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

breath. ‘Why did you do it?’ She’s standing right in front of me. Brazen and cold. ‘You and Daniel. Spain. Afterwards. Why? It was a game, you pretending to be his sister. Then when I was in hospital… with Samira, you were there, weren’t you? You’re both sick. And Abe was born not long afterwards.’

‘Eight months afterwards, Rose. Daniel would never have stayed with you, even if your little bastard had survived. He soon saw sense.’ She pauses. ‘He thought he loved you. But after you had your womb taken away… well, you became like me. A beautiful empty shell. He lost interest then. He always did lose interest after a while, with all his diversions.’

I hate her. I hate Daniel. I hate their son. But more than anything, I hate myself. I’ve hated myself since Bluefields, since not being able to save my daughter. Abigail taps into every insecurity, and it is destroying me. Why is she doing this? A blackness fills me. I do not feel like myself. The vitriol bubbles, and like milk boiling in an unwatched pan, it spews viciously over the side.

‘Why did you do it?’ I ask again. I need to know. There must be a reason.

She looks at me, and I try to decipher what I see in her expression. I think it is envy. Why does she envy me?

‘You thought you were special, with your body, your intellect, but you saw nothing,’ she says. ‘Gullible and stupid. Just like all the rest of them that Daniel fucked.’ Her smile is thin, pinched. ‘He’s good in bed, isn’t he, Daniel? Do you remember the maître d’ at the restaurant, with the shiny blonde hair? Diana, I think her name is. Do you remember Señora López? And your midwife, Cam? They all thought he was good in bed too. He slept with anything; I mean, he fucked you. He truly fucked you, Rose.’ She pauses to gather breath, then carries on relentless. It’s too much. ‘My husband was a good lay, but—’

‘Why? Why did you do it?’ I ask, because although reason is leaving me, the pragmatic, logical part of me knows there is a purpose. Cause and effect. Or are the Deanes warped beyond comprehension?

She begins to move away. ‘Daniel will be here tomorrow to see our son. You might want to take a day off.’

Walking back to Abe’s bed, she touches his bare arm, which rests on top of the white sheet that I’ve recently changed, then makes her way from the unit. She doesn’t kiss him before she leaves.

She will regret that.

I check Abe’s central line and then wheel the saline drip stand closer to his bed. His eyelids flicker like high-summer butterflies, and I prepare to do what I have to do. I don’t feel like Rose, but then again, I haven’t felt like Rose for a long time.

I go to the clinical store room and find everything I need and take it back to Abe’s bedside. I make sure the emergency alarm is muted but then disconnect the monitor completely. I leave nothing to chance. I don’t want to alert my colleagues to a problem. The air embolism might take longer to have an effect than I anticipate. I’m not going anywhere. This won’t be a mystery. Being in prison will be a release.

I place the syringe containing more than two hundred millilitres of air into his IV saline tube and slowly push down the plastic plunger. So much, and introduced so quickly, will be lethal. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I wait. I give it time. Half an hour will be enough. I stand as if frozen, but I’m not looking at Abe; I’ve turned away. Eventually, I check my watch. More than half an hour. The unit is still empty. It’s been a long coffee break. I’d known it would be, as it’s our junior doctor’s birthday.

I turn back around and finally put my fingers on Abe’s wrist. I find no pulse. Nothing. I touch his cheek. I’ve touched him so many times – changed his catheter, cleaned underneath his arms, shaved him – but despite the fact that he’s ceased breathing, I’ve never before felt his warmth like this. It emanates from him as a strong vibration, beginning in my fingers but rapidly travelling up my arm and into the very core of me, into the lower part of my stomach, where the space inside is so empty.

I stagger backwards.

What have I done? I’ve gone mad. Insane. I remember Abigail’s words, and a strange clarity overwhelms me, filters through like an awakening as I register what should have been so obvious. A good lay, but… But what? What was she about to say?

A bitter ball of dread sinks deep inside my stomach.

But he couldn’t get me pregnant.

And that is when I see Miles, his tortured expression taking in the scene before him. He moves to Abe’s bed, finds his hand, lifts it, checks his pulse, and as he does so, I remember the terrible practical joke of years before when I was a medical student.

‘How long have you been here, Miles?’

‘The whole time. I heard your conversation with Abigail, all of it.’ He shakes his head. ‘Abe is dead.’ He touches the young man’s hair, smooths back the corkscrew curls from his forehead. In death, Abe looks so very like me.

‘Go home, Rose,’ Miles says. ‘I’ll tell the staff you’ve got a migraine.’ He pauses. Coughs. Wheezes, as if he can’t find breath. ‘I’ll finish up here.’

I glance at Abe’s body. What have I done? Then I find my husband’s eyes and my heart fissures even more.

‘I heard everything Abigail said,’ he carries on. ‘I never knew. I didn’t know Deane introduced her to you as his sister. You didn’t tell me. All these weeks Abigail’s been visiting, and you didn’t tell me.’

He was here throughout my confrontation with Abigail, and while I was muting Abe’s monitor and tampering with his central line. He didn’t stop me.

My stomach twists