devil's berry

Chapter 9

About an hour later they both leave, and I’m left with the nurse that I had before. She tells me to eat as she places a tray on my lap and helps me sit up.

After that I fall asleep and wake up to a different nurse by my bed. That was the nurse for that day. It was the same every day for a month.

One of them was horrible. The nurse had entered the room without slowing her stride at all. One moment she was in the corridor, her eyes dead ahead and the next she was grabbing my hand to take a pulse. In this exchange she neither made eye contact nor spoke; i began to feel sub-human, as if I no longer qualified as a person at all.

The nurse's face was like an overstored apple, round, full, yet crinkled worse than a brown paper bag after all the candy is gone. Her eyes were small, mean, bereft of any make-up and she smelt of detergent. She made a clicking noise with her tongue before pursing withered lips, finally hiding her yellow teeth and cutting off the smell of garlic.

I began to open my mouth to ask when lunch would come but before I could the nurse had bustled off, disappearing down the corridor as rapidly as she came.

Today my nurse smiled and raised the head of the bed saying that breakfast was coming soon and then I was free to go. She was po-faced again, washing her hands then she was writing on a folder outside the door.

So this was my new nurse for the day and possibly my last one, I sighed and rolled toward the window, I’ve had worse. At least this one tried to be nice. A few minuets later I let my nurse help me get dressed and sit in the wheelchair I was now bound to.

She wheeled me out and I saw my father outside, ready to pick me up. Oh no, I had to go back home, and I know I’m going to pay for wasting his time again. I will most likely be killed, either today or someday soon. I sigh and rest my head on the window as my dad puts the wheelchair in the boot.