The breakfast tray sat untouched on the bedside table as Nurse Teegan shuffled around the room adjusting monitor settings and pretending to document my vital signs. Her auburn hair was perfectly coiled on top of her head, and her scrubs sat crisply on her narrow frame. Her eyes were large and brown, magnified by thin framed glasses with red rims. Every so often those eyes would shift to me before darting back to her computer screen. Her slender hands danced across the keyboard and her lips moved as she thought quietly to herself; though I often wondered if she were speaking to someone else, someone who wasn’t in the room with us. Did she see the man in the room? I’d tried and failed to spot any listening devices, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
“How are you feeling today dear?” Nurse chimed, and I scraped together a weak smile. In another minute or two, Nurse Teegan would feed me several pills, which I would hide in my cheek and spit out later. The Physicians thought I needed them- they thought that I was crazy. Or “psychiatric” was the term they liked to use. I disagreed. My mother was crazy, but I wasn’t. I knew that Nurse Teegan was afraid of me, and so was the orderly who brought my food. He wouldn’t hold my gaze any longer than a second or two. They all tiptoed around the room as if I were a ravenous animal, ready to devour them at any moment. I’d only ever attacked one person, and that man had deserved it. He was working with the man in the room.
I sat up straighter and narrowed my gaze to the corner behind where the nurse stood, typing, typing away, oblivious to the shadowed figured looming only feet behind her. He was tall and thin, and he liked to dress in black, his hat pulled down low to obscure his face, and his coat collar pulled up high. I never saw his skin, or the whites of his eyes- he was simply a void in dark clothing. He changed his name daily, never using the same one.
The room grew suddenly chilly, and the sun’s rays seemed to choke behind the blinds, casting the room in shadow. The man in black preferred it like that- dark and cold, like himself.
Nurse Teegan stood over me now, an expectant look affixed to her face. In her right hand she clutched a small paper cup full of pills- mood stabilizers, and what I suspected was some sort of sedative. I could read her guilt, and I eyed the pills a second time, trying to determine which one of them was poison. Perhaps she was working for him, too.
“It’s time to take your medicine,” she added, shifting nervously. My fingers gripped the bedside rails, and my heart rate increased. The man loomed across from us both, drifting closer still. I could hear his ragged breathing. Smell the death of the others on his nonexistent skin. He’d come for me again, just like he had nearly every day for the past several months.
It’s only a matter of time, he whispered. Tears sprang to my eyes as realization dawned on me, along with a sinking feeling that he was right. I could only evade him for so long before he seized control completely, and no Doctor and well-meaning nurse would be able to stop him. Panic enveloped me.
“What is your name this time?” I asked him.
“Honey, I’m Nurse Teegan,” she told me carefully.
Fate, the man replied.
The Nurse’s eyes followed my gaze behind her, though she wouldn’t see him like I did. They never did. That’s why he was so frightening. How do you stop something you can’t see?
“Do you see something, Marie?” Nurse Teegan asked. I gulped and nodded as a trail of tears slid down my cheeks and onto my gown.
