The Night Nurse

The night was cold; the snow that accumulated out the nursing home’s windows slipped through the old institution’s cracks and froze the residents that rested there. But it wasn’t the weather that chilled my bones this darkened day. It was the click in that halls that hinted towards death. No, it wasn’t the reaper himself with his shadowed cloak and ivory fingers; but one we had but no choice to place our lives. And it was a choice that could cost us that very thing.

I huddled under the scratchy, pale blanket of my bed as the clicking grew louder. And when it stopped in the way before my door, my eyes squeezed shut tighter than they had when I was nothing but a babe, terrified of the monsters in my closest. But this was nothing like them. What stood at my door could kill me. Not with fangs or claws; but with a clear liquid filled to the brim of a syringe.

The door swung open; and the creak that came from its hinges nearly stopped my heart in its track. But I was not so fortunate. The tap of her shoes in that room were horrid. Each and every closely concealed by the beat of the monitors. I felt the hand on my shoulder before the footsteps seemed to faded. In that moment, as it drained every ounce of warmth from my brittle bones, I prayed for salvation. And when it fell and I began to hear the sound of tubes being tugged and vials being drawn, my faith collapsed. The monitor were first to react, tracking perfectly along the palpitations that wrecked its bright green line, then following close behind as the line began to lengthen. I heard bed springs moan as the nurse moved closer, pulling herself onto the mattress. And as she did, the wheezing came, watery salutes of saliva pending with a slight pop of freeing gas. Then the realization and struggle. But with muscles that were too weak and a pulse that was lessening, it wasn’t enough. The nurse pulled the cord before the haunting flat tone of the monitor could bellow out into the halls. And for a final time the bed springs moves and the hand on my shoulder returned. With it, a shallow voice that panted like a dog’s. “Mary-Ann’s gone, sweetheart. It’s just your room now.”

The crippled palm fell away as the tap of the linoleum returned, now fighting with the beat of only one heart. The door came back into place, and the room grew its usual quiet. But it was anything but normal to have a corpse share your room.

When the morning arrived, the bright light brought with it a dread like no other. Regretting the sight I would see if I were to turn on my back, I remained in my curled position, even after the day nurse knocked gently on the door, claiming the morn. And as the dawn grew late, the door was again opened for the second time that new 24-hours. Only now, the tap was soft and a voice appeared in its gentle tones. “Oh, Mary-Ann.”

And before long, a hand shook on my shoulder and that gentle, sweet voice returned in my ear. “Josie.” It whispered as though to rouse me from a sleep I was not in. “Josie. I need you to get up, dear.”

The day nurse had a kindness to her, one the night nurse didn’t; and it was a pleasant relief when she chose her body to block the sight adjacent. With a shudder under my breath, I met with her sadness and let her hands help me up. But even as we walked from the room, the unforgiving view could not been fully displaced. Mary-Ann had been a beautiful woman; and if you didn’t see that on her face, you could see it in her eyes. Yet in that bed, arched on her back with her blue lips agape in a silent scream, there was no beauty; nor in the hollow white clouds that had been her eyes did anything but horror show.

The room was cleaned as I waited in the dayroom. A bright, yet dull enclosure that spoke of freedom with its large windows, yet halted it with its locks and bars. I was not alone in that room, but I might as well have been. All of us who rest these halls knew the monster that lurked their shadows at night, and knew the tragedy we could not stop of every week. In the months we survived, we knew there was no help; no evidence to prove our natural passing was falsified. No word from our lips was to be believed. The old die; and in such a place as we lived, it was expected. As we learned this, there became a silent understanding among us dying few, as well as a silent condolence to those who died too soon.

It seemed an eternity before the nurse returned; the day of the morn slowly turned into that of afternoon as I sat before those windows. Her hand again found itself on my shoulder and gave a squeeze before she questioned my return to resting. And though I wished never to enter the newfound place of death, my room was the only place now I felt at home. And with a hesitant nod, we departed.

The sickening smell of anti-bacterial was first to greet me; next was the hollow bed neighboring mine, made and waiting for a host to cocoon. Half the walls were empty, their possessions stripped away after Mary-Ann, and the linoleum was bare of cords and the metallic feet of medical instruments. Such emptiness made me wonder what would happen when I passed, natural or not. Would my side show the same vacant view? Or would some small part still reside in the white walls or tiled floors? As I pondered, the nurse helped me to bed and waited at my side to console my loss.

“If there’s anything you need, just press your button, and I’ll be right here.”

And as she turned and walked back out, I knew what she declared could not be taken completely to heart. Because when I were to need anything would be when the night nurse came on duty and day nurse were to leave.

The night again fell, and with it: the cold that had receded during the day; it returned like a hound after its master; its master being the night nurse. Though for six more endless nights I was free of night nurse’s overdose, the tap of her shoes still sent waves of fear down my spine. Those half-a-dozen days were when time flashed forward; and on the seventh when it slowed. Those nights were the hardest in some ways. After her dispatches, the night nurse pretended her duties, learned to fabricate the compassion she needed to remain in work. And had you been new, you would have never guessed the dismay she brought day and day. But for those of us who’d survived, we knew what was coming. And it wasn’t any shock when her ruse fell apart upon the end of her six-day wait.

The nurse again was on the hunt for a new victim to cradle in death. And like every occupant that resided here, I prayed it wasn’t me.

But God can only give few miracles.

The day of worship came, and on its dusk, as did the night nurse. The familiar tap of her shoes caused my stomach to churn, and I again found myself curling into the hollow shelter of my blanket. But such thin protection might as well have been the air around me.

Her steps halted outside my door, and in that moment I felt as though I had fallen back in time to the night of Mary-Ann’s demise. The door screeched at it had, only now its call sped my pulse, for I knew what it meant. The tapping on my floor was thunderous as it bounced off clear walls. But what seemed ever louder was the sound I hear just above her gait: the glass phials that clanged together in her pockets. When she touched me, it was the bony hand of death that gripped me. And when she whispered, I could almost hear the voices of the dead coming through her lips. “This will all be over soon, Josie. Just relax.”

I knew my fate when I felt the tug on my IV cord. And even more so when I began to feel my arm going numb…

Anyone you ask – the police, the day nurses – would have told you it was an accident. That during my sleep, I began to thrash. And the night nurse had had the misfortunate to be checking my IV drip at the time. No one questioned the broken vials on the ground, or the syringe embedded in her neck. No one noted the resemblance she held in her dying form to those of the elderly gone. Simply wrote it off as a bad dream that caused reality to follow suit. But I knew the truth; and in the home, I wasn’t alone in that knowledge, nor in the concealment of it. Look hard into the eyes of the residents or interpret their smiles, and you’ll see it.

On the night that was arranged to be my death, I discovered a fatal flaw in the night nurse’s work. One that led to her end in an ironic twist of faith. Every seventh day the night nurse would come with the intent to kill, always assuming her senior victims were asleep.

“I believe though God does not give his miracles to all or in plenty, when he does, he finds the perfect place to send them down." - Resident Josie, from the Night Nurse