In Camera

He's not alone.

 

Like a child when mummy and daddy argued, she sat very still and didn't make a sound. And it was that same feeling. Nausea. Eyes wide, watching, following the action.

The murders had been all over the front pages for the last two weeks. Gruesome pictures, reconstructed crime scenes and terrible accounts of what probably happened. Victims smiling faces stared out at the reader.

The resuscitation team cut his tee-shirt up the middle with large square nose scissors. Velvet slick, damson-red material peeled back as a tall doctor squirted gel onto metal pads.

"Two-fifty," the doctor shouted to an overweight nurse who forced the digital display upward with a clickity-click.

His body took the force of the shock. This wasn't sanitised like on television. Like the tide when it came in over shingles, he foamed froth. It leaked from his mouth and nostrils slowly.  

She sat and watched. Sat and waited. The room smelled of bleach, blood and sick. It made the back of her throat itch while all around the material of uniforms swished like cheap curtains, as the staff rushed, as they worked, as she sat.

"Three hundred," and the display clickity-clicked upward.

The chair cut into her thighs, the hard plastic edges uncomfortable. She shifted. What a warped designer to ignore both comfort and aesthetic.

"Again."

That familiar sound of all muscles and anticipation tensing filled the air, overtaking even the sound of dropped needle caps, nurses conferring quickly, and the doctors arguing about stopping, starting, hitting him again with a higher shock or signing his life away.

She wondered if they'd use a black, blue or red biro?

She shifted in that uncomfortable seat and picked at a hang nail. She pulled it off sharply, like she'd been taught to do with plasters.

That pain shouldn't be delayed. Face it head on with a glint in your eye and smile on your lips. She'd heard that on television.

She dropped the nail in the bin. It was a hospital, after all. Things had to stay clean.

A beeping filled the air, magically pausing everyone�"but only for a moment.

"Good work, everyone."

It was. Really.  

They took measurements. They jabbed him with needles. Sharp slithers of metal that bent the skin until finally they tore between corpuscles and slipped slickly in. She smoothed her skirt out in the room that smelt of bleach, blood and vomit. And finally they were alone. It was just him, her and the beeping monitor.

She stood over him. He was a mess of cuts and bruises and scrapes and slashes.

She slipped her hand under his. He had strong hands. Wide hands. Hands that could catch spiders. Hands that could change light bulbs and take rubbish out. Useful hands. Hands that meant something.

She squeezed his useful hand.

"I'll be here when you wake up."

 

###

 

She side stepped a puddle of clear liquid on the floor of the hall, and then the other way as a janitor pushed a mop and bucket toward it. Life could be a strange dance.

Something that looked like something resembling coffee squirted out of the machine. The card was thin; the cup was hot, even with a napkin wrapped around it.

She sipped it. She dropped the full cup in the bin. But life was still too short for bad coffee.

Darkness sank the hospital into dusk. Instinct, and she side stepped where that clear liquid had been and pushed the heavy door to the room open.

Her job was not a complex one. It was simply to provide comfort and to be there for people. It was almost like being a member of the clergy. She chuckled at that. He groaned. She went to him.

"Lucky that coffee was bad."

That strong hand felt warmer, felt more alive now. Time, even the shortest amount, really could help.

He cracked his blackened eyes open and made a sound like words but not like words. If you knew what he was trying to say perhaps it would have made sense, but she had no idea, no clue. She squeezed his hand instead. Studies had showed that physical contact was comforting. She squeezed again. He squeezed back and licked his lips.

With effort, words formed and linked together. And when linked they created a sentence.

"I'm not dead?"

She brushed his hair back from his bruised forehead.

"No."

He had, what she realised were, puppy dog eyes. They were warm and expressive, and although blood shot, she knew they often got him out of scrapes.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"I'm here so you're not alone."

That scientific study had shown that loneliness could be a killer. After reading it she wondered how much money and time had been spent proving something that every person knew?

He took a deep breath before managing, "What happened?"

This part used to trip her up. In the early years she was never too comfortable telling them, but as time went on, as it slowly drifted like river debris, she knew there was little point in delaying the inevitable. What had happened had happened. It was what it was.

She sat on the side of the bed.

"The attacks have been all over the news for weeks; it was like a lion letting a gazelle know it was being tracked.

"Maggie's mother had got her a stun gun so when you dragged her into the alley she delivered ten thousand volts through your nervous system.

"POW!" she squeezed his hand suddenly.

"She shouted, screamed, and when help came, they recognised you from all that publicity. It's strange how base people can be when they have to justify becoming what they’re judging. I think eight weeks of rapes and murders needed to come out somewhere."

She squeezed again.

"I'm glad they got the right person. Sometimes they don't and I end up working a lot of overtime."

His puppy dog eyes were wide. He shook his head, and despite the pain it didn't stop.

"Not me!" he managed through a cut lip.

She smiled.

"I'm here to make sure you're not alone. I'm not here to judge you." The far wall split down the centre, white light streaming out as it widened and formed a large hole. "That's her job."

A tall blonde stepped through, surrounded in a haze of summer light. Her voice was wrong. Her face, too. It was right but not. It was human but wrong. There was something so amiss it sent his heart monitor into a galloping ping.

"I'm here to take you with me." The blonde turned from him to her. "Nurse?"

She squeezed his hand and with the other�"being careful of that one shorter nail�"she placed a thumb and finger on either side of his temples. She hugged his skull until it cracked.

The heart monitor was at peace with a single melodic tone.

The resuscitation team burst in. A doctor confirmed his lacking vitals whilst standing in her shoes. Literally, he was in her space, as if there wasn't enough, as if in this huge room they were squeezed into the same reality. She shivered; so did he. He stopped, looked around and frowned. He couldn't understand that feeling. She knew he had no frame of reference. It was common.  

"Time of death, ten seventeen," he said.

And finally he stepped back out of her skin, of her bones, and head, and all of those things he wasn't ready to see yet.

 

No, that was next month. He'd been a naughty boy, too.