by John King
When he had started at the hospital his first task had been to learn its layout off by heart. He studied the plans for several days before setting out to match the various wards, theatres, laboratories and storerooms to these drawings. There was no point in rushing this work. He had to know every corridor, cupboard and WC. It was a period of discovery and reflection that lasted for the first month. It was also a time to gently introduce himself to his fellow workers.
He fully understood the potential for problems. Those who spent their lives caring for the sick did not readily accept an outsider whom they suspected of promoting spending cuts. This was not his role and he had patiently explained that the nature of his work was to ensure things ran more smoothly. He made the effort of introducing himself as an individual rather than as a job tide. The personal touch made his work so much easier. At the end of this month he felt he knew the hospital and had been accepted by his colleagues. He was not arrogant enough to believe he could ever stop learning though, and was forever discovering new corners. Short cuts. Links. But he was thorough in his work.
The sounds of the hospital became familiar. The building was new compared to his last place of work, so the atmosphere differed. The floors were quieter and he generally moved in near silence. Any echo was softer than in older hospitals built in an age of acceptance and military-like regimentation. Many sounds were the same. The human element. The sound of suffering. But this hospital had been designed for the modern age, some twenty years ago. Ease of access had been a major consideration for the architects. A great deal of money had been spent in the search for efficiency.
From the outside the hospital was bland, some would say depressing, and obviously did not stand comparison with the great brick constructions of a hundred years before in terms of architectural design. Jeffreys preferred the grand entrances of the older establishments but understood the need to concentrate on practicalities. Money was more important than ever. Health care had evolved. Huge wards with long rows of beds did not exist here. Privacy and a sense of individuality had been attempted, beds clustered in small groups. The atmosphere was more personal and this made his job easier.
Now he was fully accepted. One of the gang, so to speak. He quite obviously did not pose a threat and was on particularly good terms with the night nurses. They shared a bond. He was part of the furniture and knew the routine. The rounds, habits, problems that arose. He knew what time Nurse Hopkins had her second cup of coffee, even the fact that she took milk and three sugars. A large woman in her forties, she was buxom and generous. He himself had made her coffee on a couple of occasions. This she had found charming. He also knew that Nurse McKenna lacked such a routine. If he was in a rush he could pass without disturbing her, such was her love of cheap romantic fiction. She should not really be reading while on duty, but the patients were asleep and it made no real difference. They joked about this love of romance. Nurse Daliwal had been harder to get to know. Perhaps due to a difference in culture. She was more reticent, but he had eventually won her over.
The alarm on his computer sounded. The sweet chimes of Mozart. He had achieved a lot in the last hour. He shut down and stood up, turned off the light and left his office. His legs were stiff and his back ached. His head suddenly heavy. A brisk walk would cure this. The corridors were stark and empty. The pressure eased a little. Muscles stretched and his mind began to clear. He was free to walk for miles if he so wished. There was a reassuring smell of disinfectant, a vital weapon in the continuing war against infection. But it was a never-ending task. As soon as one disease was cured, another erupted. During the day the voices of the sick were constant. The necessities of life demanded attention. Food was consumed and expelled, bodies washed and wounds tended, beds changed and sheets washed, symptoms considered and diagnoses given. Medication administered. There were so many things to consider. His work was pressurised, there was no question about that, yet he coped. The long list of admissions he had been working on began to fade. Everyone deserved a break.
He was certainly no paper shuffler. No desk-tied theorist. A glorified time-and-motions expert pontificating from afar. There were no ivory towers for Mr Jeffreys. Oh no. That was the easy option, both unacceptable and dull. The human touch was what made his work so enjoyable. He could flex his administrative muscle if need be, but did not. He was more than satisfied with the way things were going. Progress was being made. Everyone within the hospital was working for a common cause and even unskilled workers deserved to be heard. The porters, cleaners, volunteers. Consensus was all-important. Goodwill half the battle. He had the power to assist in their efforts but sought no special treatment. His office was small yet adequate. Just as long as he had privacy. The central location allowed easy access to every area of the hospital. He was hands-on. The problem with too many men in positions of power was that they were complacent and out of touch. Their position, salary and prestige was enough. Their decisions became tainted. He himself was already a wealthy man and the salary he received made no difference to his life. Position and prestige were easily obtained. Only fools craved a job title. Embraced arrogance. His work was a vocation.
Mr Jeffreys walked towards the west side of the hospital, turned left before he reached Pathology and began the return leg of a loop that generally took him thirteen minutes to complete. His circulation was restored now, mind stilled. He veered right before reaching the first of the children’s wards and found himself facing a barefoot man dressed in striped pyjamas. They stood staring at each other for several seconds. The face of the man was drawn tight over the skull while the pyjamas reminded Jeffreys of a concentration-camp inmate. The eyes seemed too large for the sockets, the skull clearly visible under taut flesh. Bone pressed through bloodless skin devoid of life. The poor man was aged anywhere between forty and sixty years old. He did not know what to say to this walking skeleton, felt sick just looking at him. The man was grotesque, his odour foul, yet it was the eyes that unnerved Jeffreys the most. There was an unnatural glint that made a mockery of his weak and rotting body. A smirk covered the face.
—Are you all right? Jeffreys finally asked. You look as though you are lost.
The skeleton did not reply. The eyes scanned Jeffreys from head to toe. It was a long, malicious inspection.
—God sees everything that happens in here, the man said at last. He’s everywhere, watching and waiting.
The voice was vindictive and Mr Jeffreys was chilled by its intensity. A skeletal hand shot out and gripped his arm. The man was strong and he was strangely scared. He could easily resist this patient if need be, but detested violence. The man was obviously confused, medication highlighting an evil side to his nature.
—Don’t think you can fool me. I see everything that happens in this place. God gave me eyes. I know what you’re up to, creeping around at night spying on women, stealing their panties and sniffing them in the bogs. You dirty cunt. I bet you wank in them as well, or do you go all the way and molest the women? Chop them up and flush them down the toilet? What’s your game? Why do you do it?
Mr Jeffreys was embarrassed. His legs felt weak and he didn’t know what to do. The man was senile, obviously demented and dredging the basest horrors from the depths of a decaying mind. The nurse on his ward must have let him slip away. This was unacceptable. He wondered which ward the man was on and cleared his throat to speak, aware of the horrendous glint in the eyes. Jeffreys did not want to cause a commotion. He was a gentle man and this patient obviously was not.
—Come on now. You are confused. What ward are you on?
—Ooooh, the man minced. La-di-da. But I can see through you. The fancy accent doesn’t impress me. God treats everyone equal. I’m His worker and I’ve got your number. You’re ripping the guts out of poor working girls and hanging their insides all over the room. You’ve got the surgeon’s skill and think you can use it how you want, eating livers and drinking blood. Well, you can’t, you fucking wanker. I’ll fucking stop you ripping. Even whores h
ave families. You’re Lucifer in disguise.
Mr Jeffreys brushed the man’s hand away. He felt nothing but disgust now. To be compared to a murderer. A fiend who inflicted pain when he had dedicated his life to its relief. His own father had been a surgeon. This was the basest behaviour imaginable. He saw a nurse at the end of the corridor, behind the skeleton. This man was more monster than innocent victim, the putrid smell of his body and clothing all-embracing, swamping the senses.
—Andrew!
Mr Jeffreys saw that it was Nurse McKenna. The man turned at her shout and watched as she walked towards them. Her head bowed. No doubt embarrassed for allowing the patient to wander off. Not to mention the fact that Jeffreys knew all about the romantic fiction.
—Wait there, Andrew.
Mr Jeffreys wished she would hurry. The corridor was very long and she seemed to be hardly moving. Yet her footsteps were getting louder. She could not arrive quickly enough despite the fact that he felt sorrow for this man, who had lost his dignity and been reduced to a blubbering shell. It was a terrible way to end one’s life, walking about in dazed confusion. It was odd how those with mental problems so often turned to religious symbolism. This was obviously conditioned, whether consciously or subconsciously, in a church, school assembly or perhaps these days through television. But even so. It was amazing that anyone took this imagery seriously in the modern age. Lucifer was an amusing enough creation, but myth nonetheless. Did these people not understand that it was a story? Jeffreys was a rational man and had no time for superstition. He dealt in hard facts and clear figures.
—Come on, love, Nurse McKenna said, when she reached them. It’s time to get back to bed.
She was careful to avoid looking Mr Jeffreys in the eye.
—He snuck out while I was answering a call.
Mr Jeffreys smiled. Nodded. Showed that it was okay. He understood that romantic fiction was not to blame. She was doing her best in difficult circumstances. A little lax perhaps but her heart was in the right place. Inefficiency was nothing more than a human frailty.
—It’s quite all right.
—The drugs confuse him, but he’s wonderful really, aren’t you, Andrew?
Mr Jeffreys smiled and prepared to leave. It had been an unfortunate encounter. The smell of the man seemed to be getting worse.
—They want me dead, don’t they? I know they want me dead.
—We’re here to help you, Nurse McKenna said. We only want to help you. Come on, let’s get back to the ward. I can’t spend all my time chasing you up and down the corridors. What about the other patients?
The skeleton turned and stared at the wall. Jeffreys marvelled at the patience of the nurse. She was humouring him as if he were a child.
—Do you think me or any of the other nurses want to hurt you? Do you?
—No. But someone does. The bad people don’t like me because I can see what they’re doing. They want to cut me up into tiny pieces. They hate me.
Nurse McKenna turned to Mr Jeffreys.
—He’ll settle down when I get him back to bed. He’s confused. A couple of days and he’ll be back to normal.
Mr Jeffreys wondered what exactly normal was in this case. The man was obviously in a bad way. He would check his details later, but right now wanted to move on. Nausea was creeping up. He kept smiling, drawn now to the skeleton’s bare feet. The nails were either broken or in-grown. What was left of the skin was covered in dirt. Below that would be all sorts of abrasions and growths. The bones were even more obvious in the man’s feet than in his face. The smell was disgusting. Swelling over the odour of his breath. Clothes. Body.
—Hurry up, Nurse McKenna said to the skeleton. You’re trouble, you are. Trying to get me told off.
She smiled at Mr Jeffreys. A good worker. A basic type but with enough sensitivity to humour a smelly, senile old man who, if he had been living in a more natural environment, or as little as twenty years before, would be in his grave instead of on a ward. Scientists had worked hard to prolong life, but, sad to say, too often at the cost of dignity. This nurse was willing to lie and tell her patient that everything was all right when it very obviously was not. She was a carer easing the suffering of a dead man. A skeleton. Hers was a tough job and Jeffreys was full of admiration.
—I’m hungry, nurse.
She tutted and shook her head. A little boy.
—You’ll have to wait for breakfast, like everyone else.
The man suddenly turned towards Mr Jeffreys, pushing his face forward.
—You cold-blooded murdering bastard. They’ll catch you and hang you. I hope you rot in hell.
A hell inhabited by a horned devil and full of raging fires no doubt. Red lizards with forked tails. Imps and sodomites. He was shocked by the outburst, even a little hurt. It was certainly not nice being abused in front of Nurse McKenna. But he remained professional. The man was sick. His sympathy returned.
—I’m sorry. He doesn’t mean it. It’s the drugs.
He watched the skeleton walk along the corridor with the nurse scolding him. She was slightly taller, wider, though not fat. Even when they disappeared from his sight the smell of the man lingered. Organs were decaying inside the body and the brain had turned rotten. It was so sad. He considered this encounter for several minutes.
Finally Mr Jeffreys continued on his way. He now realised that the fear he had felt was merely shock at the depths to which a human being could sink. He had seen this sort of disorientation many times before of course, but had never been abused in such a way. He laughed. He was not as tough as he liked to think. Working in a hospital steeled a man to the harsh realities of life, yet this incident had reminded him of his own vulnerability. There was always a surprise around the corner.
He walked fast and was soon back at his office. He locked the door and put the kettle on. He made himself a cup of tea and settled down to work, wondering for a short moment whether certain men did in fact steal women’s underclothes in order to masturbate. Did they sniff the material? As a romantic he hoped that it was just the ravings of a lunatic. It seemed highly unlikely but you could never tell in a town such as this. It was not the most cultured place in the world and perhaps such perversion was rife. He did not want to think about such things, and immersed himself once more in his work.
Ruby didn’t stir when Paula gave the girls their breakfast, nagging at them to hurry up, get dressed, brush their teeth, tie their laces, walking them round the corner to school. Ruby didn’t move till the blanket was pulled off her face and the sun shocked her eyes, a couple of seconds later the rich smell of coffee pounding her nose, opening up to see Paula kneeling by the couch holding out a mug with this mad green dragon spitting bright red flames at her, steam off the coffee blowing forward as Paula moved the mug, smoke off the fire, and the thing was, this griffin was three-dimensional and hologram-looking, like it was alive or something, a shock that lasted two seconds and then was gone.
She sat up quickly when she saw the hurt on Paula’s face, heat burning her hand, the handle broken so she was holding the mug around the middle. You had to have tough skin, Ruby’s mum had been like that, could handle anything, never seemed to feel the heat, and Ruby was reaching out and taking the coffee before it dropped on the carpet, another colour adding to the food and mud, dirty shoes the girls forgot to take off when they came in, it didn’t matter how many times they were told, Ruby nearly spilling this rich-looking tar on the sofa, not ready for the heat either, leaning forward and putting the mug on the floor, blood rushing into her head as she went, wincing when she felt the stiffness in her neck. It was the angle she’d been sleeping on the couch, snapping her fingers till they cooled down.
As the blood flowed one way she imagined antifreeze in her spine racing the other, right down her back to where wood pressed out of the couch. She’d been moving all night long, tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable. The sofa had seen better days, but it was Paula’s mum who’d given it to her and she w
as lucky having her mum around, Irene did a lot for her children.
—You look like I feel, Paula said, moving away and sitting on the edge of a chair opposite. Out of it.
—I am, Ruby smiled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. My head’s killing me and I feel like my blood needs a wash.
—Can you do that then, have your blood washed? Paula asked, laughing.
—Not for a hangover. That coffee smells strong.
—It is, I got it special offer as well, you should smell it when you grind the beans down. You know what, don’t you, I only went and forgot those tins I got last night. I left them in Des’s car.
—He’ll bring them round when he sees them.
—It was a good night, wasn’t it, specially walking in like that, straight to the head of the queue, special guests of the bouncers. Don’t think everyone else waiting was too pleased.
—It wasn’t fair, was it. I never thought about it at the time.
—So what, I don’t mind a bit of preferential treatment. Do you remember that time we went out with Jerry’s cousin Gary? When he took us over to The Honey Pot as his guests, on my birthday?
Ruby remembered all right. Gary was a crook with a stake in an out-of-town nightclub, a big flashy effort near the reservoir. It was plush inside, and even the bouncers seemed better dressed somehow, but there was a nasty edge to the place and the music was shit, the worst sort of jazz-funk and shitty disco. They’d been treated like royalty by Gary, and while it was a novelty Ruby felt funny sitting on a platform with free drinks coming over all night with a waitress, everything on the house, a ready supply of drugs, if they wanted it, and they weren’t the sort of women to look a gift-horse in the mouth, her, Paula and Dawn from work done in by the end of the night, though fair play to Gary he made sure they got home, even when Dawn, worse than the others and only half joking, offered to give him a blow job as thanks for the night. He just laughed and patted her on the head and said not to worry about all that, as a respectable businessman he had easy access to all the oral sex he required thanks very much, and that was one of the things that stood out about Gary, his manners, and he made an effort to use new words he found in the dictionary, a self-educated spiv with diamonds in his collar, another sort of dress sense she didn’t have a clue about.
