THE EXECUTOR

CHAPTER ONE

St. James Palliative Home, Gloucestershire.

Death stalked Boris Kovalevsky.

It turned his skin milky white and dulled his lively blue eyes. Even his shiny grey hair had lost its luster.
Usually energetic, Boris looked frail—childlike even as he lay on the narrow hospital bed.

Nurse Mary Platt wasn't an overly emotional person; death is inevitable and normal in her line of work.
Yet there was something about seeing Boris in that state that threatened to leach tears from her lacrimal glands.
No human, no matter how horrid deserved such slow and painful death.

"Are you okay?" Her voice was soft.

The question was redundant, and she knew it. Trained as she was in ways of relieving pain and providing diversional therapy, Mary couldn't do anything more than provide the man temporary relief from his pain.

She'd watched the man who'd come to the hospital relatively energetic shrivel into something so pitiful. It drove her crazy that he was beyond her help.

Palliative nursing was the most difficult aspect of the nursing profession. There is something disturbing about getting to see an individual in their last moments.

Boris made an effort to speak, but the sound that came out was worse than an old car belching out smoke; it was stuffy, unclear and loud.

She laid a hand on his arm. "It's okay. You don't have to say anything. Just a nod will suffice."

Boris nodded.

They both knew he was lying. He looked particularly weak today. His oxygen saturation rate was bad, although he was receiving oxygen therapy. His skin was pale and clammy, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Mary feared the worst.
She however kept her thoughts to herself and put on a brave front.

People like Boris viewed death like a gift, and she supposed she will too if disease turned her to a living corpse. For him, he'd view his death as an opportunity to be free from pain.

And as by Virginia Henderson, it was Mary's duty to guide him to a ‘peaceful death’.

A reassuring smile graced her lips for Boris's benefit. He deserved some sunshine in his gloomy world.

The room was silent. Being a reserved person, Mary appreciated quiet to noise. She found that in those moments, her mind worked at a speed that provided solutions to her troubling challenges.

Her eyes took a sweeping motion about the familiar room. Pale green walls glared back at her. The black and white checkered floor was lined with vases that contained varied flowers, the source of the pleasant smell within the room. The ceiling was painted a plain white.

She wondered who sends him the flowers. Every morning, an arrangement of assorted flowers arrive, and Boris's room was starting to look like a little flower garden.

St. James Palliative Home was a rather shrewd facility. Patient confidentiality and anonymity was held in the highest of esteems. It is why no nurse or doctor knew the patient beyond health information.