Chapter 25 Nancy
TWENTY-FIVE
NANCY
By the end of my shift, I was bone-tired and so ready to get home and wash off the asylum before collapsing into bed.
Robert had taken a rare night-shift, so for once I’d have the house to myself. An evening of peace. No snapping or sulking or laying in bed hoping he’d think I was asleep enough to not press himself between my legs.
Just quiet.
I used that goal to carry me down the corridor, my feet aching from a day of wrapping patients’ wounds and talking them through delusions. The cup of milk I carried warmed my hands in the chill of the halls as evening drew to night. A small kindness for Ginny before I left for the weekend.
‘Nancy, can you stay an extra hour?’ A stressed voice stopped me halfway to Ginny’s room.
My jaw tightened. If only I’d signed straight out rather than heading up to see Ginny one last time. My damn obsession with her would cost me at least one of my three Harvey Wallbangers.
‘There’s a crisis on floor two,’ the nurse called out. ‘We need more hands.’
Always an extra hour. I had little doubt it would be confined to such.
‘Fine,’ I sighed, turning and passing the milk glass over to an orderly with the request to bring it to Ginny.
By the time they released me from duty, my hair clung to my neck with sticky sweat and my feet ached like I’d walked over corridors full of hot coals.
I slung my apron into the washing bin and fished Robert’s keys from his coat pocket in the staff cloakroom.
The asylum was silent. A rare moment of calm amongst the torrid chaos.
Every part of me screamed to get out of the place.
But I couldn’t go home for two whole days without checking in on Ginny.
I carried fresh milk through the quiet, my steps the sole noise. I slipped off my shoes, revelling in the cool flooring against my pained feet. Stooping, I picked them up and continued in my stockings to avoid waking anyone.
The door to Ginny’s ward was ajar.
I frowned. It should have been closed up for the evening.
A trickle of unease crept up my neck as I nudged the door wide with my foot.
There Robert was.
On top of her.
The cup dropped as I took in the scene before me.
It skittered against the floor, sending great white splashes of milk cascading over the floor and pooling around my toes. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.
The sound didn’t stop his hips from slamming into Ginny in hard, angry thrusts.
Robert’s face contorted into a mask I barely recognised, sordid pleasure in each of his panting breaths.
Obscene feral grunts made him sound like an animal.
The scent hit me: sex, sweat, and that peppery aftershave that always clung to him. I choked on a sob.
Ginny lay beneath him like a rag doll. Unmoving.
He’d shoved her nightgown to her waist, exposing her round belly, his cock buried deep between her pale thighs.
But she didn’t fight.
She didn’t move.
Her arms were limp beside her, and her head lay facing me. The look on her face tore me up inside. Wide, glassy eyes staring straight through me from across the room.
Not seeing me. If she knew I was there, no sign of it showed on her slack face. Red hot rage bubbled up inside me as I watched him kiss her neck, his fat tongue sliding over her throat.
‘There’s my good girl,’ he murmured. ‘You can’t be bad like this, can you?’
The sound and smell of him clashed with the sight of the two of them.
I heaved. Bile climbed my throat so fast I had to slap a hand over my mouth to stop it from hitting the floor.
My legs turned to jello, and I gripped the frame to keep my body from sliding to the floor as my world crashed around me. Ginny was mine.
The milk crept between my toes as hot tears dripped over my cheeks.
‘You absolute cunt,’ I said, my voice sounding almost wooden with shock.
Robert froze when he heard me. His head jerked, and his thrusts stilled. He yanked his slick cock out of her, fumbling with his trousers while muttering curses under his breath. He wouldn’t look at me.
But Ginny did. A sound, faint and cracked, slipped from her open lips.
‘Elijah’s here.’
The words hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest as realisation hit.
I staggered back from Robert as he approached me, my breath burning in my throat.
Elijah. The boy she swore crept into her room for years. Who kissed her and hurt her. Who told her that he loved her. The boy she swore filled her belly with babies. The ghost I had dismissed and explained away as delusion.
Ginny hadn’t been hallucinating a phantom. She wasn’t inventing a farm boy baby daddy.
She meant him.
Robert.
Her Elijah was my Robert. My husband.
The truth scalded me.
The floor rushed up toward me as the world lurched. A thousand rubber bands snapped around my chest with every breath as I retched.
The milk kept spreading, seeping bone-pale into every crack. And the truth ran into every crevasse within me, with each step Robert took toward me.
Elijah wasn’t imaginary. He had a face. A body. A scent.
And he was the man who I’d devoted my life to.