rel="nofollow" href="#litres_trial_promo">Thirty
They told me afterwards that when Mrs Lennox died, Jenny – who had the reputation of being the most cheerful, most patient, most loving nurse on the gerry unit – had been heard to say, quite clearly, ‘Thank Christ for that.’
You might find that a shocking sentiment; but the girls who told me it didn’t think so, and neither did I. We knew well enough what Jenny had gone through; had seen how that grim old woman had worn down her patience, and turned her bright-eyed enthusiasm into bitterness and tears. And we’d seen more. We’d seen her fear. For all her cool professionalism, she had come to dread that darkened room and its occupant at the far end of the ward. Uncomprehending, her friends and colleagues had shrugged it off: ignored the signs. Only now did we realize that Staff Nurse Jenny Thomas had been truly afraid of entering that room alone, even after its occupant had died. In fact, especially after its occupant had died.
It had been a sombre winter afternoon when the doctor was called round to certify Mrs Lennox dead. By all accounts he’d done so as quickly as possible, and left the small, malodorous room with some haste. Jenny had described the old woman to me once, and I could picture her lying there, with that waxen immobility that immediately distinguishes death from sleep. A gaunt face staring up from the pillow, its lines of age contrasting bizarrely with the jet-black of her dyed hair. Eyes still half-open; jawbone slack.
There were no relatives to inform, so at least they’d been spared that thankless duty. The problems began when Jenny refused to lay the body out.
Sister accepted that the patient had not been noted for her personal hygiene: nightdress and bedclothes were stained and stinking. The body was still damp with the patina of sweat raised by the final struggle against death. Of course it wasn’t going to be a pleasant job, but it had to be done, and besides, they needed the bed.
Still Jenny had refused.
She was reminded of the staffing situation – two trained nurses including herself (Sister was about to go off) and a completely inexperienced student, to run a twenty-bed ward. The other staff nurse was starting the drug-round; Jenny would have to do the body, and do it on her own.
A third time she’d refused. The Sister must have been quite nonplussed, getting this from an experienced nurse like Jen: a girl she knew and liked. But she had no option now but to threaten disciplinary action. And finally, reluctantly, Jen had relented, and turned back towards the room where the body of Mrs Lennox lay waiting for her ministrations.
Laying-out is standard procedure, of course. The body is washed, the limbs straightened; the orifices plugged with cotton wool. Not a nice job at the best of times, but when you’re doing it alone it can be quite unnerving. Me, I’ll find myself talking to them sometimes – explaining what I’m doing, apologizing for the indignities. I still remember that time I rolled a body over and the air trapped in its chest escaped in a long, sepulchral sigh. That was back when I was in my second year. I was shaking for hours.
So I knew how Jenny must have felt, washing that cooling corpse in the grey winter dusk; all alone in the room. At one point she’d emerged for a breather, and was talking with the student when abruptly she’d shivered and turned round sharply. The rather startled first year had asked her what was wrong, and she’d said, nothing; but I reckoned I knew otherwise. With her back turned to the body, she’d felt something – some shift in the air behind her, some coolness on the nape of her neck – that made her feel she was being watched. Maybe she was half expecting the corpse to have moved, be it ever so slightly, since she’d seen it last.
Either way, she’d returned to the job in hand; and after a while the porters arrived with their clanking tin trolley to collect the deceased. The body in the room, shrouded now and wrapped in a sheet from head to foot, was unceremoniously loaded aboard and wheeled off towards the lifts and, via them, the mortuary fridge. Jenny couldn’t have been the only person to have thought, good riddance.
Shortly afterwards, the same student nurse was sent down past Mrs Lennox’s old room to the equipment cupboard in the darkened link corridor beyond it. She’d got what she came for, and was just about to return when another nurse emerged from the ward after her.
That was her first thought, anyway, going by the uniform. But the figure was hunched, and wizened, and coming with slow, shuffling steps. In the moment before her eyes readjusted to the gloom of the corridor, she’d had the grotesque impression of a young nurse who’d aged decades overnight, worn out by the pressure of work. And then she saw the face.
Mrs Lennox’s face, framed by the stringy black hair spilling out from beneath the nurse’s cap: grinning at her.
The poor girl fainted then: it may sound like a cliché, but maybe you would have too. When she came round, the ‘nurse’ was nowhere to be seen – and, back on the ward, neither was Jenny. A search of the whole floor proved fruitless.
I don’t know at what stage the first, horrible doubts began to occur to people; but eventually someone suggested a visit to the morgue. Perhaps it was just an attempt to placate the student, who was near-hysterical in her account of the dead patient come back to life. So down they went, into the cold room: opened the compartment where Mrs Lennox had supposedly been stored, and pulled out the muffled form within. And even before they’d unwrapped the sheet from around the head, I think they must have realized who they’d find.
It was Jenny, of course, cool and naked in her shroud; her body washed and prepared in the proper manner. Someone had strangled her with their bare hands. Someone with very long and unkempt fingernails.
Mrs Lennox hasn’t been seen since. Under questioning, the certifying doctor admitted that he’d been for so long without sleep that he might have omitted to check for all the vital signs, and overlooked some spark of life still remaining. And Jenny Thomas had once told me, in wide-eyed earnest, that the woman was evil. That the woman was a witch.
One of them was right, of course. I really hope it was the doctor.
But now, sitting here in the gloom … and listening to the silence of the corridor outside … I didn’t think he had been.
Maybe I was just in one of those moods.
Casualty was proving quiet tonight. The usual influx in the hour after closing time had long since slowed to a trickle, the last stragglers from the rearguard of yesterday’s business – leaving us in limbo to wait for the morning. And you can