Arsenic for the Soul

by Nathan Wilson

  Vivian watched as a nurse yanked out a tray with scalpels, rubber spreaders, and tissue forceps. There was no time to prepare the patient’s skin or apply surgical drapes.

  Crenshaw’s scalpel cleanly sliced through the muscle above the fifth rib. Vivian was struck by the brutality of the operation as the flesh easily parted. She almost pulled her hand away as the skin turned inside out to viscera. She felt detached, almost not physically there in the room with the dying young man. She was just a pair of hands trying desperately to massage his heart. The opening in the chest widened as a nurse’s scissors snapped through fat and muscle.

  “That’s the wrong way, turn it around!” Crenshaw snapped as a nurse applied the rib spreaders, a garish-looking device composed of two retractable blades. “Open it all the way up, let’s go!”

  Crenshaw grasped the Gigli saw and began to cut through the sternum. The buzzing instrument filled the air with bone dust. When the sternum split, Vivian saw the massive hemothorax surrounding the lungs.

  She gaped in wonder at the huge mass floating in his rib cage. They inserted the chest tube and a sucking noise erupted inside.

  The blood draining through the chest tube shot out in bright scarlet. The sight struck Vivian as appalling, obscene even—like liquidated viscera. It didn’t resemble the blood that should be circulating through Dominik’s veins.

  “It’s arterial bleeding!”

  “Soak up the blood!” Suddenly a sterile towel was thrust into Vivian’s hands. On impulse, she tried to stem the tide of red burbling forth. The warmth washed over her hands, sending a jolt through her flesh. It was the most horrifying kind of warmth because it contained the very life and essence of another human being. She felt the vitality carried in the blood like tiny, electric ripples.

  By this point, the hysteria in the trauma bay reached its breaking point. Nurses were shouting, the cardiac monitor was screaming, and crash cart supplies littered the floor. Worst of all, blood was everywhere.

  “Where is all the goddamn blood coming from?!”

  “I think I see it!” Crenshaw said, maneuvering the chest tube. Silence fell over him. “Fuck! It’s the aorta!”

  Vivian could only imagine the damage caused by a blade nicking the aorta. Time would be of the essence to stabilize Dominik and prevent hemorrhagic shock from setting in.

  Still, Vivian didn’t know how Crenshaw would let her get close enough to assist. Worse, she didn’t even know how to save the man dying before her eyes.

  “Quick, give me the pericardial pledgets!” Crenshaw barked.

  Vivian raced to the crash cart and frantically sorted through the instruments, trying to look like she knew what she was searching for. Suturing needles and clamps spilled through her fingers but, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what pericardial pledgets looked like.

  “BP is seventy over sixty!”

  Crenshaw’s voice thundered across the trauma bay.

  “Pericardial pledgets now!”

  “Here!” Vivian held out what she assumed were the pledgets, and to her surprise, Crenshaw accepted them.

  With a grunt, he quickly sutured the damage in Dominik’s aorta.

  “He’s waking up!” Sure enough, Dominik was stirring from his propofol-induced trance. “Who administered the anesthesia? There was nowhere near enough—”

  Crenshaw’s eyes widened when he saw the stitches tear in the aorta. Distended veins throbbed on Dominik’s neck and his breath rushed out in a piercing scream.

  Scarlet blood arced across the ceiling in arterial spray. Vivian screamed as it struck her in the face like a wet punch. Blinded by the crimson deluge, she tried pitifully to apply a towel to the source. She couldn’t see Dominik under the sea of blood but she felt him flailing with deranged motion. She shrieked as the cardiac monitor pealed.

  Vivian only felt sickening warmth where he once lay. She was drowning in its oily grasp as it drew her deeper in.

  Dominik’s jaw slackened and his eyes became glass-like as death reaped its prize. Vivian gazed at the pool of crimson gathered on the floor and choked back her vomit.

  “He’s gone,” Crenshaw said, staring at the half-dissected corpse. He looked up at the sound of gagging and saw Vivian trying to choke back her sickness. If looks could kill, she would have succumbed a thousand times to his disgust.

  Vivian didn’t remember leaving the trauma bay. Suddenly, she was standing in the bathroom, staring at her ashen face in the mirror. Dried blood mottled her hair and added a rosy complexion to her face. She looked down at her hands crusted in Dominik’s blood. It was a familiar sensation, given her notorious start to her career as the Red Widow. How many times had she drawn blood at the request of perverse clients?

  After all, she was so accustomed to inflicting pain for payment. Vivian hoped she would change that course during her tenure at the hospital. Even now, her efforts seemed to result in more harm than healing.

  She crumpled to the bathroom floor as defeat pressed down on her chest.

  “No…” she said, her voice cold with defiance. “I’m helping people. I was doing the best I could back there. I’m not the Red Widow anymore.”

  She refused to label herself a bad person anymore. She shed any negative labels that once clung to her when she crawled out of the Prague alleys and reunited with her family. That part of her past held no sway over her life.

  She was a good person with a caring heart, not the lost and bitter youth she was a year ago.

  Furiously wiping her eyes, she took one last look in the mirror. She thrust her head in the sink and scrubbed the blood out of her raven hair. She didn’t give a damn that her blurred eyeliner betrayed her tears. She launched across the bathroom at a brisk pace and shoved through the door.

  She immediately collided with someone standing outside. Still keeping her eyes fixed to the floor, she muttered a half-hearted “sorry” and sped away. She put the exit in her sights and marched ahead at full speed.

  She just wanted to rush home and collapse on her bed. Nothing sounded sweeter than shutting her eyes and drowning in sleep, where death and pain couldn’t haunt her.

  Vivian couldn’t take another second of being in the hospital today—perhaps not for the rest of the week.

  As the exit loomed over her, she heard her name being called several times.

  Leave me the fuck alone. She turned around to confront whoever she accidentally ran into.

  She was stunned by a pair of ice blue eyes.

  “Milo!” The young man disarmed her with a smile, which unsettled her more than a little. No man had ever slipped through her defenses so easily. She felt as transparent as a puddle of water before him. She swallowed several times and tried to force the words out of her throat, but only silence followed.

  “Vivian! What’s the matter?”

  Dominik’s corpse loomed in her mind, that ghostly vision of his life cut short.

  “I…I couldn’t do anything to save him,” she sputtered. The cloying scent of blood made her reel toward a janitor bucket. She felt Milo’s hands on her shoulders, someone to anchor her steadfast to reality. She smiled in gratitude, but the spark didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  “I was there, too, Vivian. I was trying to set up the blood transfusions. We were all doing our best to keep him alive. You did everything you could. I’m sure everyone could see that.”

  A violent sob rose in Vivian’s throat.

  “Here, let me tell you a story about my time in Budapest. Just stay here with me and calm down.”

  Vivian leaned against his shoulder as his words painted a picture of the nightlife capital. She didn’t even realize she was rocking back and forth in his arms.

  He described a beautiful chapel to her until she stopped shaking.

  “Maybe the next time I go, you can join me,” he said. His story at an end, he put her at arm’s length.

  “Come on, why don’t I take you to dinner sometime and I’ll tell you everything about my travels? Better ye
t, if you aren’t too busy, I know a place with a splendid view at dusk.”

  Vivian managed to smile between the tears welling in her eyes.

  “That sounds lovely, Milo. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Vivian almost laughed at the tender moment unfolding between them. This was hardly how she imagined their romance blossoming—crying in Milo’s arms after a gut-wrenching disaster in the ER. She still smelled like antiseptics and death. Perhaps it is true what they say about miracles happening in the most unexpected ways, not to mention ridiculous.

  Vivian sniffled.

  “I wanted to save him, Milo. I didn’t want it to end this way.”

  He gave her shoulders an assuring squeeze but even his eyes glistened with sorrow.

  "You can't save everyone no matter how hard you try, dear. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you wish. All we can do is accept that it’s their time and pray for a peaceful transition."

  Vivian bowed her head as the truth hammered down. She couldn’t come to terms with what she saw in the trauma bay.

  “I take it you've dealt with death many times here?”

  Milo’s sympathetic gaze settled on her.

  “More than you’re capable of imagining.”

  NINE

  Camilla looked over her shoulder for perhaps the fourth time since arriving in Kunatrice Forest. The evening lay thick around her as she followed the muddy path dotted with pines.

  Streams swirling with ice cut silver trails across the blackened horizon. Swan Lake was a distant jewel borrowed from the pages of a fairytale, adding a sense of wonder to an already mysterious woodland. For all those scenic displays, Kunatrice felt like anything but an oasis tonight.

  Kunatrice was to be the arena where she would come face-to-face with the last breathing Vesely. According to Gavin, the only one unaccounted for was her biological mother—and she was just “the other woman” in her father’s marriage.

  Perhaps she held Camilla personally accountable for her imprisonment in the Magdalene asylum—but she would have no reason to condemn her for exposing the crimes of the laundries.

  Her use of the word “sinner” scrawled in blood also baffled Camilla. Of course, the religious zealots in her family would equate her actions with betrayal. There was no such concept as innocence in the world, only lost souls who needed cleansing or redemption. As for those who overstepped the brink of salvation, there was clearly only one option left…

  It was simply a matter of time before her stalker came to retrieve her blemished soul.

  Camilla played anxiously with the pendant around her neck as the ashes swirled inside.

  She settled down on a bench. She gazed quietly at the sturdy trees encircling her. The sun set like an amber pearl over Kunatrice Forest. Enough snow dusted the ground to endow the land with a surreal glow. The trees looked as though they were rendered by pastel in a blackish-blue void.

  In the distance, she heard the faint rumblings of the city and the sonnet of a bird, but everything was removed from sight. Those sounds faded to an inaudible hum that pierce the silence.

  The sun became an orange puff of fire in the fog, much like a great eye belonging to a creature hovering above. The light transformed the woodland into a slick, metallic landscape under the haze.

  Camilla felt naked. She couldn’t describe the sensations sitting in her gut as she waited. She didn’t even know what she was waiting for.

  Would she finally confront the creature that walked in her footsteps? Would she find the answers she so desperately sought?

  Camilla’s fingers brushed against the gun concealed under her cashmere jacket.

  She tried to fall back into her meditation routine. She had been practicing control over her breathing and heart rate ever since the grisly discovery in her apartment. She closed her eyes and exhaled through her nostrils, retreating to a serene corner of her mind. Her pulse slowed like a trickle of water.

  A dull sensation passed through her, forewarning something horrible and inevitable.

  Firm hands seized her head from behind. The shock made Camilla fumble with the gun in her hands. Faster than she could imagine, it fell clumsily through her fingers.

  Full blown panic enveloped her.

  Camilla clawed at the hands and arms restraining her, but the strength behind them was monstrous. She tried to block out the needles of hot pain that dug mercilessly into her brain. Her neck strained under the pressure as her assailant tried to twist her head around. Her muscles pulled taught in fierce resistance but it was futile. Even worse, she feared to look into the same hellish eyes that glowed outside her bedroom window.

  The base of her skull prickled with fire now, neon explosions of pain lancing through her spine. The wind clawed at her mouth as she screamed.

  Her hands sprang up to where she imagined its face would be, digging her nails into its eyes.

  “Bitch!” A sharp blow to the base of her skull sent her sprawling to the ground. Camilla painfully registered the pavement scraping her face. As she refilled her lungs with air, she saw the figure towering behind the bench.

  He—or she—was dressed in a jacket and clutching her face, thus shielding her identity. Spots swam before Camilla’s eyes as her brain spilled into vertigo. She couldn’t tell whether her assailant was a man or woman, much less the hair color or complexion—but she knew it was her mother.

  Camilla pawed at the cobbled walkway as she rolled onto her knees.

  Her eyes instantly settled on the gun. She lunged for it as her mother rushed around the bench.

  Camilla raised the gun and squeezed, overcome with fear.

  The bullet whipped past, grazing her attacker’s shoulder and tearing a furrow through jacket and flesh. What happened in those next few seconds didn’t immediately make sense. Her vision was still swimming as oxygen tried to restart her brain. Despite the lapse in reality, one thing was brazenly clear; she was still alive.

  She looked up to see the stalker clutching her torn shoulder. She could have easily ended Camilla’s life there. She barely lifted the pistol again.

  Her mother took one look into the eye of the gun and ran.

  Camilla limped after the silhouette fleeing into the darkened boughs of Kunatrice Forest. Her muscles failed her and she fell to her knees again. She could barely lift a finger despite the determination burning its way through her heart.

  “No…” she whispered. That word carried all the protest building up inside her since the day this ordeal began. She couldn’t let the answers slip away when she could barely touch them now. She needed to know why. Through weary eyelids, she saw the figure melt over the horizon. After a series of setbacks, Camilla won this round against her stalker.

  She slogged and stumbled to the edge of Kunatrice until the tangled thickets were far behind and the city sprawled before her. The yellow street lights made her temples throb. The sudden weakness in her knees pulled her to the ground.

  Perhaps those hands winding around her throat did more damage than she thought. A droning hum invaded her mind as her cheek lay against the frosted streets. She kept expecting to wake up because nothing felt real anymore.

  A shadow fell upon her.

  Could it be her mother returning to finish the job? Camilla could barely fend her off now. Strangely, she didn’t feel fear or much of anything.

  The last thing she remembered was her heels scraping against the cobblestones as someone dragged her away.

  * * *

  Camilla lazily opened her eyes. She found herself in a dark room with the sheer curtains drawn across the window. Not long ago, she was surrounded by trees petrified in the final hours of dusk. The smell of dew-speckled ferns still whispered through her mind—as did the vision of her grisly encounter with her stalker.

  Her mother.

  She remembered staving off death’s sweet hold around her throat.

  Frantically, she bolted up from bed and looked into the most accusing pair of eyes she e
ver saw. Vivian was sitting in the corner of the bedroom, watching her.

  “You…?”

  Vivian folded her arms in her telltale way of saying, “You’re in trouble.”

  “You’re lucky I never get tired of finding you passed out on the streets,” she said, finally cracking a grin.

  “You make it sound like a common occurrence.”

  Vivian’s smile faded just as abruptly as it crossed her lips. Clearly, the time for jokes and pleasant tidings had dried up. Camilla sank back into the bed, wondering how she would ever leave the room now. This was the second time she acted on her own and brushed up against death.

  “She attacked me.”

  “After luring you out to the forest.” Vivian brandished a familiar photo that Camilla received from her stalker. It depicted the mist-wreathed landscape of Kunatrice Forest, which almost became her burial ground. Vivian’s eyes glowed fiercely in the shadows, but it was an expression born increasingly out of concern, not betrayal.

  “I found this in your jacket. I hate going through your things, but you’re obviously not telling me everything. We can’t afford to keep secrets between us, not when the silence can kill.”

  Camilla looked down at her feet as if she couldn’t meet her friend’s eyes.

  “I hope you understand why I chose to confront my stalker alone. I know you’d do anything to help me—but I couldn’t bear the thought of you dying on my account. I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

  Vivian laughed.

  “Have you forgotten what we endured last year? Ill-fated encounters with a deranged killer and backstabbing detective? Notice I said we.” Vivian sighed and plopped down on the bed. “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “What?”

  “When my dad found that money in my jacket. What an awful memory to pop into my head now.”

  “Too bad you can’t send me off to a Magdalene asylum.” No sooner had the words left her lips, Camilla’s eyes popped wide open. She gazed out the window into the gray void of morning light. “Actually, I think that’s precisely where we need to go.”