Page 49

“Anna.” First names, now. Wow, so this was going to go well… not.

“In five weeks, you’ll be somewhere else and I’ll still be here. They haven’t replaced the last nurse, and trust me, they are in no hurry to. That leaves you and me. So let us not start inventing problems. He is chained to a bed. Which means if something hurts, treat it. If something is bleeding, stick a dressing on it and walk out.”

And that was the extent of any help he was willing to offer me. Which was exactly… nothing. Which wasn’t surprising by this point, as he was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

So, I decided to go with plan B.

I tried getting somebody else in the room with me whenever he was there, hoping he wouldn’t dare try anything if a guard was with us. Which is why I asked the officer on the medical post to have a uniform present whenever the transfer patient came down for treatment. Naturally, I didn’t say I was frightened, because being frightened wasn’t a good enough reason seeing as my job description was clear. I worked at a prison for Christ’s sake and treating murderers was part of it.

So, I went instead with something more official sounding. I said that a high-risk inmate should not be alone with one member of staff. I reminded him of the rules and hinted that rules came back to bite a person who ignored them. Now this didn’t exactly win me any brownie points in making friends, but it did get him to agree… sort of.

Because I wasn’t sure how much I could trust a simple nod of his head or the shrug of his shoulders that came with no paperwork at all. Which meant that I shouldn’t have been surprised that his vague agreement only held for about four hours and until I went looking for him and found a stranger standing on his post.

It turned out that the one who had agreed to be in the room with me had been moved to the yard a short time later. Nobody could tell me who by, or why, for that matter. Which wasn’t surprising as I was only a nurse and had no say over where the prison assigned guards.

Instead of trying to dig for more information, I asked the new guard if he had been briefed about the transfer patient and being in the room with me if and when he needed treatment.

He hadn’t.

But what was worse, he didn’t look particularly bothered by the request, nor did he look like he would pay any attention to it.

So, I did the only thing I could think of doing. I called the agency at lunch. Which was why I was standing in the parking lot with my back to the building, praying they had a vacancy I could fill. I asked to be moved anywhere at all and said I would take a pay cut or nights or a two-hour drive if that was what it took. And to give the woman credit, she was perfectly nice about it and asked me the only question there was to ask.

“Can I ask what’s prompted this, Anna? Has something happened?” I looked back toward the prison and released a sigh. Because there it was. If I said yes, she would open an incident record. And an incident record generates statements, and statements go to the prison and to the agency and, if it got out about what he did, then the incident would go to the police.

No, I couldn’t risk it.

“Nothing’s happened. I just wondered what else was on the books,” I said, trying to keep my tone light and easy. Something that was admittedly a challenge, considering how hard my heart was currently beating in my chest.

“I’m afraid nothing local right now, sweetheart. Sit tight, and I’ll flag you for the next one, I know working in a prison isn’t for everyone.” Well, she was right there, especially when there was an insane inmate with no name who was tormenting me day and night. Okay, so granted, the nights were my own fault, but the days… oh the days were solely thanks to him. Because it might have been only three times, I had seen him so far, but it was the promise of a next time that had me flinching at every sound. Had my hands shaking every time I opened the treatment room. Had me jumping at even the sound of my own blood sugar dropping.

It was the torment of not knowing when that next time would be… or worse still… of knowing how far he would go when there wasn’t a knock at the door to interrupt us.

In the end I had to settle for the last resort and to be fair, it was one I should have armed myself with from the beginning.

A small black plastic thing on a lanyard, about the size of a cigarette lighter, with a red button set under a lip so you couldn’t set it off accidentally by leaning on a desk. One of the officers got it for me and I swear I could have nearly wept in gratitude. At least this way I didn’t have to try and run for an alarm. No, all I would have to do is reach up and press it. A sound that would scream for me, telling every officer within a hundred yards, please come and save me.

He even clipped it on for me himself and tested it in the corridor so I could hear what it sounded like. It was so loud in that concrete space that I flinched and laughed at the same time. It sounded like a banshee had stubbed her toe while stepping on a Lego and bumped her hip into the corner of a dining table after burning herself at the stove. I would have asked my brain where that amusing picture came from, but seeing as most days I felt like I was going crazy, I didn’t need to look far. Someone once said to me, if you didn’t laugh, you would cry and I didn’t have to guess at which sound the ghost who haunted me would prefer.

“That’s the noise,” the guard said, grinning. “Everybody hates that noise. Which is the point.” He then winked down at me and left me standing in that corridor with a plastic box against my sternum that felt like the lifeline I needed. Because I didn’t need to be clever, or fast, or strong enough to move a man who weighed twice what I did. I didn’t have to beg or try to talk my way out of anything at all.

I just had to press a button.

I carried that feeling around with me for the rest of the shift like something warm against my chest. Unfortunately, that feeling only lasted until six o’clock, when I went to the locker room for my coat.

The staff locker room at Ashlock was nothing to write home about… not that I had a home to write back to.

It was nothing more than a narrow, tiled area off the corridor before the gate that only held twelve lockers. There was a bench, the smell of feet and bleach and nothing else but a cracked floor. Mine was fourth from the end, with a cheap combination padlock on it that I had bought at a gas station. I only really kept my coat in there and the burner phone in the pocket, as my bag I always kept on me in case I needed my insulin or emergency stash of candy.

But as I approached it, I noticed the padlock was hanging open on the latch. Just hanging there. Not broken, not forced, not cut, but just hanging there, like someone had picked the lock.

I stood in front of it for a small eternity, before my shaky hands reached for it. I swear you would have thought I expected poisonous vipers to come shooting out of it for the way I was acting. But when all I found was my coat hanging there where I had left it, my shoulders dropped, and a sigh of relief escaped me. One that was premature as I soon discovered that wasn’t all I found. Because as soon as I grabbed my coat, I noticed what was hanging behind it.

A white prison-issue undershirt, on a hanger, squared up on the rail as though somebody had taken his time about it. Hung at the back, where my coat would have been pressed against it all afternoon.

I knew whose it was before I ever touched it, because there was no other man in that building it could have been.

Don’t… Don’t touch it… Get an officer.