The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

little, as it always does, when I hear the turn of his key as he locks the door again, despite the fact that a part of me – a big part – is relieved to be in prison.

Sitting on the narrow bed, I open the fat letter. I read the first line thinking I won’t go further, but I do.

Dear Ms Marlowe,

My name is Theo Hazel. I’m a novelist and non-fiction writer. I followed your case with much interest and, to be honest, intrigue too.

I’ve written several non-fiction books about women who have been convicted and incarcerated for murder; your case stood out for me.

I am very keen to meet you, to hear what you have to say. I would, and I’ll be blunt, very much like to write your story.

At the end of the letter, Theo Hazel lists his five published works. Three are non-fiction. An unaccustomed smile lifts the edges of my mouth at the title of one of them. I’m intrigued, and even though an instinct to like this man nudges at me, there is no way I’ll be speaking to him. I cannot.

His letter is engaging and he is erudite. He includes lots of detail about his life; I know he’s doing this to gain my trust. Tucked away in between the penultimate and last pages is a photo. Maybe he is another mad member of the public.

I study the image. Dark hair, quite long, skimming the collar of his cream shirt, a zipped-up black North Face jacket. I’d say around my age, maybe younger. I look again. Yes, a bit younger. I’m good at guessing ages, I think many medics are, from years of looking at birth dates and then at the face accompanying the paperwork. I nail him at forty-four, maybe forty-five. Three or four years younger than me.

Nut-brown skin. I recognise his face from somewhere, and I dig deep into my memory. The man sitting in the public gallery on the day of my sentencing.

It is him, I’m sure of it.

There is a church in the background, and in the left lower corner a gravestone. There’s a digital number at the bottom of the photo. Time and date. It was taken last week. I read through the letter again, happy to be able to put an image to his name.

Recently I’ve begun teaching basic biology to a few inmates who’ve decided to broaden their educational CV. I love the teaching, but also the opportunity that being in the prison library gives me – access to a computer.

I will google Theo Hazel the next time I get a chance.

3

22 March 2016

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I’m thinking about Theo Hazel’s letter, but then my mind flits to the image of Abe’s wife in the courtroom. And their baby. I know the child’s name and try to un-know it. The inside of my head hammers.

I lean forward and stare at the blue of my cell floor. I’ll never be able to live with what happened. What is the alternative, though? To not live with it? I’m not brave enough for that, despite what I know is happening inside my body.

I’ve no fear of death, but I can’t instigate it.

A heavy and solid terrible guilt drags at me. It’s always worse in the late afternoon, and that is when I want to sleep, when I don’t want to be alive; though it’s been the same for years, and not only since Abe Duncan’s death.

Abe died at 9.50 in the evening. The timescale of that day is carved into my soul. I’d been working part-time on the unit for four years and my husband twice as long as a consultant anaesthetist when Abe was brought into intensive care. He was admitted on my day off, and when finally I was on the shift coinciding with one of his mother’s rare visits to see her son, I don’t know who was more taken aback, her or me.

I peer at the annoying red horizontal stripe painted midway up the cell’s wall, which circumferences the entire room and mirrors the prison’s themed decor.

Being here is my punishment for everything, and not only Abe.

Lying down, I pull the thin duvet over my legs, up to my chin, close my eyes and turn onto my side in the foetal position, Abe inside my mind. My hands are tucked between my thighs, nails digging into the softness, and eventually the sting of ruptured skins hits. And then the bite of salt on my cheeks.

The free association bell rings and I wait for the knock on my cell door, which has been opened in preparation for the part of the day that indicates a type of freedom. I don’t particularly like freedom time, although I do like it when my friend Cathy appears, and thinking of her conjures her up. She loiters outside.

What do we have in common apart from being in here? My therapist thinks it’s our lack of remorse. He couldn’t be more wrong.

As a med student, and then a nurse, I was never lured by the alchemy of psychiatry, but since Abe, I’ve been obsessed with how the mind works, how it shuts off, how it can trick itself; mine and other people’s.

How it can make a person who has always been one way become another.

‘Hey, you.’ Cathy takes a step inside my cell. ‘Duvet day?’

I don’t answer, but I know I won’t get away with it for long.

There is no discernible expression on her features, although I’ve learnt this doesn’t mean she isn’t feeling something. It’s just that her feelings are separate from her, hang outside of her. That small separate entity understands there is something very wrong with leaving your three kids home alone whilst you go on holiday, but most of her, the other, bigger part, doesn’t comprehend this. It’s as if there are two Cathys.

I’ve tried to understand why I get to see this separate part of her. At first I thought it was