The Pain Nurse - страница 34

“I’m all right.”

“What happened?”

“Spill on aisle one.”

She laughed loudly and told him to not move while she checked for any possible broken bones. Fortunately, he looked to be about her age, a dark-haired tall man. He wasn’t one of the elderly patients that seemed to find every opportunity to get over the railings of their beds or lose hold of their walkers. The nurses called them falling stars. He had sutures in the middle of his back, an incision about nine inches long, but they were in good shape, probably overdue to come out. It looked like the handiwork of Dr. Goldstein. A spinal cord tumor, she guessed.

“I told you I was okay.” He pulled down the sweatshirt that had ridden up on his back and belly.

“We need to get you up. Can you stand?”

He shook his head. He was on his side with his legs still drawn up against one arm of the upset wheelchair. He raised himself to an elbow but couldn’t get any higher. She would need help. She glanced into the chapel but it was empty. No one was coming toward her from the main part of the hospital.

Suddenly she smelled it. He must have lost control when he fell from the wheelchair. The noxious, all-encompassing odor of feces seemed at odds with the man’s handsome, lived-in face and his full head of lush wavy hair. Her well-trained gag reflex didn’t react. He started coughing and stared over her shoulder. She turned and saw Lennie.

He must have just stepped out of the stairwell. His gray pants and blue workshirt were smeared with shit. An old green parka looked little better, turned brown with age and dirt. As always, Lennie greeted her with a rotten-toothed smile beneath the large crimson nose and its ever-expanding map of broken veins. His hair was long and wild, spiked out like the images she had seen of Medusa. It was just Lennie. His eyes were different, though. His stare was fixed and uncomprehending, looking into a dimension that existed only in his mind.

“Lennie, what are you doing?”

He didn’t immediately respond. Then, “Gotta, gotta, gotta, stop. No. Fuck, fuck, fuck…why are you doin’ this to me? Why are you doin’ this? No! No! Fuck! Fuck!” His voice rose with every word. He stared back at the fire door, then over his head.

“Get out of here, Lennie or I’m going to have to call security. And no crapping in the hallway!” She said the last with a laugh in her voice, but he screamed at her.

“Don’t you see him! He’s right there!”

He seemed to be looking in the direction of the patient on the floor.

“He’s right there, the devil!” Lennie’s eyes were huge and puffy as he stared first at the fallen man, then at her. His eyes changed with a fresh thought, as if a new reel of his private movie had been started. He licked his lips with a fat, dark tongue. “I get it, you’re one of his demon-angels. You want to confuse me!”

“Nobody’s the devil or an angel, Lennie. You know me.” This was new. She had never seen him like this before.

“I know! I know! Oww!” He snapped his head around, first to the right, then straight up. “Ayyyyyyyy! I hear. Yes! Yes!” His eyes focused on her anew, something primal in them. “Can’t fool Lennie, no you can’t…” His voice trailed off in a mumble. “I saw the devil kill right here…right here…” Then, “Kill the devil!”

He said it with such a drawn-out shriek that Cheryl Beth felt a chill spread with infinite slowness across the back of her neck.

“It’s the devil from hell, he’s coming out of the floor! Fuck fuck fuck fuck! I hear! I hear!”

He reached into the parka and his filthy hand returned with a knife. The handle itself seemed huge and the blade was longer and black. Lennie held it out like a cross to ward off vampires, then started jabbing and swinging it against unseen phantoms. He flapped the sleeves of the parka, the movement sending out fresh waves of foul odors.

Her feet felt like the cement of dreams and from her stomach came a nauseous lurch she hadn’t felt since she had seen her first autopsy as a nursing student. She fumbled to pull the cell phone out of her lab coat, nearly dropping it. All she could see was the long thick dark blade.