Read by William Teller
1am: St Thomas’ Hospital I.C.U.
I’ve been in a tremendous amount of hospitals over the course of a distinguished career, and this is the first that has smelt of Vicks. I don't think that’s normal. Hospitals have a list of approved smells and it runs, in order; bleach; urine; the tinny reek of blood; sweat; faeces; the earthy musk of fear. They’re more unpleasant odours than Vicks, objectively, but they’re fitting. A place for every smell and every smell in its place. Vicks is inappropriate. Facetious, even, because it creates the impression that here, in this intensive care unit, all they have to treat the patients with are tubs and tubs of Vicks.
‘Get more Vicks on him!’ they cry as a patient flat-lines.
‘Quick, Nurse! This woman’s body is rejecting her new heart, get a line of Vaporub into her, stat!'
Mr Ernest Lassiter, supine in his plastic-fenced bed and stinking, like everything else, of camphor, is long past the smelling stage. His organs are failing and no-one’s worked out why. It’s agonising, but the sooner they establish nothing can be done, the sooner he can be moved, pumped full of diamorphine, and guided out.
I want to be there when that happens. He’s got at least an hour though, so there’s no point in me hanging about, clearing my airways. I’ve got rounds to make.
1.30am: Operating Theatre 3
Surgeons don’t like to appear to be concentrating. If you’re worth your salt, they reason, you’ll be able to perform a deeply cutting, blithe monologue even whilst you’re blithely cutting deep into the abdomen of a twelve-year-old girl.
Amy was rushed down here an hour ago because part of her exploded.
‘Funny things, spleens,’ says Mr Steer, impudently probing Amy’s with a gloved finger. ‘But they don’t rupture unprompted – that would be a design flaw.’
The nurses laugh dutifully. Amy’s heart rate increases on the monitor, as if she’s realised to her horror that the man elbow-deep in her viscera fancies himself a comedian.
‘Something’s happened to young Amy: usually it’s force, punch to the gut. Alexandra Ward couldn’t give me a hint though. Can’t keep their house in order! You’ve heard what’s happened? No? Very embarrassing. Chap in ICU, organ failure, spine curved into a shapely C, bleeding internally…’
Prompted by his own performance, he presses on Amy’s delicate organs and they splutter red.
‘I mean, what do those symptoms sound like to you? Ever read a textbook? Or an Agatha Christie?’
He locates her spleen in a sea of blood, and slices.
’Not my job to tell them. But … here’s the sticky part,’ he flicks something sticky from his glove ‘Patient’s been with us for weeks. Came in on the 5th for an op. So how could it happen? It’s one of us, clearly. Or someone in our midst. Got to be ingested you know, and visitors can’t get near the food.’
He’s so wrapped up in intrigue he’s not noticed the blood filling the glove on his left hand, which remains tucked inside Amy’s torso as if she herself is a warmer, larger glove.
She’s going to die.
I ought, as a medical professional, to direct Mr Steer’s attention to it. But then, I’m not a medical professional.
Amy’s eyes flick open. She sees me, and even though I’m dressed as a friendly doctor she must recognise me because she panics.
Before she can give the game away though, a nurse clocks the blood and throws her weight behind a wad of surgical packing, Amy’s eyes slam shut. Mr Steer slops her spleen triumphantly into a dish and raises his needle like a lance.
I can’t stand him.
I should press on.
1.55am: Room 12a
They’ve settled Ernest into a private, increasingly Vicks-scented, room and allowed family in.
His elderly wife stares. His daughter, extravagant in grief, throws herself over the bed and beats her six-inch heels against the ground. Occasionally, for the look of it, she’ll hiccup out his name or a snatch of that poem from Four Weddings and A Funeral.
She’s trying to make me feel guilty, and frankly she’s overdoing it.
His wife turns, recognising me from when she was in here herself. It was a routine operation, she says, they came to see him the other day. No one could give her an explanation. What happened? Couldn’t I chase it up? and so on…
‘That sort of thing really isn’t my job,’ I explain, but of course they’ve all been saying that. Besides, Steer’s correct: it’s so obviously suspicious, the fact no one’s cottoned on yet is embarrassing, for them and for me.
Call it self-sabotage, but I glare at a nurse in the corner till she gets a syringe.
They should’ve run bloods in ICU, but he went south so quickly, and they’re all stretched very thin. Which reminds me, I’m needed upstairs.
2.15am: Alexandra Ward
Mrs Oona Jeffries is 82. She will remain 82. 83, she will not see (as the old medical rhyme goes). 82’s her lot. I’ll make sure of that.
Her notes read: Mrs Oona Jeffries, 82 (stop me if I’m getting repetitive) non-smoker, but a large cell carcinoma in her lungs, Stage 4. A nurse herself once, it says here she came over on the Windrush, which seems like an irrelevance.
With all little old ladies I do the same Charming Doctor routine. Good bedside manner, reassuring smile, slightly sexy but not in a threatening way. They expect it.
‘How are you feeling, Oona? ’
She groans.
‘You look lovely this morning,’ I add.
She doesn’t, that was me being charming. She can’t even open her eyes or shut her mouth. She’s really not lovely by any stretch and she’s started taking huge sucking gasps as to drain the moisture from the air, which makes her even less lovely.
I know you won’t believe me, but I desperately want to help her.
So I do.
It's a kindness, really.
I’m just straightening up from her lifeless body when … she grabs! Fastens an aged mitt about my collar and pulls. I catch a few strong images: Ernest. The smell of almonds. The girl mixing it into the jar. Oona was a nurse, she saw what was happening. It’s been on her conscience. She wanted to tell them but …
But now she’s told me. She snatches my hand, drags me to the door and before I know it we’re through the wall and out of the ward, along the corridor, round the corner, round a second, rocky corner, past some wooden houses, and at the sea.
The sand’s impossible for me to walk on, and I’m far too hot in my seductive Doctoring jacket, but they rarely choose their destination with me in mind, and I have to accept that. Oona’s unclamped a chubby hand from mine and toddled off, which is a relief.
The surf’s full of children, splashing, tossing nets about. One of them smiles at me from the bow of an upturned fishing boat.
Perhaps not an irrelevance, then. And I was doubly wrong, she didn’t remain 82 at all.
We live and learn.
Well, we learn at any rate.
3.15am: Room 12a
Back with Ernest, and just in case I felt the trans-Caribbean jaunt might’ve taken a toll on my respiratory health, I’m virtually choking on Vicks. The smell’s overpowering, but now I focus, other smells are underneath too, especially that earthy fear, and a hint of almond.
You don’t think of cyanide as a topical poison. But I’ve read medical text books and Agatha Christie and (unlike Steer) I’ve seen into the dying thoughts of the only witness, so I know it can be.
The question now is who.
I’d love to tell you it was the Oona. Or me, what a twist! But Ernest’s final thoughts are the last nail. I see his wedding day. His wife’s funeral. I see his own daughter, between his bed and Oona’s, rubbing it into his chest. Something strong to mask that tell-tale smell, something they wouldn’t question…
A doctor enters, policeman in tow.
Ernest is standing behind them, hand in hand with Mrs Ernest, who thanks me for chasing everything up for her.
‘Could you chase one last thing for us, dear?’
‘Oh, it’s really not my…’
‘No, no, this is your job. We’ve never liked her."
‘Certainly don’t like ‘er now.’ says Ernest, who I’d never pegged for a Yorkshireman during any of this.
Sure enough, the daughter’s running. She’s pushed past the policeman, into the hall.
She’s uninspired, this one. Read too much bad fiction, as is clear from her profoundly stupid method of killing. She’s expecting, therefore, an uninspired look. In a way it’s comforting, like slipping on an old jumper. An old, eight-foot-tall jumper made of bone and sacking and agricultural implements.
I want you to know that, despite my verbose, discursive manner, I’m physically very fit and terrifyingly fast.
She reaches the end of the first corridor, and aware of me, whips round. Behind her there’s nothing. Silence. But any moment the police. Reception is floors away: she dashes to the stair but …
Halfway down. There I am. Tattered. Rotting. Pointing (it’s a bit much but I do it anyway). It takes effort, manifesting to the living, but it’s worth it. She screams, heels skittering. Back the way she came. The smell of fear is stronger than ever, and sweat – that’s more like it! I run. Vault up the stairs. Cold ring of bone drowning out frantic click of heels. The bones aren’t clean. She swerves, avoids an orderly. Trips. Sprawls. I’m closer. I swing the blade in time with my stride. It’s not clean either. Not some swishing aluminium beauty, scalpel-sharp. It’s a huge clunking piece of steel for cleaving flesh.
She actually freezes on the floor. Hands out, shielding her face. I jab at a Vicks-rubbing finger as an ironic warning and she shrieks and leaps back, smashing her head into the wall.
Screaming, screaming, she lurches up and staggers forward, really a lot of blood splattering behind her. That tinny smell, just as it should be. Not that I’m doing this to restore olfactory equilibrium, it’s just a pleasing side-effect.
And who’s that there? In the dead-end corridor I’ve forced her down? Why, it’s Ernest! Gamely joining in. He himself has overdone the rotting. He shambles forward, retching, struggling to breathe. Sounds like he could use some Vicks, really! I laugh, and the sound makes her completely lose control. Two more familiar hospital smells, and we’re closing in. She spits out a sickened groan. Screws shut her eyes.
Opens them.
I’m gone.
A last-minute reprieve?
She stumbles slowly, vision swimming, to the stairwell
She can make it out if she keeps going. But she’s lost a lot of blood, and her centre of balance is off by six inches.
She falls.
The sickening sound of her head as it collides with the radiator at the bottom is like a grotesque root vegetable hurled on a spike. Jets of steam blow down on to what’s left of her. She leaks, sympathetically, onto the tiles.
She furnishes me with a final image of myself in full pursuit which I’ll save in a special place in my heart and look back on whenever I’m having a crisis of confidence. I stoop to guide her out, but as soon as she sees me she runs again. No time to spare. Scrambles back up the staircase. Screaming. Dashing forward, even while the nurses rush to her body.
Eternity, in those heels. Hurts just to think about it. Maybe she’ll realise in time that I’m not chasing her any more. But I don’t know, what’s the old verse? The wicked flee where none… something, something. I don’t know, I’m Death not the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Besides, I can’t stand around congratulating myself. Work never stops in this place. I’ve got rounds to make …
(c) Anna Savory, 2018
Anna Savory (left) was born in Medway and now lives in Brixton. She’s a comedy writer and performer. She inherited a cursed library from Dennis Wheatley once, but almost never mentions it. Follow her on twitter at @AnnaSavory.
William Teller is an actor, singer and storyteller. He has appeared on stage and film in dramas, comedies and musicals, and has even had a spell as a ‘scare’ actor at Blackpool Dungeon. He enjoys bringing characters to life. His storytelling skills have been displayed in festivals and fringe events, and he also lends his voice to audio and radio drama, and has presented a daily radio magazine show for a community radio station.
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