terrified the whole time, every time I saw a policeman I thought I was going to faint. How can it be blackmail? I haven’t had any letters, no demands, no, I just don’t see it.”
YOU'RE DEAD: Three Gripping Murder Mystery Suspense Novels Page 16
