I was ready to burst into her room, but Henry grabbed me before that. There were new black stains on his scrubs.
“What’s wrong? They’re just trying to clean her up,” he said. Gail was still screaming:
“What’s wrong? They’re just trying to clean her up,” he said. Gail was still screaming:
“Please stop. Stop! Stop, please, please. Please!” I pulled away from Henry and stepped inside Gail’s room. I felt her screech behind my eyes, and in my teeth. She had an orderly nurse on either arm, big men, and they weren’t enough to hold her; she kept pulling free, scratching them, punching them. Another nurse was holding Gail’s head by her ratty, snarled hair. The nurse was scrubbing her face with a soapy cloth.
I saw why Gail screamed, why she didn’t bathe: each swipe of the cloth was scraping away skin, leaving behind blackness that seized and trembled, tendrils that snaked out of the wounds and spread black filth across the flesh that remained, like some perverse creature hiding inside Gail’s cheek licking its lips—before that skin, too, crumbled away under the nurse’s ministrations efforts. They’d cornered Gail in only a sports bra, and I saw that where the men held her, too, her arms were breaking apart and black blood was welling up, pouring over their hands to soak the bed. Their grip was slipping, they were slipping and had to know it, but they couldn’t see what made her so difficult to hold. Gail was bleeding.
“Eric, we need some help!” Henry was holding her legs. Gail’s pitch-black eyes caught mine, and I could see what they were doing, how she was falling apart. I couldn’t stop them without becoming a patient here myself, or somewhere else, far away, far away from Gail. I hauled the nurse with the cloth away from her, and she gave me a withering glare.
“What’s your problem? And hers? It’s been weeks since she bathed!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Henry told her. He gave me a look that meant words later.
“Just get her taken care of.” There were no whites in Gail’s eyes for her to show, but as the nurse prepped the syringe, Gail began fighting harder, screaming.
“Eric. Eric, help me. Help me!” She screamed my name, and her jaw shattered. Her arms were falling apart, and the men were holding onto solid shadow. How did they not feel it? She was falling apart. I took over from the men with both of Gail’s wrists in my hands. I held her wrists as gently as I could, but I felt things shifting, felt movement under her skin.
Gail’s scream faded into a whimper when the nurse administered the shot. I held her wrists, held her hands, until she was entirely limp. They’d broken open her arms, shattered the skin. The men had been digging their hands into the wounds for purchase, and they had no idea they were doing it. Her hands were still whole, like porcelain doll hands. Her face had fractured along the same rift as before, and half of her jaw was missing. I ached to clean her up, but no one else, no one else said anything about her blood. I couldn’t clean what they said wasn’t there.
“Eric,” Henry said when they’d finished restraining her. “Come with me, please.” He led me to an alcove away from the main drag.
“What was that?” I’d washed my hands, but this ink refused to leave my skin. I played with it, with that furry paper feeling between my fingers. I couldn’t meet Henry’s eyes.
“They were hurting her. Gail is reasonable. I have no idea how it escalated that far. If they talked to her like, like a real person, I’m sure she could be—manageable.” Henry’s eyebrows arched. I remembered too late that he was a nurse. I was just a care assistant.
“Gail?” He sighed. “Eric, man. Manhandling Cathy like that, not good.” He studied my face. “Maybe you better take a few days off, right?” Everything in me surged against the idea of leaving Gail like this, here, with them. But Henry had been with me the first time, and he wouldn’t see. He couldn’t feel the dry, papery liquid on my hands when I shook his hand after he escorted me to the door. If he didn’t smell its sweet scent on his own clothes, he never would. None of them would.
Poor Gail =( . Her "people" need her, even if she doesn't want to go...
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