by Rees, Kevin
Eddie exploded, losing what little composure he had managed to contain. ‘Stop right there, lady. Firstly, you need to remember who you are talking to, a colleague, a fellow professional who holds the same rank in this department. You strut around here like some Queen fucking bee! Secondly, not once have you asked if Kat is still alive, or how’s she doing. And you do not question my professional standards of work. Am I getting through to you, Sister Flint?’
The woman sat down heavily in the chair, once more injecting a humourless fart into his tirade. Her mouth opened and closed like a suffocating fish. Before she could say anything, Eddie picked up his rucksack and left the office.
He was angry as he waited for the lift from Somerset Ward to descend from nine floors up. He also needed a drink to take the edge off. It crossed his mind to leave before the lift got to him and buy some vodka. Then Kat’s face surfaced. ‘You prick.’ Eddie said it loudly enough to attract the attention of a passing porter who turned around and glared at him. He waved an apology as the lift doors opened.
Strangely, the incident with Kat served as its own brand of therapy. When he was grappling with the kid, he felt an adrenalin rush that actually meant something. It was the same rush he had when he went forward with the SAS into hostile zones in Iraq. The men trusted him with their lives and he never once let them down. They were good, good men and true to each other. Eddie questioned his decision to leave most days and came to the same conclusion: the incident in Umm Qasr.
Ros Kant was sorting out the medicine trolley when the lift-doors opened. She glanced up and saw Eddie emerge. They nodded to each other, and she motioned her head towards a door with the number sixteen on it. He mouthed thank you, and paused before entering, as if a little unsure as to what he would find. Ros tried hard not to look at him, but her eyes strayed. He was looking awful, even without the excuse of coming off a tough nightshift that put his girl... Ros couldn’t finish the word, and the end died quickly in her thoughts. It wasn’t that long ago when she had been a notch on Eddie’s bed. She hadn’t kidded herself back then, knowing his reputation, and accepting she was one in a long line of notches carved on his hard, wooden heart. She never figured out why he was attracted to her or how they got together. Perhaps it was their shared common pastime of drinking heavily to forget. She drank to forget the miscarriages, her husband’s quick fists and a messy divorce. He drank because he had to keep the monster inside him caged behind thick bars. He would never talk about it, and she worried he might one day end up a headline on a red top.
Eddie was someone she needed but it soon became obvious he grew tired quickly of the same old routine. Ros accepted she was cold in bed, never the instigator, and never going that little bit further to please him, knowing he liked his girls to act like little whores. One good thing about Eddie, he never once forced her — not like her ex. But, she could tell it just became sex to him; really dull sex with no emotion attached to it. When they were both drunk he would accuse her of being frigid, she retorted by accusing him of being an insensitive bastard knowing the abuse she had survived. Her husband had been right when he threatened she wouldn’t enjoy another man. He made good on that promise by living in her head and destroying her future.
She glanced up at the door again, but Eddie had gone inside. As Ros turned over the first chart, a drop of water fell onto one of the little medicine boxes. She quickly wiped away a second one from her eyes with the back of her hand and pushed the trolley down the corridor away from room sixteen.
She looked so pale and vulnerable lying in the bed, almost childlike. Her leg was immobilised in a frame and swathed in layers of bandage. Her hair had stayed in exactly the same place where dried blood caked parts of it. Eddie saw her lips were dry and beginning to crack, and streaks from her mascara pooled into dark circles around her eyes and down the sides of her head, making it look as if she had glasses on. Eddie looked for something to clean her face with, finding a box with a few tissues left inside. He took them all and poured tepid water over them. Eddie squeezed the wet tissues and gently began stroking her face.
‘Kat... Kat, it’s Eddie.’ He spoke softly, hoping she would open her eyes and give him that wonderful wide smile he had woken up to for the last few weeks. ‘Hey, I’ve just finished my shift to come and see you and you can’t even raise an eyelid.’
Why was it so difficult to have a natural conversation with unconscious people, Eddie considered? He wanted to shout at her to wake up and tell him she was still in there. Kat’s hand was above the blanket attached by a tube to a bag of saline. He reached out, took the last digit of each finger and held them. If this was all Kat had to give for now, that was fine — he would wait for her to get better.
‘Doctor, there’s a call for you,’ Kathy Houghton said, handing the phone over.
He cursed at the ceiling and snatched the receiver. ‘Dr Jones here, who am I speaking to?’ Phil demanded. The voice was barely audible with the hisses on the line. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get that. Are you on a mobile? Walk around to get a better signal... I still can’t hear you.’
‘You have Father, yes?’ The voice crackled.
‘Do I have what? Look, speak with the day staff, they may be able to help you.’ He thrust the phone at a bewildered staff nurse who walked into the office.
‘Who was that?’ Kathy asked.
‘Some prat asking stupid questions at the wrong time of the morning. Let’s get out of here.’ The doctor held the door open for Kathy.
‘Could have been a relative,’ she said, pulling her coat tighter as the contrast from the heat of the hospital changed to a cold, crisp morning.
Phil Jones shrugged and dismissed the call. He was too tired. But there had been something strange in the voice. The few words were mostly broken, but they seemed to echo in his head. You have Father, yes?
‘Hey, watch where you’re going, Doc!’ Kathy grabbed his arm before he walked absently into the road. ‘You okay?’
He nodded, paying more attention to the traffic. Steady on, Philip. It was a crank — a nutter on the phone. He shook his head, trying to clear it. But the whispered voice stayed, rattling around like a stone in a can. You have Father, yes?
Kathy waved him goodbye at Jepsom Avenue. There was a pause when she took a slow half-pace and turned to look at him through the rush hour traffic. The invitation was stuck on the roof of her mouth, and she was afraid he would reject her again, or worse, think she was a slut for throwing herself at him.
She turned to walk home. Something primal in her brain became aware someone was following her. Quiet, determined footsteps were approaching from behind. She instinctively reached for her pen, something Eddie had taught her as a self-defence technique. He reckoned the simple, metal tipped pen was lethal in the right hands. She had laughed at the absurdity of a Bic pen being lethal until he demonstrated its potential. She screamed, more in shock than pain when he applied it to several sensitive points. Eddie went to a very different place when he acted out the attack. He could be scary at times — not the laid-back fool he pretended to be.
Kathy tensed as the footsteps broke into a run. She could hear — phap, phap, phap — as if the assailant was wearing flip-flops. Kathy turned quickly, pivoting on the ball of her foot to face the attacker, her pen held closely into her body, ready to strike out. But there was no one, just an empty street with buses and cars passing at the end of the avenue. Those few seconds of confusion were enough for her killer.
The only sensation Kathy felt was a whisper of wind touching her neck. The cut was so quick she was still turning her head; unaware the bone, muscle and tendons keeping it attached to her body had been severed. There was no pain, just a sense of confusion, and a peculiar feeling of falling. Kathy watched helplessly as the grey tarmac came up to meet her face. She knew her reflexes were trying to shut her eyes and prepare for the impact, but nothing seemed to be working. Her nose hit first. Kathy expected intense agony, but there was nothing. Her right eye rolled over broke
n glass, which cut neatly across the soft orb, bringing immediate darkness to that side of her head. When she came to a stop her left eye was blurry and not focussing clearly. Kathy’s world had also become soundless, except for a soft whoosh, as if a seashell was being pressed onto to her ear. She tried to take a breath in, only to find the precious air that had been her constant companion since birth had left her. Kathy’s blurred vision cleared for a moment as her blood-starved brain took in the horrifying scene. She saw her body was still standing upright and, where her head should have been, blood ran like a river over the top of her throat. There was also something else — another head clamped to the stump of her neck, preventing the six-foot geyser of blood that would have tagged her death like graffiti on a wall. She tried to scream. The thing on her neck glared down at her, its chin dripping with her blood. It bit into her neck, never taking its eyes off hers and began chewing the flesh. Mercifully, the last drop of blood and electrical impulse keeping Kathy Houghton conscious seeped away.
The thing let the woman’s body fall and turned to the head lying lifeless on the pavement. It had still not satisfied its insatiable hunger. It uncurled one of its fingers. The long fingernail, tapered and sharp, reached out and delicately removed Kathy’s undamaged eyeball that stared blindly out from her head. The skewered eye, with its deep brown iris, was dulled by death. The thing let out a shrill laugh that chilled the air even more, before it put the eye into its mouth. It chewed slowly, savouring the silky outer membrane, before its sharp teeth bit down and sliced through to the jelly inside. Soon there would be plenty of eyes for it to feed on. The noise of a truck reversing into the street made it freeze for a second before it launched itself easily over a high wall and away from the first feed of the day. Before tomorrow it would feed three more times, as would his brothers and sisters. There were after all, plenty of cattle to choose from.
4
It was one of those deep inward sighs that no one could mistake for pleasure, which Ros Kant let out in a slow, resigned stream as she read her student’s latest effort. It was a simple essay on the hygiene requirements of an unconscious patient. A thousand well-thought-out words were all she asked for. In return, the essay was lost in gibberish. The quality of the phrases and spelling was utter garbage. Some words were unintelligible and out of context, leaving the tone indifferent towards the bed-ridden patient whose fate would one day lie in this girl’s hands. Ros shook her head despairingly and absently sipped her tea, ignoring the warm liquid on her tongue as she re-read the whole thing again to make sure this wasn’t a joke on her.
It wasn’t just the essay, seeing Eddie going into the slut’s room had hurt more than she had expected. He was someone who would be tattooed onto her soul no matter how hard she tried scrubbing him off. She resented being stuck in some kind of Eddie groove, like a gramophone needle jumping in an out of one deep rut and ending up playing the same thing over and over.
She stirred her tea with a pen and gazed blindly at the essay in her hand. The noise of the lift doors opening did nothing to break into her trance given the ward had quietly slipped away as her past played out in one long, slow motion car crash. The clatter of wheels bouncing down the corridor and a collision with a chair were unwelcome reality checks, plunging Ros back into the mundane. She got up and smoothed down her uniform, aware of the arousal her mind had started. Eddie was a hard man to forget.
‘Hello, Sister. I have this gentleman for you. Here are his notes. I understand he came into casualty with no property,’ Jahed Khan announced. It was his first nightshift as a porter, which seemed to have already rolled into the morning. ‘I was asked to bring him straight up by Sister Flint. I understand he is called Mr John Doe.’ He shuffled nervously, looking at the woman who said little, but stared at him with an infuriated expression that was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable. Jahed cleared his throat and pushed the notes into her hands.
‘Sister Flint told you to bring me a patient she didn’t have the courtesy to inform me of. I have a good mind to turn you around and send you back to casualty with Mr Doe and a message that would no doubt upset Sister Flint,’ Ros snarled. The notes shook in her hands at the same tempo as the vein throbbing in her neck.
‘I was only asked to deliver this gentleman to you, Sister. It’s my first nightshift and I am learning how to do my job. You and Sister Flint are my superiors. In fact, it feels like everyone is my superior, so please, Sister, I am at your mercy,’ Jahed said, holding his hands up as if in prayer.
‘All right, put him in that side room, number twenty-four, I’ll talk with Sister Flint.’ Ros pointed down the corridor. ‘Stay with him until I send staff down to admit him.’ She looked at the man in the chair. Outwardly he appeared old, but there seemed to be something like an aura burning on the outer edge of his body. Ros had seen it before when treating several famous rock and film stars for their various addictions in a private clinic. They exuded the same aura. It shone like a beacon separating them out as special from the mortals around them. But dig a little under the surface, and you would find a lonely child buried deep under a rock fall of neuroses and abuse. This man was more than that. He had a different story. He had seen things, done things, maybe terrible things, in the past. In those few moments Ros felt alive and at the same time scared by John Doe. He stared up at her impassively at first then slowly covered her body with his eyes, undressing her.
‘Sister, are you okay?’ Jahed asked.
Ros tried to break away from the old man’s strange, hypnotic hold. ‘Yes, thank you, I’m quite all right,’ she answered flatly.
The porter wheeled the old man to his room. Ros motioned for two of her staff to follow and start admitting him. As she turned back to her desk a tremble began to flutter in her stomach like a thousand butterflies flapping their wings all at once, causing her to gasp loudly. The air felt alive as if it had a static charge that danced over her body. Then a dizziness made her grab desperately for the desk as the corridor rose and fell like a boat ploughing through high waves. The old man’s dark eyes floated in front of her face, sending nerve endings pulsing into an eruption of pleasure that quaked along her entire body. Ros let go and collapsed into a chair, wrapping her arms tightly around her stomach. The orgasm went on for longer than she had ever experienced. Waves of morphine-like pleasure brought her to a point of almost losing consciousness. She imagined Eddie thrusting hard inside her, his breath shared with hers, their sweat mingling. Then — as abruptly as it started — the orgasm stopped. Ros opened one eye slowly, expecting to see faces staring back at her. She hurriedly smoothed down her uniform, which had ridden up her thighs. The orgasm left her drained with an overwhelming feeling of nausea replacing the intense pleasure. She swallowed hard as a bitter taste crawled up the back of her throat. Ros wanted to be sick and walked as fast as she could without attracting attention to the toilet. As she went through the door, Ros was aware of the stickiness between her legs, but it was the dark, almost purple eyes of Mr John Doe that threatened to overwhelm her again.
It took Ros several minutes before she could compose herself and walk without swaying to the coffee lounge. The only person inside the room was her student sitting with her legs curled underneath her ample backside, reading a trashy celebrity magazine; the kind Ros passionately disapproved of. The girl glanced up at her, smiled briefly, and then returned to the latest gossip. Ros bit down on her tongue to stop herself from walking over to the lazy bitch and hoisting her out of the chair by her hair. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt abject frustration — even hatred — for this girl. The little cow was too stupid and idle to be a nurse. She had a barbarous attitude, which Ros found unattractive in anyone, but it was especially unattractive in her. Too good to do the work to soil her manicured nails with their gleaming white tips and fat, polished bodies.
Ros forced a smile on her face. ‘Casey, an interesting case is being admitted in room twenty-four. It’s a gentleman with no identity. We call them John Doe until we k
now who they are.’ Ros paused aware the magazine had yet to be lowered. ‘It’s very rare we get a John Doe, so I’m making him your special project for the rest of the time you have with us.’
‘Like, ah... is he gonna be smelly? Cos, Sister, I can’t do smelly — it makes me wanna pa...uke.’ The girl put on her most disgusted face and held up a perfectly manicured hand as if warding off Ros’s impudence of asking her to do something.
Ros could feel her smile slipping. ‘Casey, if you want to be a nurse then you will come across gross, unpleasant things. Wait until you do a surgical placement or have to change a colostomy bag. Things are not pretty in this job and you need to build up resilience to it. So get yourself to room twenty-four and help out.’
‘Like, I’m only supposed to observe, right? My tutors told me only to watch fings, ya know what I mean?’ the girl said sullenly.
‘Then go and watch, but Casey, you’ll only learn if you get involved. In my day we worked with the staff. We did everything they did. That’s how I learned.’
‘Yeah, in them days gone by, uh,’ Casey said, with undisguised sarcasm. ‘Okay, Sister Kant, I’ll go.’
She sauntered past Ros and let the door swing back loudly in its frame. Ros could sense the utter resentment her student had for her, which was equally reciprocated.
Casey walked down the corridor with her arms folded and a look of complete disgust on her face. The smell was vile, and the clinically saturated air barely disguised the odour of human faeces. She ignored shouts of ‘Nurse!’ with ears that carried not even the smallest note of empathy for the people lying in the beds. Casey had already developed a strong detachment towards the sick in the brief time she had been a student. Whatever made her life easier was a priority, and dealing with old people who stank wasn’t top of that list. She guessed the man in twenty-four would be no different.
