Chapter 18 Nancy
EIGHTEEN
NANCY
The packet of ribbons lay in my lap as I sat in the car, my fingers clutching the crinkled brown paper bag tight.
It had taken days to find the right ribbons in that perfect baby pink. Soft, butterfly satin. So clean compared to the bloodied, soiled ones I’d buried with the rat.
My pulse quickened just looking at them, remembering Ginny’s face when I’d promised them to her and the way she had trembled under my hands.
I shouldn’t have touched her like I did.
It was crossing a professional boundary.
I knew it. But being able to see life blossoming in her so close up had blurred my thoughts.
To touch the naked swell of her stomach and see her breasts dripping milk had done something to me. Something I couldn’t name.
I’d imagined that it was me. That it was my body heavy with child and my nipples leaking. That the warm, greasy milk was something I’d produced. That my babies hadn’t died before I even looked anything other than bloated.
The sound of the car door closing pulled me back to the present. Robert slid in behind the wheel, glancing at the packet of ribbons before lighting his cigarette.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said.
‘She’s in the low-risk ward,’ I countered. ‘The high-risk patients can’t get into her room.’
On the upper floors, in the high-risk wards, anything that looked remotely like it could be used to bind was strictly forbidden. Unless in the hands of the doctors, of course.
He gave me a look that oozed with derision.
‘You think I give a fuck if someone offs themselves? It’s less money, that’s all. Assuming someone tells the family, anyway.’ Where had the man I’d fallen for gone? The man who went to medical school to try to help people.
‘Why are you being so horrid?’ I asked.
‘You say someone is tormenting the girl. And yet you’re providing more ammunition. Assuming it’s true. Do you want more dead rats? Or what if it’s around the girl’s throat next time? What about the baby?’
A note of sadness tinged his words, yet I didn’t believe a second of it.
I bit my tongue to stop barking back at him while tucking the ribbon poking out back into the bag.
There was no point arguing.
He’d already decided what kind of man he was.
By the time we got inside, I’d pulled my veneer of professionalism back in place. Patients shuffled past in drug-induced hazes. Doctors were rarely seen. And the stink of bleach and sweat and despair settling over me like a cloak.
Larry sat by the corridor wall with his big shoulders hunched. Crumbled bits of cheese surrounded him. Carefully piled dairy towers in a circle around him.
‘Are you okay, Larry?’ I paused beside him, the paper bag rustling in my fingers
His stricken face lifted. ‘No. My friends are gone.’
It took me a moment to understand what he meant.
The rats.
My stomach dropped as I remembered the tortured little body strung up in Ginny’s room. Telling him would only have incited him into a rage.
‘They’ll be back, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Maybe they just found something yummy in another part of the hospital for now.’
Larry’s meaty hands tugged at the hem of his shirt.
‘It’s been days, Nurse Nancy.’
A sinking feeling spread through my stomach. I hated lying to him.
And the thought gnawed at me. Whoever was tormenting Ginny might be doing the same to Larry. The missing rats. The ribboned corpse in her room. It couldn’t all be a coincidence.
I glanced down the corridor. Only the shadows stared back.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was toying with us.