Nurse took a long drag on a Marlboro Red. It was her third cigarette. The night was cool.
If people weren't going to do the right thing and die, then she wasn't about to either. The audacity of some people, she thought. No social contract. She took a long drag and kicked her foot against the loading dock.
She had beaten three people to death in the past four hours with their own bedpans. Well, except Mrs. Cagen, who had just had surgery on a brain tumor. She was easy enough. Just a little poke in the right place. That was where the off switch was apparently. Not in the heart or gut, but in the brain toward the back. It took a lot of beating up on Mr. Meeks to figure that out.
It was a busy night. If this were going to keep up she'd need to upgrade weapons. She wished she'd had her gun. Nurse had a lot of guns.
There was Tom, too, the annoying kid down the hall. He had simply disappeared. His mother had acted odd at the last visitor's hours. She'd talked to Nurse as if she were mental: "these cookies are for Tom only. Make sure that no one else eats them, okay?" But now they were eaten, crumbs all over the place, and Tom was gone, not that it made her sad.
Then again, he was terminal. He should have died just like Mr. Arnold and Mr. Meeks and Mrs. Cagen should have died. He was even off the chemo. The little brat. Things like this didn't happen on her shift. Patients didn't disappear, and the terminal ones either died, or laid in bed waiting to die. There were rules.
She lit another cigarette. She would need all her guns.
No comments:
Post a Comment