SNAFU
By Angharad
Part 7
We were all rather tired the next morning,
but no one seemed to want to talk about the events of the night. Both my
parents stayed home that morning and after a light lunch they took me to the
station. I slept much of my journey back to Barbury feeling stiff and grumpy
when I arrived there.
Upon arriving at my quarters, I was
overwhelmed by the reception I received, they all seemed pleased to see me, and
in some ways I was glad to be back. My life could now get back to a degree of
normalcy, well as close as it was going to. Despite the grumbles I had an early
night and awoke feeling much better, but I would need to, I had much catching
up to do.
In terms of the theoretical side, I was up
to speed if not ahead of most of them, what I had missed were practical things,
learning techniques and actual hands on training. So for the next month this
was what happened. I was very tired, it was surprisingly physical, moving
patients, doing dressings, bathing and supervising patient’s toilet. I had
worked on the medical ward dealing with infections and heart problems, now I
was moved to surgical.
Well it was supposed to be surgical, but I
was there about a day and a bit when ITU called for help. I was despatched as
the cavalry, although with my relative novice status I couldn’t think why.
Surely they’d want more experienced staff, but it was me they got.
Intensive care is tough, and very
specialised. Patients have named nurses because some form of rapport is so
important in view of the serious nature of the illness. Stays may be short or
long depending upon progress of the patient, only the very sick are kept here,
it’s too expensive to do otherwise. It can cost thousands of pounds a day to
keep someone here on life support using expensive drugs and equipment and highly
paid, well trained staff. It is also highly technical ITU nurses are
technicians, monitoring all these machines and nurses, tending to the human
need of their patients. Sadly even with all this, people still die and I saw
several walk away from their bodies while I was there. I also saw others
collected by what I presumed were relatives or friends. It’s hard to tell with
spirit folk.
Some of the other staff began to query how
I knew who was about to die when it seemed unlikely from the electronic monitoring.
It took much badgering before I revealed my source, that I could sometimes see
these discarnate entities. It spooked some of them and they avoided me, well
unless they needed to make contact. I felt a little dejected. Having been part
of the team elsewhere, rejection took me back to my school days and that
naturally brought up all sorts of unwanted baggage. Astonishingly, I hadn’t yet
caught up with Pam Davis. I did so in a most surprising way.
It was a Tuesday evening, well quite late
night when the grapevine said that a nurse was on her way from casualty, all
sorts of rumour abounded from accident to assault to kidnap by terrorists. In
fact it was inhalation of vomit.
Being a student nurse, meant I often acted
as a gofer, or helped setting up drips or physically moving patients into or
out of bed. I also got the job of preparing the bodies for collection by
undertakers. The latter because I seemed tuned into the dead and no one else
liked to do it. I didn’t either, but someone had to do it, and it fell to me.
The only creepy part is when you move a body and air in the lungs or body
cavity makes a groaning noise, a burp or a fart. The first few times it
frightens the life out of you, then it makes you laugh. There are few jokes in
playing with the recently deceased, so you take laughs where you can find them.
So I had just come back from sorting out
another newly dead body, when I was called to help a nurse admitting a new
patient. I wasn’t too happy, I should have been on my break, but that’s ITU.
“Curtis can you gimme a hand?”
“Sure corp.” I went over to the nurse
corporal who was standing by the gurney. Together with two orderlies we lifted
the lifeless patient onto the bed. Well she was alive, but only just. It seems
that a surfeit of larger, collapsing in the toilet and blocked airways caused
vomit to be inhaled. It was maybe an hour or two before she was found. Not
good.
Vomit is horrible stuff. Well even non
nurses know that. It stinks and just a spot makes the rest of us want to follow
suit. I hate being sick, I hate the smell of it, and I am not very good when I
have to hold a bowl for someone who can’t hold their own - no pun intended. I
go a delicate shade of green or sometimes blue through trying to hold my
breath.
So we agree sick is yucky stuff. Stomach
contents are designed to be in one’s stomach, not over the bed, the bathroom
floor or in the lungs. It’s nasty stuff full of whatever the food or drink
contains, plus any bugs therein, plus – and this is the worst bit, stomach
acid.
Everything that goes down the hatch passes
through an acid bath, hydrochloric acid to be exact, presumably because all
chlorides, the salts of hydrochloric acid are water soluble, which helps
absorption. The guts are designed for it. Alas the lungs are not. So if you put
lots of fluid in the lungs, it tends to impede breathing otherwise known as
drowning. If you put corrosive fluid in the lungs it tends to severely damage
large areas of the sensitive lung tissue. If treatment is offered rapidly,
this minimised and recovery is fair to good. If treatment is delayed then the
prognosis is not good, decreasing by the minute, especially if there is large
scale inundation. In this case lack of oxygenation of the brain can cause
irreversible damage quite quickly. This was the case in point.
As I helped set up the lines of the IVs and
associated machines, I didn’t recognise who the unfortunate was. There was
quite severe facial bruising from a fall and no one looks the same with a
tracheostomy and intubation. It was only towards the end of the process, when
all the machines were attached and beeping, and the drips running, when the
nurse corporal put up a name tab over the bed. It was Pam Davis, I nearly fell
over and went all cold. The corporal noticed me and said,” You okay Curtis
looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Ha ha.”
I began to sway and apparently went very
pale. She grabbed me and I managed to stay conscious. “Are you okay?” she
repeated her question.
“I’ll be alright, I just haven’t had
anything to eat for a bit.”
“Sorry Curtis,” she said looking at her
watch, “you’re a bit late with your break aren’t you. How long you got to do?”
I looked at my watch, it was nearly four in
the morning. “I’m on until six.”
“It’ll be quiet now, gerroff to bed. Well
go on then.”
“Is she going to be alright?”
“Why do you know her?”
“Sort of, she was at my school I think.”
“Doesn’t look too good, probable brain
damage. They’ll do a MRI as soon she’s well enough to leave the unit. Kidneys
don’t look too special either.”
I don’t know what I felt. This relatively
lifeless body had been the person who had cause such massive alteration to my
life, an unwanted alteration. I had despised her most of my life, she was a
bully and totally despicable. Yet she was also a human being and in the most
awful situation. Despite the revulsion that my logic said I should feel, all I
could feel was pity. If she was brain damaged, then she may be better off dying
because no quality of life that I could recognise would be possible.
I walked over to her comatose form and
spoke to her, “Hello Pam, you’ll be alright now, you are in the safest place
you can be. You’ve been ill, but we’ll do all we can to help you get better. So
you just rest and recover as fast as you can.” I held her lifeless hand as I
spoke, it felt cold. I squeezed it and it responded with what I presumed was a
muscle spasm. I couldn’t tell. I watched her eyes as I talked to her, they were
scanning back and fore under the closed eyelids, a little like REM (rapid eye
movement) which indicates dreaming. I felt sick as I realised she could be
locked in this nightmare for the rest of her life. I offered a silent prayer, trading
my forgiveness for her recovery. Then I bade her goodnight and went back to my
room to sleep.
The latter did not come with any ease. I
was extremely tired and hungry, but I couldn’t face the idea of food. I chewed
a sweet as I walked back to my room and didn’t even bother to clean my teeth, I
just undressed and lay on the bed. My head was swimming with strange ideas, and
I found it hard to get some point of reference to think things through
logically.
I was aware of the irony. Here was the
person I feared most in the world and she was less danger to me than a fly. But
instead of feeling liberated and free I felt cheated again. Life had prevented
me from confronting my fear and dealing with it, in the same way it had
destroyed my manhood. It took away any choice and I was forced to become who I
had become. How could it keep on doing this to me, it wasn’t fair.
It seemed doubly unfair that it should
prevent me having my say with the poor wretch who now lay in the intensive care
bed. Admittedly, her own stupidity had created her situation, but I’d have to
be a very hard nosed sort to take advantage of her when she was defenceless.
She might have done it to me, but I didn’t work that way. To have kicked her
when she was down, was against all I believed in, and I thanked my parents for
this fairness of mind. Some may consider it stupid, but it was how I felt. I
fell asleep wishing her well once again. I knew no matter what the outcome of
her illness, and it looked very bad for her, I knew she no longer held any
power over me. Were she to recover 100% and grow to twice her size, she would
never worry me again, let alone frighten me. I had at last moved on, and
realising that I drifted into a deep and troubled sleep.
I found myself in a strange place. I was
once more in ancient Egypt and at some sort of tribunal or trial. It began to
dawn on me that it was a trial for the soul of Pam Davis. The crocodile waited
with great anticipation, for any soul which failed the test – they were weighed
against a feather, was fed to the croc and languished in the Egyptian version
of hell or the underworld, rather than rising to their heaven to live in luxury
for all time.
I was merely an observer to these weird
proceedings, but my fascination turned to horror as I saw the scales in which
her heart was placed begin to dip against the feather. I found myself screaming
a protest. I was grasped by Anubis, god of the dead and leader of souls, and
was cast to the floor.
“How dare you interrupt these proceedings.
By what right do you do so?”
“I am sorry your greatness, but this person
is not dead.”
“She is as good as, and as we want the day
off tomorrow, we thought we’d hurry it along a bit.” (Well it was a dream!).
“So you are going to cast her to the
crocodile simply as an expediency.”
“In a word, yes. Why should you care, after
all it was your mistress who caused her to be in this mess.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are a servant of the Lady Sekhmet?”
“I am.”
“Well it was your hatred for the woman for
her treatment of you, which caused your mistress to destroy her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Anubis pointed at a large mirror and I saw
myself cursing Pam, wishing her all sorts of horrible fate. It seemed to scan
back over my life at a very rapid pace and I watched with horror as I relived
the pain and hurt from those days. No wonder I wished her dead. But that was
then, this was now, and I no longer felt that way. I felt ashamed of myself. If
anyone needed to be fed to the croc it was me.
“How can we stop this ?” I asked.
“We can’t. You have brought this about and
it will happen.”
“I don’t accept that”, I said, “I wish her
no harm.”
“There is perhaps one way in which this
tribunal can be stopped.” Said the jackal headed god.
“Please do it.” I asked him.
“I shall summon your mistress. If it
displeases her, prepare to be destroyed.” I thought perhaps I should have felt
scared, but hey, when you are about to be destroyed every other day, even by
the Eye of Re, you get a bit blasé. But I hid it well, they may not do
flippancy here!
The lioness headed goddess arrived and was
not in the best of moods, this did not bode well. “Your ladyship, this slave of
yours wants to take back a curse she made some time ago and spare the life of
this Pam woman.”
“Out of the question.” And with that she
turned to leave.
Without thinking I threw myself on the
floor before her and begged for the life of my unwitting victim. The goddess
stopped and regarded me with amusement. “I shall never understand you humans,
you ask for something and when we grant it, you change your mind.”
“I am sorry great and merciful goddess, but
I cannot condemn another for an act which I forgive.”
“Oh so now you decide their fates as well.”
“No great mistress, but I cannot condemn
another without condemning myself as well.”
“Fine, feed both to the crocodile, he looks
in need of a good meal.”
“Please mistress, spare her and take me.”
“Why should I? Just because you have some
form of death wish which occurs every few months. Why should I oblige you, why
not just take some Prozac?”
I very nearly laughed at this anachronism,
but it was a dream, and they do sometimes seem rather ‘Alice in Wonderland’,
but instead of a white rabbit we had a whole bunch of anthropomorphic Egyptian
deities and a feather.
“So what if I do spare her, what will you
offer me. I already own you until the end of time.”
“I have nothing to offer you mistress.”
“It’s a pretty poor bargain from my point
of view.”
“Ask what you will of me mistress.” I was
really struggling. I mean can you imagine what it feels like to be kneeling
before some seven foot tall woman who has a lioness’ head? Weird doesn’t nearly
enough describe it especially when you actually know she has a destructive
power even the USA can’t match for lethalness.
“Take her place then and get out of my
sight.”
I thanked her and found myself being
manhandled back to the tribunal, whereupon my heart was removed before my very
eyes and placed in the tray of the scales. I prepared to become croc fodder. I
closed my eyes and waited. Suddenly there was a commotion and I opened them
again. It seemed the unexpected had happened, my heart was lighter than the
feather. I was as surprised as the rest of them. What happens now ? I thought.
From the distance came a laughing that made
the whole place vibrate and a voice which came from my mistress, “Let them both
go, I’ll deal with them later.”
I woke up in a bath of sweat and I had sand
on my hands and feet. In fact there was sand in the bed. This was very strange.
It was daylight, about eight o clock and so I showered and went for some
breakfast. Afterwards, I went back to the ITU.
“Hi Jamie.” It was Lt. Smith. You missed
all the fun last night.
“I was here ‘till four.”
“This was during changeover.”
“What happened?”
“A comatose nurse who has more machines
attached to her than a formula one car, suddenly screams and gets up out of the
bed.”
“What!” I felt a cold shiver go down my
spine.
“I mean this woman has brain damage,
knackered kidneys and no lung function worth talking about, screams and then
gets off the bloody bed. We get her back to bed and start to disentangle
machines and drips etc. and she is breathing by herself, her throat appears to
have healed and instead of the last rites, we had to give her a shot to calm
her down. I have never seen a raising of the dead, but I reckon we came pretty
close to it a couple of hours ago. She’s been sent off for an MRI of head,
lungs and kidneys. It doesn’t make any sense, but I should think miracle just
about sums it up.”
“No one saw anybody unusual, did they.”
“One of the nurses thought they saw you by
her bedside.”
“That was before I went off at four.”
“You didn’t come back?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, why?”
“’Cos it was me who saw you Jamie. You
seemed to be talking in some foreign language and then it all went crazy.”
“I was asleep.”
“You sure.”
“Positive.”
“Well who was it? Another of your ghosts?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t care to mutter over some of
the others would you? They could do with some extraordinary help.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t me. I don’t know who
it was.”
“Okay, so it wasn’t you, maybe you can
explain how we found sand in the bed after our mysterious visitor, and a few
animal hairs, which I have sent off for analysis.”
I just shrugged my shoulders. I had an
idea, but no one would believe me. But I was delighted that whatever had
happened had happened, even if it meant confronting my fears. Perhaps I dreamt
it all. Could all of this be a bad dream? I pinched myself and it hurt.
It took me half the day to track down where
Pam was. She was now on a medical ward. I went to see her.
I gave her the flowers. “Oh thanks. Do I
know you? You look familiar.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I think I should
know you but I’ve been ill and it seems to have affected my memory.”
“No problem. I was on intensive care when
they admitted you. I came to see you with my own eyes. Anyway, I’m glad you’re
on the mend.”
“Hang on a minute, you were in my dream.”
“No, not me.”
“Yes it was you. You saved my life didn’t
you?”
“I’m a student nurse, I couldn’t save fifty
pence let alone someone’s life.”
“I’m sure it was you.”
“You probably saw me in ITU and the rest
was just a dream.”
“What about the sand?”
“What sand?”
“The sand they found in my bed?”
“I don’t know. I’m a nurse not a
geologist.”
“You look awfully familiar.”
“Sorry, I’ve got to go.”
“Jamie Curtis! Are you the girl I was in
school with?” I knew I shouldn’t have worn my uniform with its name tag.
“Shush keep it quiet!” I hissed at her.
“It is, isn’t it?” she hissed back at me
like a demented viper.
“What if it is?”
“You look really well.”
“Do I?”
“I like your hair up like that, you used to
wear it so short before didn’t you?”
“Things were different back then.”
“Yes I know, you’ve change quite a bit.”
She smiled at me, and for one moment I began to wish I hadn’t bothered
preventing the croc from having his dinner. I wondered if she would now
blackmail me.
“It was you last night, wasn’t it?”
“In ITU? Yes.”
“No silly, in my dream. You saved me from a
crocodile and a lion.”
“You were delirious.”
“No I wasn’t. It was you, wasn’t it.”
“What if it had been?”
“After the way I treated you at school, I
was surprised you would help me.”
“I’m a nurse, I practise random acts of
kindness.”
“You took quite a risk didn’t you?”
“What coming here? The road isn’t that busy.”
“No you silly girl, in my dream.”
“I don’t know, I have enough problems with
my own dreams.”
“It wasn’t a dream was it?”
“No it was delirium.”
“If you say so. But thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“To you maybe, I nearly died.”
“Nearly isn’t quite the same as actual
doing it. Thank the doctors and nurses who looked after you. It was them who
saved you.”
“You always were modest. I feel sleepy,
this dying lark doesn’t half take it out of me. Thank you once again. Don’t
worry, I won’t cause you any trouble ever again.”
“I know Pam. Just get some rest, we’ll talk
again.”
“Yes Jamie, I think we shall.” She smiled
at me and drifted off to sleep. I wandered back to my room, trying to work out
exactly what was happening. Like I said before, weird did not do this stuff
justice. It was mega weird.
My confrontation with the woman who had
effectively destroyed my life was over. It had been a non-event. I wasn’t
sorry. I had moved on. I was no longer the distraught adolescent who wanted to
see her burn in hell, I had grown beyond it and I felt pleased. Part of me was
no longer angry because it seemed that life did conspire to cause me to be
female and I was beginning to accept it at the deepest levels. The cause, some
past life pact with a deranged Egyptian goddess or much more mundane ones, were
not as important. What was important now was the future, and that was another
story.
Speculation about what might have been is a
fruitless task but we all do it as if the other path would have produced a
better outcome. Of course the grass is always greener, its human nature to
believe we would be better off if we’d done the other. Except, when you know
that things don’t get any better, a feeling we rarely admit just in case it
spoils our luck, tempts Providence and all the other similar adages.
Because I had always carried this feeling
of being cheated around with me, like some enormous mill-stone, I had rarely
felt, ‘this is as good as it gets’. I was too tied up with my lost potential to
realise that apart from never having a family, things wouldn’t necessarily have
been much different. Until the British Army got involved, and lets face it,
they could make a pantomime out of Proust novel. How we as a nation ever won a
war, puzzles me at times. But then life is full of paradoxes, the army being
just one of them.
So I spent my adolescence being small and
relatively feminine in appearance while loudly protesting in my squeaky voice,
that I was just as butch as most of the boys and some of the girls! On reflection,
some of the girls were more boyish than I was, and naturally most of the boys
were too. I laughed at myself when I wondered how many of my contemporary
teenagers at school still slept with a teddy, as I did, and how many of them
had actually made the clothes he wore? I was well hard by any comparison! What
a joke I must have seemed, small, sensitive and squeaky voiced and sixteen. The
only boy in the school without zits, no wonder the girls liked me. I was the
only boy who didn’t have a face full of pus! However, they didn’t treat me
like a boy unless it was as a much younger brother. They certainly didn’t see
me as potential mate, and I must have been the only boy who got asked to
baby-sit on a regular basis. I had never thought about that before.
When I was fourteen I managed to save
several hundred pounds to buy myself a laptop computer. Okay, it wasn’t state
of the art but it burned CDs and got me on the internet and all the other
things I needed it to do. So I was pleased with it and the envy of my peer
group, most of them. What I had completely forgotten was how I got the money,
by babysitting. I felt myself blush as I recalled this ancient memory.
So I was a goodie-goodie, we can’t help our
natures. I did do things wrong and remember I did almost condemn Pam to burn in
hell, or the crocodile equivalent. So I wasn’t all sweetness and light, and I’m
still not. I’m human, apart from the lioness thing, but we won’t discuss that!
I was fourteen and living in a close of
nice four bed-roomed detached houses, the house in which my parents continue to
reside. The other residents were similar to my family, professionals with one
or two spoilt brats and the odd child saint like myself (joke!).
The Johns were a doctor and his wife, and
they set up a card school where they played for the chance to sleep with each
other’s wives and sexually abuse the children. In reality, Dr Johns was a
bridge fanatic and his wife was quite a player too. They had two young children
Bill and Eluned (pronounced Ee-lin-id), Mrs Johns was Welsh. Bill was about
five and Linnie, as I called her was about seven, so effectively half my age.
Their regular baby-sitter was a girl called Janet who was nearly eighteen and
off to uni when she wasn’t breaking the hearts of half the young men in the
district. She was quite a looker, blonde with curvy figure and dazzling smile.
I fell in love with that smile but she was far too mature to even see me, a
small squeaky pimple free zone!
One day, the Johns were short of a
baby-sitter at fairly short notice and as my parents were part of the Willow
Close bridge set, I got volunteered. There were four couples who made up the
bridge set, three of whom lived in the close and the fourth around the corner
in the next close, which was connected by a footpath. Janet had had quite a
local clientele for her moneymaking activities, by pure chance it fell into my
lap, or should I say laptop.
Not the most salubrious occupation for such
a macho man as myself, but hell we all have to make sacrifices to earn a crust.
I blushed as I remembered the Hewetts asking my mum if her daughter could
baby-sit for them. She thought it was quite funny at the time, but I went off
on one and sulked for most of the afternoon. They had two daughters called Lucy
and Chloe. The Hewetts were a bit pretentious even by Willow Close standards.
He was a civil engineer from somewhere up north and she was district nurse.
Some bloody nurse if she couldn’t tell the difference between a squeaky-voiced
boy and a girl.
To cut the story short, she forgave my
anatomical deficiencies and I overlooked hers and her daughters’. They were all
as plain as the pampas and had all the makings of a tribe of bean poles, being
as thin as rakes. Even Mr Hewett, Len, was about six foot three of matchstick.
He did however, have one saving grace, he had a Cambridge blue for athletics
being a onetime holder of the Oxbridge record for the 1500 metres. So I could
respect him, and I did have a sneaking regard for his anorexic wife after she
dealt with my cuts and grazes – I came off my bike, at about a million miles an
hour crashing into the pavement and spilling my rare blood group all over it.
How I didn’t rearrange my dental structure I will never know, but I did put my
ivories through my tongue, and had a few cuts and grazes to arms and legs. Mrs
Hewett, sewed me back together and I had barely a mark a month later. Today I’m
quite thankful she did such a good job.
Back to my tale of enterprise. I got the
job thanks to my father volunteering me in Janet’s absence and I was apparently
rather good at it, because they all used me at various times and I used to get
five pounds an hour, plus food and fizzy drinks, so I did well out of it.
I also got to do my homework once I settled
the various offspring down, so it worked out to my advantage in all sorts of
ways. Again I blush as I recall being shown how to change nappies, slightly
differently for boys and girls and how to make up drinks and things when necessary.
I became quite the little nursemaid, but if I did a good job, I often got a
bonus. To my shame, I sometimes enjoyed looking after the kids. Macho man has a
tender side, or getting in touch with my feminine side. Ha! What a joke that
turned out to be. But I was quite good with kids, and for some reason they
seemed to take to me as well if not better than Janet.
It got to such a stage, that when they had
a big bridge tournament all the kids would be brought to our house and I looked
after all seven of them, with Linnie’s help, she being the elder stateswoman of
the group. She used to love being my assistant. But I used to get very
embarrassed when she said she wished she’d had a big sister like me! I think
she only did it to wind me up, but she could have meant it, especially when my
hair got a bit long and I wore it in a pony tail. She brought me a very pretty
scrunchie one evening. I got it cut the next day and she was quite upset about
it.
At age fifteen, I began to appreciate
puberty had somehow missed me. I was still pimple free and squeaky voiced. My
peers noticed, my parents did not. So I became ostracized by previous school
mates. Thankfully I had my computer and I sublimated my deficiencies with
electronic games or my studies. I still rode my bike, but it was on my own or
shepherding groups of littlies from the close. Now I think of it, I have memory
of one of my class mates seeing me with three or four little ones and I was
called ‘Nanny Curtis’ for a few weeks. Mine was not a normal childhood, thanks
to the intervention of Pam Davis’ knee to my gonads.
I recalled that day. I still felt sick as I
felt the bony part of her leg make contact with a very soft part of my anatomy.
I know I keeled over finding it hard to breathe. The pain was unbelievable and
I cried buckets. It was just the two of us, I was eleven and she was two years
my senior. I shuddered as I remembered. Maybe I should have left her to the
crocodile, she was evil to me in those days.
The things she made me do, then when I once
refused she would twist my arm or punch me or on the final occasion knee me.
Now I knew she had destroyed my emerging gonads, neither of us knew that then,
and my suspended development happened. I still have the voice of an eleven year
old boy. I felt the tear run down my cheek. This statement is not quite true
because my voice did change slightly, especially after the hormones, but it was
very little and I can and do sing soprano, albeit only in the shower these
days. I reached my room and felt quite desultory, I had to leave all this
behind and look to the future. But could I? I understood perfectly how abused
children carry the scars for so long, effectively I was one of them and my
doting parents didn’t notice, didn’t ask why at eighteen my voice had not broken
or my stature had grown so little. Could they really have been so blind as not
to see it, so rapt in their own lives? This was becoming too cathartic, I
needed a distraction, I went back to work.
“Ah, Nurse Curtis. Could I see you in my
office please, now.” What did Major Collins want. I walked behind him, my
shorter legs moving far quicker than his long ranging ones. He beckoned me in
and closed the door behind us.
“Please sit.” I sat as instructed. I had
been in the office once or twice before. I remembered all the medical journals
and textbooks on the shelves, plus the army memorabilia, a display of cap
badges, photos of him with HM the Queen, Tony Blair and a large photo of a
group of soldiers stood or sat in ranks, obviously a departmental and official
photo. I had one of my final year in school, with all my contemporaries. I
still looked like a girl.
“It has come to my attention that you, erm,
that you see ghosts and dead people.” The Major was having a bit of difficulty
with the concept, it possibly being beyond his map of the world.
“If I was to say I did sometimes, would it
have some affect upon my career here?” I’m not sure if I had given the right
response, or indeed why I had asked the question. Did I still want out? Perhaps
I did.
“No, not unless it could be demonstrated
you were having hallucinations or were psychotic.”
Well that’s alright then, I thought to
myself, unless they think I am potty.
“It isn’t so much about that…. Well I
suppose it is in a way. It’s about finding sand and animal hair in an intensive
care bed at which you were seen during the night.”
“I wasn’t there sir.”
“But you were seen.”
“It was at the end of a long shift and I
was fast asleep in my own bed.”
“You should have still been on duty.”
“I had been sent off early because I’d had
no break and had laid out a newly dead patient before hand, a job none of the
others will do.”
“So you maintain you were in bed and
asleep.”
“Yes sir I was.”
“No one saw you?”
“No sir, I sleep on my own as per policy of
the nursing school.”
“Quite so. So you weren’t there?”
“No sir.”
“Can you explain the sand and animal hair?”
“As I wasn’t there sir, no I can’t.”
“How do you think they got there?”
“I presume somebody put them there sir.”
“But it wasn’t you?”
“No sir it wasn’t.”
“Do you see dead people?”
“I fail to see the relevance of this sir,
whether I do or not, wouldn’t cause sand to appear in the bed of the ITU.”
“How do you explain Nurse Davis’ recovery?”
“Why should I have any better explanation
than you do sir? You have much more training, knowledge and experience than I
do.”
“Yes I do and I have never seen anything
like it in all my life. If I had been called to sign a death certificate I
would not have been surprised because she was near to death. I have never seen
anyone with half the problems she had make a recovery like she did. It is
extraordinary. It seems that when you are around extraordinary things seem to
happen. Is this mere coincidence?”
“With all due respect sir, I am not aware
of any other extraordinary event.”
“What about all the dead people?”
“What dead people, sir?”
“The ones you allegedly see.”
“Oh we’re back to that are we. Okay, I see
dead people. That makes me crazy, so can you discharge me and I can go home and
get on with my life.”
“Jamie, please don’t take that tone with
me. I am witness to a remarkable happening. An event to which the term miracle
could easily and rightly be applied. You are allegedly seen at the place. Sand
and animal hair is found at the place, apparently arriving there mysteriously.
You are alleged to see things which we mere mortals do not. I am asking for you
to help me understand something which I cannot. It makes no sense, it seems to
turn the laws of science upon their head. Please help me to understand.”
“Sir, I don’t know why you seem to think I
understand any better than you do.”
“We seem to be going around in circles. I
believe you know what happened last night. Whether you had a direct hand in it
I don’t know. I should like you to tell me what you think happened, on the
understanding that it is off the record and does not go outside this office.”
I didn’t know what to do. I knew what
happened, I knew why it happened. The hows were beyond me. What I also didn’t
know was how much if any I could tell him.
“I’m really not sure what happened.”
“Were you there?”
“No sir. I was not there.”
“But you would agree it was a remarkable if
not miraculous event.”
“If you think so sir.”
“Why, what would your definition of a
miracle be then?”
“I don’t know sir, I’ve not thought about
them since trying to work out how the ones in the bible might really have
happened.”
“Could they not just have happened by
divine intervention?”
“If you say so sir.”
“Are you an atheist, Nurse Curtis?”
“Not especially sir, just not a believer in
fairy tales.”
“I see, so you see the stories of Jesus as
fairy tales do you?”
“Don’t I have that option?”
“Of course. I am just surprised, as you
were seen praying at her bedside.”
“I keep telling you it wasn’t me.”
“Why the sand, Nurse Curtis? What was the
significance of that?”
“If you’ve quite finished sir, I should
like to go. I was not there and do not know how, whatever happened, happened.”
I stood up to leave. “Please sit down again
Jamie, I’ll tell you when I’ve finished.” I sat and folded my arms,
demonstrating my displeasure.
“Ever been to Egypt?”
“No sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“But you know about it, don’t you? Read
lots about it, if I know you Curtis.”
“Years ago.”
“Know anything about a lion headed
goddess?”
At this I nearly choked and I felt myself
go pale. “They had all sorts of animal human hybrids in their pantheon.”
“Yes, yes they did. But only one of them
was seen coming out of your room.”
“What sir, when?”
“Last night.”
I was now in deepest cack. Who had seen it
and what had they seen, or was he bluffing, if so how could he know about the
Egyptian connection. Oh bugger!
“Sir are you trying to tell me that someone
saw someone with a lion’s head coming from my room? Wasn’t the same person who
imagined they saw me in ITU when I was fast asleep in bed?”
“It was Captain Brice, would you consider
her fanciful?” He had me there and he knew it.
“Well sir, if Captain Brice saw a
triceratops coming from my room, I should believe her no matter how unlikely it
was.”
“But she didn’t see a triceratops, or a pink
elephant, but a tall female with the head of a lioness and a sphere of some
sort between her ears. It sounds remarkably like a description of the ancient
Egyptian goddess called Sekhmet. Would you not agree?”
“Who am I to doubt my CO, sir?”
“Spare me the evasions and tell me what the
bloody hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“I am trying to be reasonable Curtis, in
dealing with a very unreasonable thing. You are the one person whom I suspect
could help me in understanding this strange occurrence. I will ask you once
more, can you tell me what on earth is going on here?”
“No sir.”
“Would you tell Captain Brice?”
“Tell her what sir?”
“Don’t piss me about Curtis.”
“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t know what you
are talking about.”
“So why did you go pale when I mentioned
your goddess friend?”
“Did I sir? I couldn’t see that.”
“Are you into magic and stuff?”
“What conjuring and prestidigitation,sir?”
“You know full well what I mean. Mumbo
bloody jumbo and raising spirits or Egyptian goddesses.”
“Sir, okay I’ll tell you what I know. I
know nothing about all this miracle stuff. I was fast asleep in bed. I do know
however, were I to be into Egyptian magic or mumbo jumbo in your estimation, I
would most certainly not be calling up Sekhmet. Do you know what she is capable
of…”
“Do you believe all that stuff?”
“I have a healthy scepticism, but were I to
experiment with the occult I would try something far less innocuous to call up,
not the ‘Eye of Re’, the destroyer of nations.”
“So you do know something! Captain Brice
was right.”
“I know a little about the deity to which
you refer, along with bits about Jupiter and Hera, or Zeus or Ganesh or Shiva
and lots of other mythologies. I used to read about them when I was a kid. That
doesn’t make me the army’s version of Aleister Crowley or Jesus Christ. I did
not raise the dead or call up a spirit. Can I go now? I have work to do.”
“I have asked our local museum to identify
the sand and hair. You will not be surprised to learn the sand could have come
from Egypt and the hair was from a lion or lioness. You may go, but until I
find out what happened, do not consider this matter closed.”
I left his office feeling very vulnerable.
Things were happening over which I had no control – a familiar situation, but
not one I enjoyed. Others were being drawn into my strange world, or the
strange world which seemed to follow me. I had no responsibility for any of it,
well very limited. Oh shit! Was it all my fault? How could it be? Just how could
I be responsible for a psychotic, psychopathic, deranged Egyptian goddess? Even
in my craziest moments I only wanted to destroy one person, and when it came to
it, I couldn’t even do that. So how in the name of all that’s wonderful, could
I be held responsible for all this.
I mean, what self respecting goddess would
become involved with me? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps manifesting as a little
black dog and following Winston Churchill about, that would seem more credible.
Plus the fact that he was a s mad as march hare, makes it doubly credible. But
someone like me? You have got to be joking. It’s like something out of ‘Ghost
Busters’.
I worked my shift, it was miserable. I kept
getting funny glances and sniggers. It struck me as ironic that this is possibly
what would have happened had it got out about my change of gender. Now I had
first hand experience of what must have happened to some of the people I read
about in my researches. I wanted to be angry, on their behalf. I wanted to be
angry on my behalf. I also wanted to just run away. Several times I nearly said
something, but desisted because I thought it would make things worse. I nearly
shouted, “Yes it was me who raised the dead, I’m a transsexual too, so fucking
what!” But I didn’t.
I felt very alone, because I couldn’t speak
to my parents or anyone else who could understand. My gran would have
understood. I wish she were here now. She always understood me.
Over the next week I put up with the
embarrassment and the accusing looks. I kept away from Pam Davis and everyone
else. I was either in my room, off the camp or working. I avoided everyone like
the plague. I had borrowed a bicycle from another nurse and used to ride out
into the countryside and sit and watch the birds and bees or just sit.
Sometimes I’d take a book with me. Always it would seem I had my leonine friend
with me, although I didn’t see her. Well not until one gorgeous, sunny
afternoon.
I was about five miles from the camp and
hospital, sat on a picnic table near the river, reading a book. I started when
unbeknownst to me, a shadow fell across the pages. I looked up. There before me
was a young man.
“Did I frighten you?” He asked. He was
about five foot ten and well built, with dark hair and a five o clock shadow on
his cheeks and chin.
“You made me jump a little.”
“You’re very pretty.” He began the chat up,
or so I thought.
“Look it’s a lovely day. Thanks for the
compliment, but I’d just like to read my book.”