Red Grow the Roses (33 page)

And Shanella lived happily ever after to the end of her days.

So I quit nursing altogether, after he turned up. There are some things no one should have to put up with – and I've put up with a fair fistful in my time, let me tell you. Drunks and loonies every night when I was in the public sector: knife-fights in Casualty and people who'd spit on you even while you were trying to staunch their bleeding wounds; hysterical mobs of girlfriends and dirty old bastards who'd stick their hands up your skirt. Not to mention halfwit young doctors who knew less than I did, and consultants who treated us like dog-dirt.

I thought that things would be easier when I made the jump into private practice. I thought it would all be ingrowing toenails and breast enhancements – and to be fair it was easier, and there was plenty of that. We did a lot of cosmetic surgery at Nine Elms Hospital, a lot of hip replacements, a lot of scans and biopsies – you know: the sort of problem that isn't immediately life-threatening but you wish could be done faster than on the Health Service, and in more comfort. If you were standing outside the place now, in its wooded garden, you'd think you were looking at a country house hotel. Inside, it looks more a luxury spa, all plush carpets and fresh flowers and guests – we aren't allowed to call them ‘patients' – in complimentary white dressing-gowns. I'm not saying the guests were all sweetness and light, that they always treated us with gratitude. But no one ever tried to punch me, and they were at least sober. And young. You know, relatively. In public healthcare so much of the work is in Geriatrics, and that's a soul-crushing business. At least the patients at Nine Elms stand a good chance of getting better after admission.

It was a good job, I had. But I'm not going back.

The night
he
turned up I'd finished my 2 a.m. round of the rooms and was down in the lobby, killing time with Stefan, the night orderly. Stefan came from Poland originally and has a big bony face and big bony hands and gappy teeth. It sounds ugly but somehow it worked and he had a certain way about him, the horny beggar. He liked to drag me into a supply cupboard and shaft me from behind, up against the rattling shelves of drip tubes and dressings. He liked to push my boobs together and stick his face down into the cleft between, snuffling and slurping. He was a bit of fun, was Stefan. We'd go at it most nights when our shifts coincided.

So I was sitting on his lap, behind the desk with its ranks of CCTV monitors, with the skirt of my nurse's uniform rucked up to my hips to give his tickling fingers access to my undercarriage, and his big Polish
kaszanka
sticking up between us, hot in my hand. We weren't doing anything heavy yet, just a bit of mutual teasing, and I was just popping his plum out to say Hello when a taxi pulled up outside the front door. I twisted to see it in the monitor; it was a black cab from the City. I was surprised to see one out this far, and at this time of night. The rear door opened and a figure got out, hunched and bulky, blurred by the camera into a shadowy mass.

Stefan eased me off his lap as he frowned at the screen and thumbed the intercom. ‘Attention. This is private property. No public access permitted at this time of night.'

The figure didn't pause. The security doors, all modern smoked glass under that Georgian portico, were electronically locked, of course, because any hospital can be targeted by thieves looking for drugs. I could see the red ‘locked' light glowing over the lintel. That didn't stop them sweeping aside with a faint pneumatic hiss, and the man striding straight into the lobby.

The electrics must have been playing up.

‘Hell,' said Stefan, struggling to get his cock back into his trousers before leaping into action.

‘Sir,' I said, jerking my skirt straight and hurrying out from behind the counter. I could see straightaway that he was carrying a limp figure in his arms, and there was the familiar hue of blood all over her torn clothes. ‘This is a private hospital; we don't have a casualty department. You need to ring an ambulance.'

‘She needs a transfusion. Now.' His voice was rasping and deep. I took in little of his appearance other than that he was dark-haired: my attention was all on the woman in his arms, who looked so pale and slack that I couldn't be at all sure she was alive.

‘We haven't got a casualty department,' I repeated, louder and firmer. ‘We don't have the facilities to deal with injuries. I'll ring the proper emergency services for you, sir.'

‘Blood,' he said. ‘O negative. Now. Page Dr Hogg.'

My hand paused over the telephone. Dr Hogg was on our staff and he was actually on call tonight, if one of the guests required a doctor. I wondered how the man knew that, and looked at him sharply, wondering if it were someone I ought to recognise. But he was a stranger to me; dark-eyed and dishevelled. So dark-eyed, in fact, that I got the disconcerting impression that he had no sclera at all, just blackness behind those narrowed slits.

‘Keep calm, sir, please,' said Stefan, finally stepping out from behind the shelter of the desk. ‘The nurse will ring emergency services for you; the ambulance will be here very soo–'

‘
Call Dr Hogg
. Now.' His voice was extraordinary; I felt the force of it strike my breastbone. Something cold gripped my heart and squeezed – and that is no metaphor: the sensation was entirely physical and utterly terrifying. And then it was gone and both Stefan and I were gasping and clutching at our chests.

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,' Stefan muttered, crossing himself. ‘Holy Mother of God.'

‘Call Dr Hogg,' I ordered, my voice faint. ‘I'll get plasma.' I wanted the excuse to get out of there. But I did go for the blood-plasma, and I did hurry. I grabbed a wheeled stretcher from the waystation and jogged back with it. When I got into the lobby the man was standing there exactly as I'd left him, looking down at the woman in his arms. He must have been pretty strong, thinking about it afterwards; he didn't show any sign of strain, supporting her weight. Stefan was hunched behind the desk, ringing through to the surgical team, and Dr Hogg stumbled out of the lift with his bed-hair still sticking up in all directions just as we laid the woman down on the gurney and I started to punch the cannula needle into her arm.

‘Oh, hell,' said Dr Hogg. He knew the strange man; from the look of dismay on his face there was no doubting that.

Mobster, I concluded, setting my jaw and puncturing the ashen skin. She had dried and blackened blood all over the lower part of her face and neck. I'd thought my days dealing with this sort of mess were over.

And that was how they checked into the hospital, those two. She ended up in one of the luxury guest rooms, and he installed himself in the family room adjoining it. ‘Mr and Mrs Smith' they were signed in as, as if they were a shameful adulterous couple in a 1960s bed-and-breakfast. ‘Smith', my ass: ‘Singh' I might have believed, given the midnight darkness of his eyes and hair. Whether they were actually a couple I couldn't guess, at first: she was certainly a bit older than him.

We pumped her full of blood, but she didn't regain consciousness that night. To be honest I was surprised she wasn't dead, given how much she'd lost. Scans showed brain activity at an absolute minimum. There were multiple shallow stab wounds in her throat and more, along with grazes and cuts, all over her skinny, dirty body, as if she'd been dragged down the street. Her clothes were torn, her shoes missing. It took me about thirty seconds to wonder if Mr Smith were the perpetrator.

You know how you sometimes like someone on sight, before you even get to know them? Well, I disliked that man on sight. He gave me the creeps. It wasn't just that weird thing he'd done with his voice either. He was one of those guys who just oozed money and privilege. He was used to having people do exactly what he told them, and everyone who wasn't doing something for him was beneath his notice. You could see it in his every glance: he didn't throw himself on the doctor's expertise or look for reassurance from the nursing staff. He didn't beg us to tell him if his girlfriend would be all right. He just looked straight through us all, as if we hardly existed.

He seemed genuinely concerned for the woman, that much I admit. Then again, abusers often are. He sat up with her for the rest of the night, refusing food and drink, holding her hand and sometimes pressing it to his cheek. But he didn't cry or try to talk to her; he just stared. Like I said, creepy. If she was his girlfriend, I thought, I didn't envy her: I'd just bet he was one of those psychotically jealous, possessive types.

Just before my shift ended he gave up and locked himself in his room to sleep.

* * *

When I came in on duty the following evening I was surprised to find them both still there. More surprised still, when I looked through the clipboard of her medical notes. The human body can do some weird stuff, but in the ordinary run of things there shouldn't have been any way Mrs Smith was alive. She'd lost so much blood that her brain and heart should have shut down, and I couldn't see what had been sustaining her, even unconscious. I cornered one of the day doctors on his way out and asked, ‘Shouldn't Mrs Smith have been transferred to an intensive care unit by now?'

‘Um,' said Dr Bellingham. ‘It's been decided that we're her primary medical caregivers.'

‘But we haven't really got the facilities to look after coma patients, have we?'

He puffed out his chest. ‘Mrs Smith is our guest, and we've been requested to keep her here.'

‘By Mr Smith?'

He blinked like a mouse in a trap. ‘Yes. By Mr Smith. As you say.'

I didn't question any further. It was clear that Mr Smith had influence and had been throwing it around. I went round to her room out of sheer nosiness and didn't bother knocking – a calculated impoliteness, I admit. He was sitting back by the bed, his elbows on the mattress, his bowed head in his hands and his eyes closed, which is why he didn't notice me entering, not at first. I had a chance to take in the scene; the woman lying still and silent against her pillows, the man hunched over her, a picture of misery. He dropped one hand to clasp hers and I heard a whisper: ‘… so sorry, Amanda, so sorry I can't start …'

That was when he realised I was standing there and he lifted his face. He was a bit of a looker, that guy, if you like the Middle Eastern thing. But his face was a mess now: drawn in lines of wretched despair, and deeply haggard – even more so than I remembered from last night. He blinked at me; he must have been momentarily blind, because there was black stuff oozing out from his eyes, black runnels already tracked down his cheeks. I thought it was mascara at first, crazy though that sounds. Then I just didn't know what to think. I mean, you can't cry blood, can you? And if you did it wouldn't be black, would it?

It was so freaky that the only thing I could do was pretend I hadn't noticed.

I'll give him credit: he didn't try to hide his face and he didn't get defensive. Indifferent to my witness, he just looked at me with those terrible, bleeding eyes, like all his pain had been distilled into material form and could no longer be contained. For a moment I felt a reluctant sympathy for him, despite my skin crawling. But I buried both under a businesslike manner, bustling forward to the bed.

‘Just going to turn her on her side,' I announced, running an appraising eye over the banks of machines monitoring her every function. ‘We don't want bedsores, do we?' They'd put her on a medical ventilator, just to be on the safe side, and you could hardly see her thin, rather refined face under the mask. She was rather pretty, I thought – or at least she had been, a few years back. She made me think me of some
grande dame
of the theatre, all fine bones and faded beauty. Her silvery hair was still matted with dried blood in parts and I made a note on her details board that she needed a wash tomorrow when the dayshift came on.

‘Will you give me a hand, please?' I asked, but I was speaking to myself. The room was empty; somehow he'd slipped away without me seeing a thing.

* * *

The third night was when it got really crazy. I was making up a bed in an unused room …

OK: I was with Stefan. I had been making up the bed when he snuck into the room behind me, tossed me forward on to the mattress and pulled my skirt up and my panties down. I responded by spreading my legs and wriggling my ass at him, of course, and his reaction was to sink to his knees behind me and bury his face between my cheeks, pushing them apart with his hands so he could get his tongue right to the tight hole of my bottom. God: that one took me by surprise, I can tell you. I kicked and wriggled in outrage, but he pinned me down effortlessly and licked at my pucker with his hot wet tongue until all my reserve exploded out through the top of my skull and I was giggling and sighing like a teenager getting her first oral. Shocked that he'd do it, and astonished how good it felt to be teased there on my most sensitive and intimate flesh. My muscles fluttered and clenched, while hot and cold flashes danced over my skin.

When he straightened his tongue to a point and began probing, I began to moan breathily: ‘Oh, yes. I want your cock, you dirty bastard. I want your big cock in my asshole.' He stuck his finger in me instead and I muffled my squeal in the top sheet as he wriggled it around. It felt so wrong and so right, both at the same time, and the wrongness was what made it right. My hips danced, impatient. ‘Oh, go on, yes, go on!'

He laughed and nipped at my bum cheek with his teeth. ‘I think you are a dirty girl, a bad nurse.'

‘Oh, God, Stefan! I'll be good, I promise – if you fuck me.'

‘Promise?'

‘I promise! Just give it to me, in the ass – please.'

There was the sound of a zipper being pulled down, of a condom packet crinkling, of his breath coming in constricted snorts against my bouncing flesh. Then he stood and as I wriggled my hand under me on the bed, feeling for my clit, I felt the thick tip of his cock rake through my wet gash and nudge up against my bum-hole, clumsy but determined. He stooped over me, his breath coming in hot gusts against my ear