Red Grow the Roses

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘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

  That’s when the pager at my belt went off.

  Swearing, I wriggled the little electronic tyrant from beneath me and brought it up under my nose to see who’d pushed their Nurse button. ‘Oh, hell. You’d better stop, Stefan. It’s Mrs Freeman.’

  ‘Fuck her,’ he suggested with a grunt, trying his best to do just that to me. His cock was already embedded in the airtight seal of my ring. It was with reluctance – and some effort – that I elbowed him in the ribs and rolled out from beneath him.

  ‘She’s got a heart condition. I’ll get back to you.’ I yanked up my panties and hurried out, with only a reluctant grimace for poor Stefan, stiff as a flagpole but with no flag to run up it. I’m not a bad nurse, see. I put the patients first, even under duress.

  I reached Mrs Freeman’s room and found her gasping and flapping her hands about.

  I jumped to the heart-rate monitor, interpreting the numbers. ‘What’s up, Mrs Freeman?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, my dear – there was a man in my room!’

  ‘A man? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes! I just woke up and he was there, leaning over me!’

  My concerns blew away at once: she’d been having a nightmare and carried it through into waking. I had to force myself not to snap at her. I mean, she wasn’t to know she’d interrupted my roll with Stefan – but honestly – how dumb can you get? There was no sign of any trouble on her monitor, though she was clutching at her chest and throat. I looked round the room to check there was no other occupant, but the pristine chamber was empty of course.

  ‘Well, there’s nobody here now. Are you sure, Mrs Freeman? Are you sure you weren’t just having a dream?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure! He pulled down my nightie!’

  Frankly I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to pull down Mrs Freeman’s polka-dotted nightdress and expose that big freckle-painted chest, leathery from years of ill-advised sunbathing. But I looked anyway, dutifully. To my surprise her gown was actually ripped; her gold crucifix gleamed up at me from her exposed breastbone. Mrs Freeman was a good Catholic and had had the priest in to see her on her first day of admission.

  I frowned. Presumably she’d done it herself, in her sleep.

  After helping her get changed into a new gown and reassuring her that there was absolutely no one there and that I’d check in all the adjacent rooms and set Stefan to watch over the corridor, I went to find the orderly in question. We had unfinished business, after all. I couldn’t find him, to my irritation. He wasn’t waiting in the unoccupied bedroom and he wasn’t at his post in the front lobby. I paced through the corridors, wondering what he was playing at, until I reached the men’s toilet at the end of the wing. The lights were off but I pushed open the door and flicked the switch and blinked as the strip bulb flickered into life.

  ‘Stefan?’

  And there he was, lying against the wall, under the towel roll. He stirred groggily as I approached him, mumbling my name and trying to shield his eyes from the light.

  ‘Stefan? Are you OK? What happened?’ I’m used to dealing with trouble, but my voice sounded too loud and too anxious in this echoing room. Stefan was my first backup if anything went wrong or needed dealing with: it rattled me to see him down like that. Kneeling over him I checked for wounds, sliding my hand round the back of his head in case he’d injured it in falling.

  ‘Joyce.’ He gazed up at me, his pupils wildly dilated, his lips slack. My groping hand found no injury. Drugs, was my immediate suspicion – but he’d been fine a quarter of an hour ago. What had happened to him? With clumsy hands he fumbled at my breasts. ‘Joyce … Gi’s a blowjob.’

  He sounded drunk, he looked stoned, and there was a bulge in his pants that he was trying to get me to grab on to. But when I pulled my hand from his head, despite not having detected any swelling I found blood on my palm – two little smears. Knocking his groping hands aside impatiently I rolled him enough to get a look at the nape of his neck. There: two small shallow wounds, barely bloody. Just like the ones Mrs Smith had been inflicted with.

  I took a deep breath. If I rang for backup now, Stefan would get the sack: this looked too much like getting wasted on duty. And I didn’t think he’d been taking anything illicit. My suspicions were focused on someone else entirely. I was sure I knew who was involved.

  You’ve no idea how hard this was for me. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic: I don’t believe in any of this nonsense. Yet the dark certainty roiled in my gut, propelling me to my feet. Certainty, and anger. Fury that anyone had brought this madness into my ward, on my shift.

  I left Stefan. Yes, I know it sounds callous, but I didn’t think he was in danger any more. I walked back down the corridor to the guest rooms and threw open the door into Mrs Smith’s and marched straight in.

  Mr Smith was sitting on the bed with her, cradling her against his chest. Her oxygen mask was off; I would have protested, automatically, except that one fundamental thing had changed: she was conscious. I could see that because she was holding his forearm to her face, and her lips were pressed to his wrist. My mouth fell open and no sound came out.

  Slowly, he turned his face up and locked his gaze on mine. That look was enough to douse all my hot indignation and turn my insides to ice instead.

  ‘Oh,’ I managed to say. Then I turned and headed for the door.

  He was there in front of me. I’ve no idea how. He was standing in the doorway, his fingers resting lightly on the frame either side, and from the wound in his wrist the black blood oozed down toward his fingertips. He smiled, very faintly, and with no warmth.

  I cast a terrified glance over my shoulder; Mrs Smith was kneeling up in bed, bereft and groping blindly. Her mouth was smeared with the dark blood.

  ‘I am sorry.’ His voice was smooth; it held none of the broken and desperate sincerity of his earlier plea for forgiveness, the one I’d overheard him whispering to her. ‘Normally I’d try not to be so brusque. But she needs to feed.’ He caught the front of my uniform in one hand and pulled me up against him.

  All the air left my lungs – I mean, Christ, I hadn’t fully realised until now how much he loomed over me, how physically dominant he was. My brain went completely blank. I’d always prided myself on being able to think and act fast in threat situations, but right now his eyes seemed to drain all the volition out of my limbs. All I could think of was the incredible hardness of his body, the way mine had squashed against it as our frames collided. The speed and the strength in him.

  He showed that strength by taking the front of my uniform in both fists and tearing it open to my waist, without the slightest discernable effort. Only the fabric protested. He looked down at me, pleased: my breasts are big and firm, full of bounce. Stefan loves them, the poor guy, and this man seemed equally appreciative. His mouth hooked up at the corner. I said before he was handsome, didn’t I? Handsome like Satan. My insides were turning to butter and it was running out down between my thighs.

  He snapped the front of my bra and let my breasts tumble out. My nipples ripened from soft berries to hard nuts at the touch of the air, tingling.

  ‘No,’ I said weakly: the first word I’d managed to utter. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere – certainly not my conscious mind, which had melted into a soup of unbelief. It was a leftover; a reflex protest.

  ‘Shush.’ One cool finger brushed my lips gently, sealing them. He reached behind him to close the door, but his gaze never left
me.

  Tears welled into my eyes

  ‘The thing is,’ he said as if confiding in me, his hands gripping my waist, ‘her new teeth have not come in yet. So I think you’d prefer it if I took the lead.’ Then he lifted me bodily – right up, to bring my breasts to his face. And he took my right nipple full into his mouth, and bit me.

  There was pain. Then it was gone, and something else was there in its place. Goddamn – I’ve been on a diamorphine infusion once, when I broke my leg: I’ll tell you now, that had nothing on this. That bite turned my nipple into a clit and my whole body into one giant sexual organ, wet and trembling and receptive. I was aware of my hands grabbing his head and of being carried over to the bed, but my concentration was all on the pleasure; the almost unbearable pleasure of his sucking mouth. It was overwhelming and irresistible and so wrong I have no words for it.

  I hated him so fucking much, even as I writhed in his embrace.

  He laid me out across the bottom of the bed, and his woman came crawling down to me, brushing the tubes and the monitors off her as if they were grass-seeds. When he released my nipple from his mouth I could see there was blood welling up and running down my breast, into my cleavage, toward my throat. I tried to shut my eyes, but I couldn’t. I seemed to have no will left, no power over my own body.

  ‘Amanda,’ he murmured, cupping her head in one hand and guiding her down to me. Her eyes were as empty as an animal’s, betraying only hunger. My hips bucked and my thighs parted as she settled, kneeling as if at prayer, sucking my flesh between her black-stained lips. Pleasure burst and danced in my nipple all over again as she slurped at me. Her pale hair flooded my breastbone.

  I looked up at his face from where I lay. He was smiling, but at her not at me. Proud, like a new father. And fearful: I saw it lurking in the corners of his eyes. I tried to lift my hands – to pull at her hair, to push him away or perhaps to pull him closer – but he intercepted my clumsy movements. To soothe my fretting he pulled up the skirt of my uniform and slipped his hand between my thighs. My panties were soaked through, and when he pressed the heel of his hand against them and began to rub with small circular movements, well, then I nearly left the planet. I could feel myself dilating under his fingers, the fabric being stretched as his fingers nearly pushed my gusset inside me. My hips lurched, pushing my mons up into his hand, showing him how open I was. He could have had me, easily, but he didn’t want me. Not that way, anyway. Sliding down on the bed, never losing his hold on my sex, he took my other breast in his mouth and began to feed.