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The moment of clarity was slipping. ‘I’ll be careful, don’t you worry.’
‘Yes, keep low, stay in the shadows and don’t give them any clues to your whereabouts.’
Waiting for the kettle to boil, I plucked out my iPhone and whizzed off a message to Tom.
Got one for you. Midnight-ish.
As I shook three sachets of Silver Spoon into the tea my phone chirped a reply.
Thank fuck. I was losing the will to live – the company here is deathly dull!
I smiled and slipped my phone away. The thought of Tom always gave me a thrill of anticipation, not to mention that I liked to make the most of his impressive body, and all of its generous assets, while I could.
After dodging Germans to take Mr Watkins his tea and another, warmer, blanket, I helped an old guy onto a commode, replaced several urine bottles – which included a battle with a particularly onerous waste-masher in the sluice – and changed an insulin syringe with Tinkard.
‘You OK to take first break?’ she asked, signing the drug chart and shoving it back in the folder. Her tone implied I had no choice, despite the guise of a question.
But I was used to this. First break was the worst and as a bank nurse, going to whichever ward was short because of illness, holidays or lack of employable staff in the Dales, I always got stuck with it. The trouble with taking the first two hours was it was too early to crave sleep and too early to have the munchies so it made the rest of the shift so damn long. ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said with a shrug. I could have argued, made a fuss, but what was the point? Besides, tonight it might just work in my favour.
Mr Parslow was, of course, waiting when Annie, the auburn-haired staff nurse, and I finally headed into sideward six.
‘You want to wash or dry?’ she asked.
‘I’ll dry.’ May as well save my over-scrubbed hands from water time.
She set the soapy bowl on the table and wheeled it close. Dumped in a wad of disposable flannels.
I lifted the sheet from Mr Parslow. He wore a pair of stained pyjama bottoms and a white string vest. ‘Are we taking this out?’ I asked, indicating the cannula in the back of his right hand.
‘Yeah, he was seen this morning by Javier, it was hardly an unexpected death.’
Plucking a roll of micropore from my pocket, I removed the plastic needle and applied a makeshift plaster for his bloodless skin with a ball of cotton wool. If deaths were unexpected or unexplained, an autopsy would be performed and that meant leaving any cannulas, catheters, or tubes where they were in case they’d contributed to the cause of death. Poor old Mr Parslow had simply died because his body had worn out with age.
‘How old was he?’ I asked.
Annie gently wiped his thin face. Not that it was dirty, but out of respect, to ensure he went to Rose Cottage clean and tidy. ‘Ninety-three, not a bad innings.’
‘I wouldn’t complain.’ Where she’d washed I dried with a blue-and-white striped towel. ‘How come Javier was on geriatrics?’ Dr Javier Garelli was a six-foot-two hunk of Italian muscle, his skin shone like bronze and he had cheekbones most supermodels would hurl themselves off the catwalk for. He worked in general surgery and as a senior house officer was Carl’s immediate superior.
‘Hartley’s surgical team were covering. Not that the day staff had a problem with Javier being around, they said his aftershave lingered for well over an hour after he’d headed to Eyre Ward.’
‘I’m sure.’ His aftershave was divine, kind of sugary but masculine too, fresh air but with suggestion of a long, sultry night. It was like the rest of him, sexy as hell. What I wouldn’t do to have my wicked way with him on a gurney one night.
‘He’s bonking Iceberg you know.’
My heart stuttered at this new bit of gossip and a rise of bile burned my chest. ‘No way.’
‘Yes way. Apparently they were caught in out-patients at two in the morning by a porter searching for a drip-stand.’ Her gaze caught mine and her eyes flashed. She had the look of a kid at Christmas who’d pop if they didn’t open their presents – now. ‘Yeah, he had her bent over a table, her awful crinoline trousers around her ankles and was going for it, big time …’ her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘up her bum.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah, seriously.’
She tugged Mr Parslow’s vest off his left arm and I did the same with the right, then we slipped it carefully over his head. As his bony skull settled back on the pillow I tried to close his eyes with my palm, but they slid back to half mast, unseeing and milky-glazed.
‘Roll to me?’ I asked.
Annie was already wringing out the flannel ready to wash his back. ‘Yep.’
I tugged the frail body by shoulder and hip, exposing angled scapulae and prominent vertebrae. A huff of air, like a strangled groan, rattled up from his chest and scratched through his throat. I glanced downwards. His jaw had slackened a little further at the movement. ‘Do you think the porter could be making it up? You know what they’re like.’
‘I don’t know, it’s a rumour, and rumours are like wildfire once they get started around here.’ She washed his back quickly then dried with a flourish. ‘But there’s no smoke without fire and stranger things have happened than the hospital’s number one stud getting up-hill action with the senior nurse.’
‘I suppose.’ I wondered what Javier could possibly see in Iceberg. She was a cold-hearted cow – everyone thought so. Last week she’d snapped at me for sitting down on the job when I’d gone off duty twenty minutes previously and was waiting for the rain to ease before heading home on my bicycle. Not bothering to listen to my explanation, she threatened to have my pay docked and inform Personnel of my inherent slackness.
I rested Mr Parslow onto his back again and rummaged in the bedside locker for clean pyjamas. Found some; navy and crisply new, with a Marks and Spencer price tag still in place. I wondered if whoever bought these had any idea they’d be the last clothes he’d ever wear. If so, it was nice that they were M&S, you could rely on the quality.
Annie had whipped off the existing pyjama bottoms and was washing his withered, lifeless penis with well-practised efficiency. ‘Apparently he’s off in March, got a registrar post at St George’s.’
‘In London?’ I took up the task of drying where her flannel had been.
‘Yeah, will serve Iceberg right if she falls for him then he goes and leaves her.’
I muttered an agreement and we dressed our silent patient in his smart, new pyjamas. Despite the quiet, reverent task I couldn’t help the wave of panic in my guts. Javier had been working in my hospital for nearly two years and I hadn’t once played hide-the-sausage with him. I always presumed there’d be plenty of time for that conquest. Part of me enjoyed the slow burn, the flirty smiles and suggestive banter we indulged in whenever our paths crossed in the dead of night. Another part of me now worried that I’d been wasting time when I could have been getting down and dirty, sweaty and naked, with my very own Italian stallion.
There was only one thing for it. I would have to up my game, become the hunter rather than the hunted.
Javier had no idea what was about to hit him, literally.
Mr Parslow was now fresh and dressed. Annie and I quickly tidied the room, did an inventory of his meagre belongings – splayed toothbrush, red comb strung with silver hairs, a half packet of toffees and several items of nightwear in various states of cleanliness – then we wrapped him in a paper-thin shroud and covered him with a clean sheet.
Annie left and I dropped the last of the damp towels into a linen skip.
A sudden bang on the window caught my attention. I turned and stared into the bleak darkness. The blind hadn’t been drawn over the slightly open pane and a feathery flash of silver-white knocked up against the glass. Once, twice, three times.
Curious, I stepped closer, trying to discern what was buffeting the rain-splattered window with firm insistence.
A gasp of surprise caught in my throat. It was a dove, out at night, in a gale.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ I bent and peered closer.
A black, beady eye’s attention settled on mine for the briefest of moments, then the dove took off, into the night, its wings ethereal and ghost-like, flapping against the wind.
I glanced at the mound on the bed and fought a prickle of unease tickling the back of my neck. Odd things happened in a hospital, but a dove, at night; that had been a first.
Quickly I shut the window. Mr Parslow’s soul had had ample time to depart. All that remained was his shell, so there was no need to have an escape route for his spirit to start its journey to Heaven; and I was pretty certain it would be Heaven, what with having a white dove coming to collect him on a storm-wild night.
I didn’t mention the dove to Annie or Tinkard. I just called for a porter to help me transfer to Rose Cottage and tugged on my coat. I checked my iPhone again. Another message from Tom.
You coming?
I typed back quickly.
Yes, so will you soon!
The porter appeared. He was new, a young guy, wide and stocky with hair so short you could see his scalp through it. He had the word love tattooed over the knuckles on his right hand.
‘You got one for Rose Cottage,’ he grunted, tugging the closed, coffin-style trolley along behind him.
‘Yes, sideward six.’
Luckily Mr Parslow’s skinny body was light, and within a few minutes we were heading out of the ward with him safely ensconced in the metal trolley.
‘Hey, Sharon,’ Tinkard called. ‘You may as well go for your break after you’ve done that, it’s just gone midnight.’
‘Right you are.’
The ward door shut with a heavy click and I put some muscle into pushing the trolley along the deserted corridor. As the pace picked up I stared at the lumpy back of the porter’s head and wondered if he was the one who’d found Javier and Iceberg.
If only I could see into his mind.
I pondered on whether I should question him. Just come straight out and ask if he’d seen the hottest medical senior house officer since Pompeii’s hospital had got showered in ash, shagging the Wicked Witch of the West where the sun doesn’t shine.
I thought better of it. My asking alone could become gossip, and I was keen to avoid gossip that included myself. There were too many skeletons in my cupboard, and, for that matter, in clinical rooms, sluices, linen rooms, and in that handy, unused office at the back of the pharmacy. No, I would keep quiet and do my own investigating.
Stepping out into the night, I was whipped in the face by my hair, the band holding it in a low ponytail no match for the ferocity of the gale. I hunched my shoulders and stooped, trying to shelter my face from the needle-points of rain blasting my cheeks. The sound of the torrent of drips hitting the metal trolley was almost as loud as the wind creaking at the row of oaks leading to Rose Cottage. Their boughs strained and moaned, their leaves hissing in great waves of noise.
The porter sped up behind the back of the canteen and put considerable energy into pulling. By the time we went past the incinerator and turned the final corner, I found myself jogging along the uneven path.
Luckily Tom was waiting with the door to Rose Cottage held open.
We rushed in, the trolley banging over the door-bar and a scurry of leaves whirling around our feet.
‘Fucking hell,’ the porter said. ‘It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out there.’
Tom shut the door, winked at me, then took hold of my end of the trolley and wheeled it into the bay of body drawers. I trailed along behind, tucking my wind-wild hair back into its ponytail.
‘Yeah, good job the VIPs in here don’t care about shitty weather,’ Tom said, stopping at twenty-six C and then opening the trolley’s lid to reveal Mr Parslow’s covered body.
‘Bloody hate this part of the job, me,’ the porter said, staring at the shroud-covered lump and shuddering. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.’
‘You go if you want,’ I said, ‘I’ll help here.’
He widened his eyes and took a step backwards. ‘Really?’
‘Sure, I’ve done it a million times. Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Bloody hell, thanks …’ He nibbled on his bottom lip and scanned my coat, as though searching for my name badge.
‘Sharon,’ I said. ‘Go, we’ve got this covered and I bet you’ve lots to do.’
‘Yeah, I have actually.’ He yanked his sleeves over his hands and strode back to the door.
Tom followed and I heard him lock it shut, as was standard procedure at Rose Cottage. The NHS couldn’t risk body snatching, that’s why Tom was employed as night security here.
‘Poor sod,’ Tom said, wandering back in. ‘Looked white as a sheet, didn’t he?’
‘They all do to start with.’
Tom pulled open the drawer and together we slid Mr Parslow onto the metal; his body, although light, was a dense weight. Tom then pushed the drawer shut and closed the door with a resounding slam.
He wrote Mr Parslow’s name on a piece of card and slipped it into a slot beneath.
‘So how long have you got?’ he asked, a naughty smile tugging his lips and his smoky-blue eyes twinkling.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘No time at all. Change of plan, I have to get straight back, sorry.’
‘Ah, Sharon,’ he said, frowning. ‘Why do you go and tease me like that? You know how much I look forward to your visits. They’re the only thing that keeps me going in this lifeless place.’
‘Sorry.’ I glanced down his body. Through his uniform – dark-navy trousers and shirt – Tom’s well-defined muscles could be made out, as could a fantastically long wedge of flesh behind his fly.
My pussy clenched as I remembered last week when I’d paid him a visit. He’d bent me over the desk and rammed himself into me for nearly an hour. It had been so damn hard to walk back onto the orthopaedic ward I’d actually considered nicking a pair of crutches.
I hitched in a breath, knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep up my pretence for more than another few seconds. Tom’s big dick and his skilful use of it was too damn irresistible. ‘The ward is crazy busy.’
He reached for me but I stepped away. ‘Just a kiss and a quick grope then, to keep me going.’
Quickly I moved even further away, towards the autopsy room. ‘Ha, ha,’ I said gleefully. ‘Just kidding, I’m on my break now.’
He flattened his lips into a tight line, as if holding back a broad smile, though at the same time narrowing his eyes as though furious with me. ‘You little minx,’ he said. ‘You’ll pay for that.’
‘Only if you can catch me.’ I darted into the autopsy room, dark except for a couple of low lights over a set of huge scales. The air was cool and laced with disinfectant.
I glanced around. There was a big, steel surgical table in the centre, a row of cupboards, several filing cabinets and a desk holding an ancient computer monitor.
‘Sharon,’ Tom called, the door shutting behind him with a soft whoosh. ‘You can’t escape.’
‘No, please, no,’ I said with a giggle and ran towards the far side of the room.
He chased but I dodged at the last minute, went to run for the door. He cut me off and I swivelled, found myself barging into the bolted-down table in the middle.
I gasped as the air flew from my lungs, but recovered quickly and, with my hands flat on the cool surface, scooted to the end.
Tom was facing me now, his face strewn with shadows, but I could see the thrill of the chase had flushed his cheeks and caused him to pant.
‘Come here,’ he said, edging closer.
‘No.’ I moved away from him in a circle around the table.
