Do Her No Harm

by Naomi Joy

  I hear a flurry of footsteps from the stairs – my first patient of the afternoon – my breath coming quick as I rush to get ready. I hurriedly inspect the rest of the room – all clear – then turn my attention to my desk, then to the instruments on the side, checking that everything is in its place. I need to get ready. I need to calm down. I need to focus on my job. I run a cloth along the skirting boards, rub at a stain on the cornicing, then move my gaze up to the mirror above. That’s when I spot it: a handprint. Clear as day. My eyebrows close in and I step towards it. Whose is it? I inspect it for a moment – it’s a handprint all right, with five fingers that run long, as though whoever left it had tripped and tried to grab the mirror for support, the palm-print much smaller, just a faint and foggy stain below the finger-marks. Who’s been here? The person threatening Rick? Do they know about me? About us? Am I in danger, too? I rub at the mark, coating the mirror in tiny bubbles, cleaning it, my thoughts wrapping in knots. I shiver as I think about someone being here, touching my things, reordering my carefully placed items, my precisely labelled implements.

  A knock at the door severs my nightmarish daydream.

  ‘Come in,’ I say, trying to imitate a breezy tone, but I’m fogged with thoughts of the handprint behind me, and Rick’s parting words, and I can’t keep up the pretence for long. After a few too many beats of silence, my patient takes the initiative to tell me she’s here for a consultation and that she’s interested in facial rejuvenation. I force myself back to the present and take her in, head to toe in beige, with small eyes and a sunken complexion.

  ‘I want cheekbones,’ she tells me. ‘I want them to look natural, but also noticeable.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I say, all too familiar with this contradictory request from my patients.

  I half-listen to her as I trace round the cupboards, glancing up at the mirror as I move. Then I spot something else that’s not right. On the metal dish next to the patient’s chair is a scalpel. What’s that doing there? I grab it in my unsteady grip. This isn’t mine. Who’s been in here? Whose is this?

  I inspect it, my breathing ragged. Deal with it later, I repeat internally. Don’t do anything rash, I tell myself, forcing my hand to release it. I look away. I double check my items in the drawer beneath my desk: gloves, plasters, bandages. They’re all there, in line. Just as they should be. I glance over at my patient, who’s rabbiting on about something.

  ‘To be honest, I think it’s what’s always been wrong with my face.’

  I’m only half-listening to her, trying desperately to silence the noise in my head that’s telling me to turn this place upside down and check what else has moved, to scream at her to get out, to tell her the only person I want to talk to about the confusion I feel in my head, is my friend Tabby, but I can’t because she’s not here anymore and, more than that, I can’t because I don’t know if I ever really knew her.

  I breathe steadily – in and out – going into autopilot. I’ve done this job for thousands of patients and all I need is a cannula, rather than a needle, to go deeper under the skin to create the illusion of cheekbones. It won’t take long, I tell myself. It will be over soon. I trace back to a CBT class Tabby had taken me to, and practise the technique of acknowledging my anxious thoughts, then casting them away.

  ‘I’m going to use this blunt-tipped cannula,’ I tell her, acknowledging the anxiety I have that I’ve been betraying an honest man. ‘Because I need to go deeper under the skin to give you the look you want.’ I try to cast it away, forget it, but how can you forget something like that? How can you just forgive yourself for something that terrible? ‘First, I’ll create small injection sites at your cheeks, then slide the cannula under the skin, along the bone, depositing the filler once it’s in place.’

  I hold onto the anxiety I feel with two hands and say a silent prayer that the patient will recoil as a result of my graphic description and tell me she wants to think about the procedure in more detail. The scalpel glints at me from beside her. To my dismay, she isn’t fazed, and nods enthusiastically.

  ‘That would be great,’ she says. ‘The sooner the better. I have a wedding to be at in two months.’

  ‘No problem,’ I reply with a begrudging smile. ‘Let’s get started. Could you lie back for me?’

  I offer her a drink as I mark-up her face, selecting the areas to fill, but she refuses. ‘I’m in a rush,’ she says, and, just as I’m setting up the injectable, I notice a fingerprint on the errant blade by her side. What the… Why do these marks keep appearing where they shouldn’t? I grab a wipe, put down the needle, hurried, and rub it feverishly over the metal, blurring the print but not removing it. Stubborn. I need to anti-bac it again. I rustle about grabbing extra lengths of tissue, cleaning materials and towels, busy scrubbing, wiping and buffing when my patient interrupts.

  ‘Sorry, but, I’m in a bit of a hurry – like I said – and we’re already running quite late…’

  I look up at her from my position bent over the blade, aghast, and realise how I must be coming across. I take a deep breath, though it leaves my lungs in raggedy exhales, my anxieties at fever pitch now, crawling over each other maddeningly quickly, taking turns to reach the top. I put down the scalpel then press down on the patient’s cheek but I’m in a rush and I’m distracted and everything’s out of line and, too late, I realise I haven’t given her any numbing cream and, as I slide the blunt tip deep inside her cheek I hear her scream.

  ‘Ow!’ she cries, recoiling, her hand dashing to the spot, ripping the cannula from its position under her skin, causing a deeper incision and a messy ejection from the site. ‘Don’t you numb it, first? Jesus.’ She presses her hand in front of her face, blood smeared across it. ‘What have you done to me?’

  I shake my head in near disbelief, but the patient in the chair starts to morph into someone else. Me, as a child: scared, angry, eyebrows curled upwards.

  I look away, try to compose myself, but the mirror and the scalpel and Rick and Kay and Tabby crowd me and I am frozen in place. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a mistake like this – was it a mistake? – and my eyes widen as I watch the blood running down her cheek. I don’t know what to do.

  She rubs her hand across her face once again, a renewed layer of shiny, sticky blood coating her fingers as she pulls it away.

  I watch as she pales, her eyes rolling back into her skull, her body limp.

  She’s about to faint.

  ‘No, no, no,’ I repeat, the image of her falling off the chair pulling me back from the edge. I kick into gear at last, recline the chair, get her head in line with her heart, then wait for her system to re-boot. What have I done?

  As I wait, I wipe the blade clean with a wipe and press a towel to the area on her cheek, applying pressure.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask softly. ‘Sorry about that.’

  Her eyes fall from the back of her head. She’s confused, a little dazed.

  I push a wet wipe into her hands, so she can clear the blood for herself. I think of the other night, of hitting Mandy over the head, blood trickling into the carpet. What else am I capable of?

  ‘Did something go wrong?’ she asks, dizzily, when she wakes a few moments later.

  ‘No, it’s fine, you just didn’t respond to the numbing injection,’ I lie. ‘But I’ll give you a bigger dose and we can try again.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ she puffs, and leaves the room a few minutes later with a blood-stained tissue stamped to her face.

  I already know, as I hear her footsteps slap the staircase, that I haven’t heard the last of this.

  Rick

  Thirteen Years Ago – 2007

  My dissertation tutor, Ken, leaned forward in his seat, the faded leather of his elbow pads on the desk.

  ‘You have the highest mark in the year group, Rick. You should be really proud of this work.’

  My face was literally glowing, beaming with pride. Ever since we lost the baby, I promised that I would do everything in my
power not to find myself in a situation like that again. If I was ever lucky enough to have a child in the future, I wanted to be excited about its arrival, confident of my place in the world, able to provide for its future.

  My tutor asked me for the second time if I’d had any help with my work, reminding me about the seriousness of plagiarism, when my phone rang. Ken lowered his spectacles, scraggly white whiskers on his cheeks, his shirt over-ironed, the creases in his trousers severe. He looked as though he smelt of musty corridors and tea but, to be honest, I’d never leaned in close enough to find out.

  ‘Can’t talk right now,’ I said into the receiver, then hung up the call from Darren at McDonald’s. I’d handed in my notice earlier in the day and I guess he was calling to try and convince me to do just one more Friday night shift. It felt good, hanging up on Darren. Graduating from his management. My degree had already opened doors, I had an internship at a top city bank lined up for the summer – they’d paid for my rent, they’d organised my train fare from Oxford. I didn’t even have to go back to Norwich to say goodbye to my family, I just sent a quick email outlining my plans. Good luck, was the reply I got back from my parents’ joint account, almost as though their work with me was done. I didn’t mind, not really, this was the beginning of the rest of my life. I could see a future now, one I didn’t think I’d see after everything that had happened at university.

  I locked my phone as Ken called our meeting to an end, not getting anywhere with the plagiarism accusation, the entire Economics department silently furious that the comprehensive schoolboy they’d tried to oust on a false rape accusation was going to be honoured at this year’s graduation. I smiled. Wondering if Darren would call again. But I couldn’t have worked the Friday night shift even if I’d wanted to. Tonight was a big night. I had something special planned.

  *

  I waited for Tabby to come into the kitchen, a rich bottle of red wine breathing on the counter, her favourite dessert – chocolate lava cake – bubbling and molten in the oven, the smell of it lapping at the back of my nose. I pressed my palm into my courds and willed myself to be calm. It was my favourite time of the day: dusk, the sky a patchwork of pinks and oranges, a slow-setting sun in the distance. And then she appeared, a silhouette in the doorframe.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked casually, as I dropped to one knee, a nocturnal bird singing in the distance.

  ‘We’ve been through so much together,’ I said, and noticed how she’d pulled her hair into a long, blonde plait. Over dinner it had been loose, flowing over her shoulders, the way she usually wore it.

  Her pearlescent lips parted and she dropped to her knees too, hugging me before I’d even asked the question.

  ‘Yes!’ she shrieked, and the trauma that we’d been through together flashed behind her eyes. We’d got through it. Together. And that was what was important, that was why we were here today. No matter what, no matter how bad things were, Tabby and I found our way back into each other’s lives.

  Tabitha Rice and I were meant to be together. Forever.

  Annabella

  Now

  When I was younger, my mother crafted me in her own image. She’d tell me stories about dirt and dust and grime and germs and make me believe terrible things would happen if we didn’t expel them from our home. As an adult, I look at it differently, and realise that she was obsessive compulsive in a way that I am not. She’d gargle with diluted cleaning products – toothpaste and mouthwash are about as useful as sucking on a mint when it comes to ridding your mouth of bacteria. She’d make us live in one room of the house if the others didn’t feel right, she’d only go outside if every inch of her skin was covered – citing that pollution and particulates could land on her and burrow inwards. I used to ask her how it was possible other people survived if the germs were all so dangerous and she’d look at me, dead in the eyes, and ask me to explain why else the cancer rates keep rising, why else antibiotics were becoming less effective, why else our olden-day diseases were on the up again? My formative mind soaked up this information like a sponge and, though I know none of it is true now, I haven’t ever been able to let it go. But I can live, I can function. I exist in a way my mother never could. Even when things are bad, I can keep going, I can push through.

  I catch the bus to Kay’s. She wants to talk about the next episode and, to be honest, I’m grateful for the distraction. I need to stop thinking about the woman I butchered, about the man I might be betraying, about the friend I don’t know how to help anymore.

  I skate my shoes across the icy pavements to her house; the rain doesn’t usually bother to freeze properly in the city, but it’s just about cold enough this morning and the grey slabs glisten underfoot.

  ‘Hi,’ Kay says in the threshold of her front door. ‘We need to go to the shed.’

  ‘OK…’ I reply, and she interrupts before I can speak again.

  ‘I have something to show you.’

  Kay’s shed is as ramshackle as her home, and objects grow plant-like through others in order to reach the light: a lawnmower tilted sideways, an old bike missing its front wheel, a collection of brooms, some with bristles up, some down. Out of the window, weed-geysers bubble and spew across the back lawn; at my feet a woodlouse scuttles by, searching for the dark. I reach into my bag for my anti-bacterial gel and squeeze it – liberally – into my hands. My mental health is suffering and, when I’m like this, everything is junk and clutter and mess, the lens I see the world through magnifying the chaos around me.

  ‘I invited Mandy here,’ Kay announces, her voice ringing like an ominous bell.

  I want to object. Why has Kay brought Mandy here without discussing it with me first? She is not someone we can trust yet. She is not someone we can bring into our inner circle. What is she thinking?

  Mandy stands just behind the door, playing the same doe-eyed damsel as the other morning. She wears a black leather skirt, her hands in big mittens, her face stretched into the same expression she always wears on account of the bad Botox she’s had pumped into all the wrong places. I flash back to the patient from yesterday; no doubt her cheek will be bruised this morning, purple and raised, yellow round the edges. Mandy fiddles with the zip on her jacket, nervous.

  I bite my tongue, my face hard, as Kay catches me up.

  ‘Mandy and I had a chat on the phone yesterday. I, er…’ Kay pauses, giving me reason to squirm. ‘I told her about you and Rick.’

  My stomach clenches and I stare straight ahead, straight at Kay, unblinking, aware that Mandy’s eyes have locked onto my position, sniper-like.

  Mandy’s going to tell Rick about my double life. I should have told him my secret yesterday when he trusted me enough to tell me his. I have to get to him before Mandy has the chance. Why didn’t Kay warn me? Does she think I’ve been getting too close? Does she know that I have? Does she sense that I’m starting to have doubts about him?

  ‘She knows it was just a honeytrap,’ Kay runs to explain.

  ‘Keep your enemies close,’ Mandy says to me, deadpan. ‘And I don’t care, he deserves it. He used me, he should get it back,’ Mandy sniffs.

  It’s a while before Kay speaks, but when she does, it’s dynamite. ‘Mandy’s here today to talk. On the record.’

  *

  I am stiff and stilted as Mandy positions herself on the edge of an ancient chest of drawers tucked into the front corner of Kay’s shed, readying herself to speak into Kay’s recording device. A dank stench hangs in the air and I wonder, as Mandy curls her mittens together, whether I should try and convince Kay that Rick should be the one to tell this story, that, in Mandy’s hands, what he’s been doing is going to seem even worse. That we’re burying him with this before we know that burying him is the right thing to do. Then again, hearing Mandy out will be useful – she might reveal a completely different side to this story. I need to give her a chance, I need to hear what she has to say.

  Mandy fiddles with the leather edge of her skirt, jittery,
and bends to perch on an old lawn mower, then, when she can’t find a comfortable position, stands up again.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she says, timid, laughing gently after she speaks.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mandy? How did you meet Rick?’

  ‘We met at a theatre club about six months after Tabby went missing. I was anxious at first, to date him, I mean, but I tried to put what I’d read about him to the back of my mind and judge him for him.’

  I sit back, taking in Mandy’s version of events, noting where her story diverges from Rick’s. He said there was an arrangement from the beginning. She says otherwise. I’m inclined to believe Rick, Mandy’s just protecting her reputation.

  ‘It was difficult, at first, the media really hounded our relationship, but when I moved in things began to settle. They backed off, left us alone.’

  ‘I see,’ Kay says. ‘And how have things been recently?’

  Her eyes shoot upwards and her lip wobbles almost on cue, a single tear running the length of her cheek. ‘Really hard, to be honest. Really hard.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘The truth is,’ Mandy says. ‘He did this to me.’ Mandy pulls back her hair to reveal the marks I branded her with the night I broke into her home.

  Kay darts an uneasy look at me, then back at Mandy. ‘What?’

  ‘There was no break-in,’ Mandy explains, tears pooling. ‘He attacked me.’

  Kay and I share an awkward glance.

  ‘Why, um…’ Kay pauses. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone this at the time?’

  ‘He’d kill me. And, to be honest, I’m still scared that he might.’ Mandy wipes the steady stream of crocodile tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her coat. ‘I’m so tired of his lies,’ she mutters, her hollow sentence hanging limp in the cramped space between us. ‘And, I have to say this because, even if it makes me look bad, it’s the truth.’ Her performance continues, a new round of heavy breathing and fast tears for our delectation. ‘He paid me to keep quiet. He knows I need the money. I didn’t have a choice but to take it.’