By theseustoo

(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)

Swannee, though tall and ruggedly handsome, was that rarest of all types of man, a faithful one. He loved his ever-fertile and almost always pregnant wife and ten tin lids; he was looking forward to the eleventh, so that he’d have his own cricket team; and the faintest trace of the remotest possibility that he might ever allow himself to entertain the slightest thought of ever being unfaithful to his beloved wife, Catherine, had not even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing his mind… in spite of the brevity of the journey.

Swannee was also just daft enough to be honest and to love simplicity; all the lies and deception which invariably accompanied infidelity were far too complex for his simple soul, so infidelity was the very last thing he would ever consider with anything but horror and revulsion.

His wife loved him for it with absolute devotion, of course. Named after the Catholic saint who had been executed by being crucified to a spinning wheel of fire, Catherine loved her husband deeply and felt it was her Christian duty to pump out as many sprogs as she could for him… She would give him the cricket team he had always said he wanted! She was almost there… another three months and she would pop sprog number eleven… Her beloved Swannee would finally have his cricket team! However, recently, she had secretly begun to wonder, with just a trace of nervous trepidation, whether or not he’d want the two reserves…

As a result of his native simplicity and his state of constant domestic bliss, what with all those willing and helpful children to help him with the chores around the house, Swannee was absolutely oblivious to the attention some of the female staff-members were beginning to pay him during their lunch hours. He was quite sure they were ‘just being friendly’. “Though by gum,” he thought to himself, as Loreen leaned forward to give her order in a deeper and huskier voice than usual, “…they were certainly very friendly… and I’m sure that pinch on the bum was just a friendly tease… it doesn’t mean anything at all, really… I hope I don’t catch her cold, it sounds serious from the huskiness of her voice…”

Loreen’s cleavage loomed large in Swannee’s vision and he was reminded that he’d promised to take the cricket team to the hills for a camping expedition in the near future… This weekend would probably be good, he supposed, as he bent to extract a hot pie from the oven.

He couldn’t help wondering why it was that Loreen and Paula always ordered items which came either from the oven or from bottom cupboard just above floor level; he was beginning to get serious back pains from all that bending over. He began to suspect, not without reason, they were competing to see who could make him bend over the most. Now he was sure they hated him because they seemed to tease him all the time, and they made him work so hard; bending over all the time like that. There was nothing he could do about it however; he had a job to do; the cricket team must be fed; he just had to serve these two temptresses their lunch and try to ignore any ‘unusual’ remarks or behaviour.

*****      *******      *****

Loreen could not believe her outfit was having no effect at all on her intended victim; yet it seemed as though Swannee were completely unaffected by even the sexiest of her work outfits; he had not even appeared to notice her fishnet stockings and suspender belt, even when she sat down facing the serving hatch and ‘accidentally’ allowed her short skirt to ride up over her thighs to reveal a small triangle of her black lace panties; her fishnet stockings went unnoticed and her cleavage ignored.

“How,” she wondered, frustratedly, as she checked her assets in a restroom mirror, “…can he ignore all this?! Is he gay?!”

*****      *******      *****

Paula too found Swannee’s obliviousness to her charms extremely frustrating; all the more so as she had noticed that one of the cleaners, the infamously nicknamed, “Loose-lipped Loreen” was quite obviously making a play for what Paula now considered ‘her man’. Was it her imagination or her jealousy, she asked herself, or was Swannee beginning to succumb to that Loose-lipped Loreen’s charms? She had seen him stare at Loreen’s ample bosom for what seemed like ages yesterday; was he a ‘big tit’ man? She wondered, regarding her own small but pert breasts with a dubious expression on her face. Is that why he hasn’t noticed me yet? Okay, she decided instantly, tomorrow it’s the padded bra!

*****      *******      *****

Elaine slowly turned the cards over; she’d decided against a ouija board because she didn’t want to involve her assistants. So she’d waited until they’d gone off to lunch before she took out her tarot cards and did a reading for the morgue, hoping the ether would favour her with some information about the lurking presence she now knew was haunting the morgue…

Perhaps, she thought, it was a ‘lost soul’ who’d been unable somehow to find its way to the ‘Other Side’. But she dismissed this idea very quickly; true, some souls did become earthbound for various reasons, but she had sensed something unusually terrible and evil about this one…

The first card she turned up was ‘The Fool’… a naïve young man setting out on an adventrurous journey or about to have a new experience; though not a bad card, it warned about the possibility of trouble as a result of the fool’s naivety and inexperience.

The fool was ‘assisted’ by the High Priestess, a woman of significant spiritual ability would help him with this novel experience. The ‘Death’ card which followed seemed perfectly logical, representing natural change; it’s meaning being more to do with the symbolic ‘rebirth’ which this card implied, rather than actual death itself…

These two cards were ‘crossed’ by ‘The Empress’… a powerful woman was preventing the natural change from happening. In the position which represented the immediate future, however, was the ten of swords; this card may very well indicate death, but even if it didn’t mean death it certainly meant an awful lot of trouble: The card depicted a knight, slain by ten swords, still sticking upright out of his prone corpse, making him look like a weird party-wiener, with ten cocktail sticks in a single wiener…

Trouble, she thought… and maybe even death, was coming to the morgue…

Very spooky, she thought… but the cards never lie. The question is, she now asked herself, who are these people? And what is their connection to the morgue; if she knew that, she would have a much better chance of understanding what the cards were trying to tell her… And what did all this have to do with the lurking presence she had sensed in the morgue; and which presence she still seemed to sense, just beyond the fringes of her consciousness…

*****      *******      *****

Hell Hospital Morgue - this way out .......

By theseustoo

(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)

Dentistry must be the Devil’s favourite profession, Dave thought as he waited silently and with what he hoped looked like eternal patience for the dental wing’s receptionist to finally acknowledge him. She had noticed him, he knew, for she had actually made eye-contact with him as he had hopped, with his now-moon-booted crushed foot, on his unfamiliar crutches towards the reception desk… Yes, he reassured himself, she had seen him; indeed, for a moment he’d actually allowed himself to think that she was even going to speak to him, but her attention was suddenly diverted by what was apparently an urgent telephone call… it was certainly a long telephone call.

After the first few minutes, Dave looked around him to take his mind off his leg, which was beginning to ache a little now, and noticed a portrait of the dental wing’s patron and founder, one Dr Vladimir Von Draco; a famous, if imported Australian, who had earned himself the nickname ‘Vlad the Sucker’ for inventing the little metal vacuum-sucker-hose that dentists use to suck dribble out of their patients mouths so they don’t drown on their own spit, thus not only killing the patient – the goose that lays the golden egg – but also putting an end to the dentists’ own sadistic pleasure at his patient’s discomfort.

Returning his gaze to the receptionist he saw she was still deeply involved in her telephone conversation. “Now I know why they call us ‘patients’…” he thought to himself “…we have no choice but to be patient…” as he silently sought aloft for divine inspiration and the strength to endure what he knew was going be an ordeal.

Finally the receptionist’s voice became audible as she brought the telephone conversation to a close, “… no… don’t worry, he’ll like it I tell you… yes, I think the blonde highlights really suit you; look, gotta go; see you Saturday!”

Turning at last to Dave she barked, “Name?” with all the natural charm of a Howitzer, to let him know, in case he hadn’t guessed, that she resented being torn away from her beloved telephone. Dave gave his full name; the breadth of the reception desk forcing him to speak in a loud, firm voice in order to make himself heard. The receptionist checked it against that on her computer and then demanded, “Address?” again Dave gave his address, though it made him slightly nervous to voice such personal details in such a public place as this in this glorious twenty-first century. Next, the receptionist demanded, “Date of birth…” Dave glanced around and behind him, nervously casting his suspiscious gaze over the current occupants of the waiting area. “Crikey!” he thought, as he also gave the receptionist his date of birth, “I hope none of those people sitting there in the waiting room are cyber-criminals; there’s enough information there for anyone with a bit of knowledge and a larcenous inclination to steal my identity!” He couldn’t help wondering why the receptionist didn’t just ask to see his driving license along with his Medicare card, which she did ask to see. That, Dave thought, would have been much quicker, much more discreet and much more secure.

Eventually, after checking several more computer screens, the receptionist said, “Oh yes, I see you have an appointment. Please take a seat in the waiting area…” Thankfully Dave hopped over to the waiting area and gracelessly plonked himself down on one of the chairs; arranging his crutches underneath his moon-booted leg to raise it as much as possible off the floor, grateful to be finally able to do so; it was beginning to feel quite sore from its unaccustomed and protracted perpendicularity. After a few minutes’ wait, the dentist and his assistant emerged from among a vast maze of corridors and cubicles and introduced themselves. The dentist, who introduced himself simply as ‘Andrew’, was a tall, freckled youth, complete with curly red hair, n his early twenties. His assistant, Katarina, was a raven-haired beauty with the palest of skin and emerald green eyes.

Dave had often wondered why dentists always had such gorgeous assistants; he finally realized that it was all part of the system; male clients, at least, were much less likely to complain and much more likely to put on a show of macho bravado in front of a perfectly made-up and coiffured, very pretty assistant, as the dentist poked and prodded his teeth with what seemed like an increasingly numerous array of implements, both hi- and lo-tech…

Once upon a time, he remembered, there had just been the dreaded ‘hook of pain’; but now there was also an ‘air-test’, an ‘electricity test’, and what Dave could only describe as a ‘blunt-instrument test’, in which the teeth were tapped with a blunt metal instrument; indeed each of these new tests proved equally capable of producing dental pain in a new and different manner. Instead of one painful test to discover which teeth were rotten, now there were four… and the dentist, of course; a fourth-year dentistry student; insisted on a thorough analysis, using all four tests. “Now that’s progress!” Dave thought.

Always a great believer in the prophetic power of Murphy’s Law, Dave had already predicted that before the torture-session they would ask him to accompany him to their own little cubicle, which would, and indeed, actually did turn out to be right at the other end of what also turned out to be a very large dental wing. St Helvi’s was, after all, a teaching hospital.

Indeed, Dave was learning all the time… right now he was learning that in using his crutches, he was obliged to lift his full bodyweight of about 90 kilos, with every ‘step’; using crutches was thus, essentially, walking on his hands. Even at home, just going to the loo was a workout. Getting himself up and down the stairs to his first-floor flat was an extreme sport… He would certainly sleep well tonight, he thought.

Of course, after all those tests, the dentist finally told Dave exactly what Dave had told the dentist on his arrival, that his upper right rear bicuspid, which the dentist, he noticed, referred to only with a number, was split vertically in two and would probably require extraction. Notes were taken and entered onto a computer and another appointment was made for a date mercifully a few weeks into the future.

This would give Dave a few weeks to screw up his courage to actually keep the appointment; he knew he would have to do it; this tooth had already caused an infection which, though it had abated now somewhat, had been extremely painful; and which Dave knew would return unless the tooth was removed. Oh yes! He’d have to do it, even if it meant facing needles and having the extraction done while he was still conscious…

He hadn’t minded being operated on five times already as the orthopedic surgeon rebuilt his foot; he had been unconscious for those and felt no pain; but this was different! The dentist had already squashed his pitiful plea for a general anesthetic just as, with effortless grace and perfect timing, his assistant had flashed him one of her most gorgeous smiles; and he was irrevocably doomed to an extraction under a local anesthetic. He knew from personal experience that as long as one was conscious, there was always the potential to feel pain, in spite of local anaesthetics, which he never entirely trusted; and Dave had never been fond of needles…

When his foot had been crushed and dislocated in his recent motorcycle accident, he had actually laughed and joked with some of the witnesses to help him to ignore the agony of his severely crushed and dislocated foot, until the ambulance man came to relieve him with his merciful nitrous-oxide lollipop; but when it came to facing dentists, Dave’s courage failed him and he confessed himself a coward.

***** ******* ***** ******* *****

No, the reason Loose-Lipped Loreen had earned her nickname had nothing to do with her gossiping or her inability to keep a secret; it had to do with other uses to which that particular pair of organs might be put; if one were lucky enough; or unlucky enough; depending on one’s viewpoint and life-circumstances; for Loreen was, to put it kindly, a terrible flirt. She most especially could not help competing with other women whenever it seemed as if one of them was about to ‘get off’ with a new boyfriend… or occasionally even, so it was rumored, a new girlfriend.

As it was her mystic duty to protect Paula from herself, Loreen had noticed, with alarm, her blossoming friendship with Swannee in the staff cafeteria (although Swannee himself remained blissfully unaware of it!) and had immediately realized how much harder her job would be if Paula were actually to fall in love. Even now she was hard to keep up with; and even now she required constant surveillance; Loreen now knew not only the location of every closet, but also every other possible hiding-place in the hospital. But, she asked herself, with mounting horror, if Paula were ‘absent-minded’ now, what would she be like if her mind were as distracted as it inevitably would be if she were to fall in love. Something serious had to be done, she realized; and done soon!

Underneath her nylon work-coat, Loreen wore her sexiest black lacy underwear; she undid the top couple of buttons so it showed an ample portion of her not inconsiderable cleavage. Paula would hate Swannee if she caught him looking at other women, she realized; so she would make sure he had something to look at. She had deliberately chosen her shortest work-coat; one which she had deliberately bought a couple of sizes too small for just such circumstances as these… and, although she realized that, were she to be reported to the union, she could lose her membership for violation of the Occupational Health and Safety code, over her black fishnet stockings and suspender-belt, she wore a pair of very sexy six-inch stiletto heels.

“The man,” she said to herself, as she checked her reflection in the mirror as she left for work, “…doesn’t stand a chance!”

***** ******* ***** ******* *****

....... and the clientele didn’t answer back… often!

ByTheseustoo

(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)

Elaine had always liked working in morgues; they were so peaceful and quiet; and the clientele didn’t answer back… often! She usually felt in tune with the spirits there. Elaine had always loved the atmosphere of transience she experienced at railway stations or airports or at the dockside of some shipping port or other; and morgues had something of this transience about them too. All such places had the same fleeting and ephemeral atmosphere, as people rushed through the crowd, excited by the prospect of a new adventure in a strange and foreign land, perhaps a little afraid of missing their transport; whilst others made preparations for their journey or said tearful farewells to loved ones; and still others sat silently and self-contained in waiting-rooms; a million emotions mingled on the morning air and every one of them spoke of life.

That was where the similarities with the morgue ended, of course… the transience was there but the life was not. And though the eternal was present here too, nonetheless the morgue was not exactly bustling; only herself, her two assistants and an occasional cleaner ever came down here… and none of those would ever do so if they didn’t have to… Whenever they came down here even the doctors were all business; they never stayed to chat.

Usually Elaine and her assistants were outnumbered by stiffs; the ‘dearly departed’ as they called them in public for the sake of the recently bereaved. Even the porters who delivered the stiffs just dumped them, signed the paperwork in double-quick time and shot through as if their lives depended on their being elsewhere; heaving huge sighs of relief at being able to finally breathe freely… No one liked the morgue at St Helvi’s.

But not a single one of them would admit that it was because morgue spooked them; that the morgue was, indeed, a spooky place. But Elaine had learned how to read people just as easily as she had learned how to read the cards themselves, in the thousand and some tarot-card readings she had done to supplement her pitiful salary; and she knew they were all spooked by this morgue. There was something not quite right about this morgue…

Of course no morgue was a particularly pleasant place and people often found them spooky; Elaine knew very well that spirits often hung around such places until they figured out which way they were supposed to go, and this, she felt, explained any morgue’s ordinary or ‘background’ level of spookiness. Indeed anywhere the ‘recently departed’ had passed through on their final journey from the place of their demise to their final resting place was a bit spooky too, she realized.

But this was different. This was a deep and abiding presence; a lurking menace… As she extended her sensitivity, Elaine sensed a dark and brooding malevolence hovering just beyond the fringes of her awareness; an entity full of malice and spite. Sensing her presence as soon as Elaine’s mystical insight had turned towards it, the darkness instantly withdrew itself and hid from her sensitivity, but even so, in that briefest of glimpses, Elaine had sensed the darkness, the hideous evil, which, it seemed to her hyper-sensitive awareness, had always been there at the heart of St Helvi’s…

*****     **********     *****

“So you don’t believe in God then?” Loreen asked, and took another huge bite out of her hamburger ‘with the lot’.

“Nah… well… I dunno…”  Julie said, thoughtfully. As a psychiatric nurse she had seen so many people so obsessed by religion that it interfered with their ability to get on in ‘the real world’… some of them had even believed themselves to be the living incarnation of various deities… yet these were ‘crazies’ she knew, and even though some of them were remarkably charismatic and seemed relatively sane in other respects, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were all delusional. Medication usually rid them of their delusions along with their ‘divine voices’; and St Helvi’s Psychiatric Wing’s deprogramming programme usually helped them see the ‘error of their ways’ and eventually turned them into solid, if atheistic, citizens.

After a few moments thought she stuffed the final bite of her sausage roll into her mouth and, through a mouthful of crumbs, said, “Well… I suppose it’s always possible… anything is possible…”

“What about angels?” Loreen inquired, rather persistently, Julie thought.

“Well, like I said, I suppose anything is possible!” Julie began to suspect Loreen’s sanity now… it seemed like she really wanted her to believe that religion wasn’t really all just a bunch of fairytales held together with bullshit. She didn’t like to be impolite, but then she wasn’t about to be converted either. You couldn’t convince a crazy person that their delusions were just that simply by telling them they were wrong; one had to be much more subtle than that.

“What would you say if I said I knew someone who’d seen an angel?”

Julie thought, ‘I’d say they were totally nuts!’, but kept the thought to herself. To Loreen she said, “Well… I dunno… I’d like to see some evidence… You must realize it does sound a bit crazy?”

Loreen had expected this answer, “Hmmm…” she said pensively, “I suppose so… but my friend… the one who’s seen the angel… she seems really like a sane and sensible person otherwise. She doesn’t seem nuts at all.”

“Well…” Julie said, conscious of the need for tact, “Many delusional people seem quite normal when discussing any other topic but the one which concerns their delusion… I suppose they’re not really counted as ‘nuts’ until their delusions start to interfere with their daily life; their work and family… We shrinks only ever intervene when these become totally chaotic and out of control. Then, of course, we must do something!”

“Oh, I see…” said Loreen thoughtfully, as she sipped her coffee. “Well… thanks for that. Do you think my friend needs to see a shrink?”

“Dunno…” Julie responded, careful to appear casual and offhand, “Maybe… couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“No… I don’t suppose it would… Well anyway, thanks again… see you later, I’ve got to get back to work now…” She did not add that she needed to find a convenient closet to hide in so that she would be on hand to prevent Paula’s next disaster, which an angel had warned her about. But she did think that the accuracy of St Helvi’s predictions about Paula’s stuff-ups could only indicate that she wasn’t really crazy at all. After all, that was eveidence, wasn’t it? Nonetheless, she thought it would probably be a good idea to make an appointment to see a psychologist… not a psychiatrist, or else she knew she would be instantly drugged, sedated and zombified to such an extent that any kind of coherent thinking would be quite out of the question.” She drained her coffee, stood up and, now lost in her own world of thought, drifted out of the canteen. Julie shrugged, puzzled by the encounter but determined not to let it get to her… instead she turned her attention to the question of whether or not her diet would allow her another sausage roll… they were unusually good today.

*****     *******     *****

.... an X-rayted washroom incident

By Theseustoo

(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)

Loose-lipped Loreen did not earn her nickname by giving away secrets; oh no! She herself had plenty of secrets and knew enough to understand that if one wants to keep a secret, then it is vital to keep it secret that you have a secret to keep. For example, she had told no-one of her vision; a religious epiphany she was certain, in which the hospital’s patron saint, Helvi appeared unto her and said,

“Look, Loreen, I want you to keep an eye on my great-great-great-great-great-grand-niece Paula… If someone’s not there to prevent disaster she’s lethal. But if Paula should actually kill someone it would invoke the ancient curse of the family demon, Count Vladimir the Vacuous (more commonly known as Vlad the Sucker); and bring about the destruction of the hospital as we know it… Oh, and if you don’t do as I say, and Paula is responsible for a patient’s death, then I shall personally see to it that the Devil reserves a particularly hot spot in Hell for you! Usual reward for success, of course… pearly gates and all that… harps… wings… long white smocks… haloes etc…”

Well, patron saints are patron saints aren’t they? And they are there to be obeyed, thought Loreen; besides, she herself was a terrible sinner, so she did not wish to endanger the evidently good chance of going to heaven in the afterlife, which St Helvi’s orders had implied. That other place didn’t sound like much fun at all to her; and ever since her epiphany she had followed her charge around the hospital, trying her best to undo any damage Paula may  do to her patients or their chances of recovery. St Helvi would send her secret messages through her horoscope in ‘Take Five’ magazine to keep her ahead of the game…

Thus far she had been successful, but it was a full-time job; and it was often ‘touch and go’, as in her most recent episode with Mr Peabody and the biro-tube… Luckily, as one of a small army of the hospital’s cleaners she had the freedom to virtually roam the premises at will; nobody notices a cleaner and they never look out of place; thus they are virtually invisible.

“But by crikey!” Loreen exclaimed to the little statue of St Helvi that she kept in her bedroom, which had been transformed, ever since her first vision, into a shrine to the hospital’s patron saint, “If you hadn’t sent me that warning, I might not have had a chance to hide in that closet and get a biro-tube ready. And it was a bit cryptic wasn’t it? ‘Today the pen is mightier than the sword to heal a dangerously closed wound…’ If I hadn’t been paying attention I might have missed that one! Next time try to make your message a bit more obvious! Amen!”

*** ***** ***

Paula was not having a good day. It had started with the usual burnt toast, hurriedly stuffed into her mouth as she rushed out still only partially dressed to her car; as usual she was running late… And as usual, she found herself doing up her bra-strap at the traffic lights at Gepp’s Cross on her way in to work. A truck had pulled up alongside; the truck-driver wound down the passenger-side window as he leaned over and said, “G’day luv… you make my day you do… every day, same time, same traffic-light, same brunette adjusting her bra-strap! Gives me a giggle every time! Sets me up right for the day…”

Paula had prepared a mouthful of abuse to hurl back at the truckie, but just then the lights changed and she was obliged to settle for flipping the bird at his rear-view mirror.

Of course she was late arriving at work and this put the Director of Nurses’ nose out of joint for the whole day… and then they’d put her on a ward with a Nigerian student nurse who apparently had some difficulty with the English language. Paula had been in the Med-Room washing her hands after Mr Peabody’s enema. She took great pride in being as careful with her personal hygiene as any surgeon; and she scrubbed her fingernails diligently as the water flowed over her hands and down the sink; the plug of which was placed on one side of the sink which occupied the middle of the Med-Room’s workbench…

Just then a yell came from the student nurse on the ward, “HELP!”

The sudden yell was most unprofessional, Paula thought, as she nonetheless rushed out of the Med-Room and into the ward, to be confronted with a student nurse and a patient, rolling around on the floor under a piece of equipment which was supposedly designed to make lifting patients into and out of bed an easier task.

This piece of equipment was, however, designed for use by two nurses and the student nurse had been attempting to operate it on her own. Paula, with something a little short of patience, helped the student nurse to her feet and then helped her get the patient back into bed; finally she gave the student nurse a stern lecture on safety procedures and the proper use of equipment, having completely failed to notice that as she’d left the Med-Room, she had inadvertently knocked the plug into the sink with her elbow and, with a facility which would surprise everyone but the originator of Murphy’s Law, had somehow found its way into the plug-hole, where it rested snugly.

By the time Paula returned to the Med-Room the water had filled the sink, and was now doing a fair imitation of Niagara Falls as it carried various medical documents onto the floor where they now floated in several inches of water. Along with the documents the water had washed a red stamp-pad into the growing flood on the Med-Room floor, and this was swiftly turning the water a beautiful shade of arterial red and permanently dying the hitherto pure-white tiles a delicate shade of pink.

Paula instantly turned off the tap and started looking for something or someone to clean up the mess. She saw a cleaner observing her with something between amusement and pity on her face as she pre-empted Paula’s inevitable request, “Don’t look at me, mate!” said Loreen as Paula’s eyes met hers beseechingly, “I got my regular work to do; I’m not here to clean up after you nurses… Ask the Union! You clean up after your own mess!” And with that, she had turned and left, though she returned a moment later with a mop and bucket.

Thinking Loreen had relented, Paula thanked her effusively, “Oh! Thank you THANK you! I knew you were only kidding…” but Loreen just put the mop and bucket down right in front of her and Paula’s face fell as she was obliged to catch hold of the mop to stop it toppling out of the bucket as Loreen simply said, “Who’s kidding?” and walked away.

***   *****   ***

Cheerful Shot of St Helvi's

by Theseustoo.

Episode 1

(Disclaimer: this series of stories is completely fictional and none of the persons, places or institutions in these stories are real, but figments of my own imagination. Any similarity to any real person, place or institution is entirely coincidental.)

St Helvi’s was the largest hospital in the South Ozzie city of Madeleine. Consequently, it was the busiest hospital in the city and this was its good fortune because large enough numbers of patients passing through the doors made it easy for the hospital administrators to convince their insurers that their medical staff were not actually incompetent and that the hospital’s fatality statistics were only marginally above the statistical norm, and, it was often argued, because it was, after all, a public hospital, St Helvi’s was obliged to take patients the private hospitals could afford to reject… such as those who looked like they had less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it through the night, so the statistics were falsely skewed. Whatever the truth of these claims, they could not prevent the local populace from endowing their local hospital with the nickname, “Hell Hospital”, as the newspapers had reported again only this morning.

God knows, Nurse Paula thought to herself, as she tightened the tourniquet she had applied for Mr Peabody’s nosebleed, we do all we can to try to keep them alive! Maybe it’s just a genetic defect with today’s generation of patients, she thought, as Mr Peabody gradually collapsed back, purple-faced and unconscious, onto his bed, unable to loosen the tourniquet due to his other injuries; two broken arms. Yep, today’s generation of patient was definitely not as durable as previous generations, Paula thought, as she finally realized, “Oh, silly me! You don’t use a tourniquet for a nosebleed!”

Mr Peabody gratefully gasped in as much air as possible into his desperate lungs as he gradually regained consciousness. As the nurse now approached him with a large crepe bandage, and Mr Peabody was unable to defend himself due to his broken arms, he gasped, “No, I’m alright, really… no really I am… No, you don’t need to bother yourself about that, I’m sure it’ll stop bleeding in just a mo…Mmphh… mpphhh”

But Nurse Paula was not to be put off; patients, she knew, were often reluctant to accept their treatment. With the speed of many years’ training she swiftly bound up Mr Peabody’s nose, and covered the rest of his face too, for good measure; leaving Mr Peabody, with only a small patch of reddish hair showing above the bandages. She checked her watch; time for her tea-break. She taped the end of the bandage to stop it coming loose and, as Mr Peabody slowly collapsed backwards into unconsciousness again, she walked smartly off in the direction of the staff canteen. One must always walk purposefully, she had realized long ago… even when you’re just going for a smoko… People will think you’re both busy and important and, with any luck, they’ll leave you alone.

In any case, she had a good reason to be in a hurry to get to the canteen for this break; there was a new chef there by the name of Swannee whom she’d had her eye on since his arrival. Swannee was tall and rangy and his rugged good looks were somehow not marred but rather enhanced by the bright red sunburn he’d recently acquired on a fishing trip which had left him in the doghouse with his wife, who evidently did not understand that sometimes a man just has to go fishing.

“Seems you caught the sun over the weekend,” said Paula with her most inviting smile.

“Yeah… Pity that was all we caught!” Swannee grumped, as he plopped a large helping of mashed potatoes on Paula’s plate, “ Or my missus might have believed that we actually did go fishingYou want peas?”

“Please!” Paula smiled ingratiatingly. An equally large spoonful of peas was added to the roast lamb and mashed potatoes on her plate. But Swannee was oblivious to her obvious interest in him as the customers in the line behind her started to grumble amongst themselves. “C’mon passionflower,” one grumbled, “move along; there’s people waiting to be fed…” and Paula was obliged to reluctantly turn away from Swannee and take a seat at a nearby table. “’By-eeee!” she said seductively, and waved coquettishly back at him as she left. He’d only been working there a week… there was plenty of time, she thought… she would have him sooner or later, the poor, unsuspecting fool. She was quite determined that, as with all her paramours, this one would not escape. She was not known to her friends as ‘Passionate Paula’ for nothing!

Returning to the ward, she discovered someone had stuck an inkless biro-tube through the bandages on Mr Peabody’s face; “Oh dear!” she thought to herself as she realized that someone other than herself had done this to her patient, “I keep forgetting that patients have to breathe!” She wondered who it could possibly have been that had saved her all the paperwork which the demise of a patient would have caused her, but she could think of no-one who might do such a thing; although this was not the first time something like this had happened. Indeed, it seemed as though whenever Paula made a potentially fatal blunder in the ward, there was some invisible helper who fixed things up after her, without ever being seen. Paula could only put it down to her ‘guardian angel’ and left it at that; she was never really any good with puzzles and mysteries; they made her head ache.

Just then she was interrupted by the arrival of another patient; a motorcycle accident victim, or ‘organ donor’ as the nurses called them. Unfortunately this one was not too badly hurt except for a very nastily crushed and dislocated foot. The new patient was placed next to the Spanish patient, Pedro Santiago, who was recovering from his recent operation; a most unusual operation it was too… Cello-ectomies were rarely called for these days; nowadays it was usually guitars. It had looked ‘touch and go’ for Pedro for a while, but the patient had survived the operation and was recovering slowly; but he was obviously still in a lot of pain. Paula couldn’t help but wonder how such a huge musical instrument could possibly have been placed in such a relatively small body cavity… still, she thought, what people did in the privacy of their own homes was their own business…

While she was busy getting the new patient settled into his bed Paula did not notice a furtive figure emerge from the closet which belonged to one of the two empty beds in this six-bed ward, clutching a broom and pushing a folded copy of ‘Take Five’ magazine into her nylon coat pocket as she slipped, silently and unseen, out of the ward.

*****   *******   *****