Page 7 of Monsters of Desire and Nightmares of Passion

1

IVY

I look at the clock on the white wall behind me. Two more hours to go. This shift stretches toward infinity, ignoring the fact that my cat and a new novel wait for me at home.

The nurses’ room is not a bad spot to read a few more pages of my favorite story. The patients are taken care of. I had to know what happens next. I clutch onto my phone for dear life as the girl in the story is about to do something stupid. I push away a strand of hair and twist it around my finger. I can’t chew my hair, at least not at work.

“Don’t tell him you kissed his brother,” I whisper but, in the silence of the night, my voice sounds like thunder through the entire place.

I hear a soft voice laughing. “Ivy, girl. Are you reading again?”

Pegg is the other nurse who works night shifts with me at the hospital’s psychiatric ward. She’s a middle-aged woman with an eternal smile on her lips. She’s a good colleague. I like working with her.

“Sorry, was I too loud?”

“Not at all, but I need to know the name of that book. Is it spicy at least?”

“You know it, girl. I love my smut books.”

Pegg checks the patient files on her tablet as I read another page on my phone. Just as I’m about to tell Pegg the details of the story, a voice fills split the darkness. It’s more like a scream, so loud and filled with pain it makes me stop and listen. I’m no stranger to the screams of patients with tormented minds. At one point in my life, I had found myself on the other side of the door. I still fondly remember the nurses and doctors who were kind to me.

“Oh, God. Poor thing.” Pegg keeps typing on the tablet that holds the files.

“The new girl in room eight?”

“Yes. Doctor Martin was with her for hours. We pumped everything we could into her, and she’s still having an episode.”

I remembered those days when my mind was so confused, I would scream until I lost my voice, when just the idea of sleep scared me because that was where they waited for me.

Grabbing a cup of water, I drank its contents and threw the plastic cup into the garbage can.

“I’ll go and see if I can calm her down. Worse case, I can check with Dr. Martin and see if we can increase her dose.”

Pegg pushes her glasses up her round button nose. “The quantity of meds this girl has in her should put a horse to sleep.”

I nod and put my phone inside the pocket of my scrubs.

Being a nurse is fun. I love my job but, now and then, watching a young person suffer hits too close to home.

I use my nurse card to disable the security system on the door to Room 8 and enter. The girl is strapped to the bed. She keeps trying to free herself, fighting a struggle she can’t win, and almost breaking her bones in the attempt to get up.

“Hi, Lisa.” I keep my voice calm and even, something I learned from years of training and working as a psychiatric nurse.

“Nooo. Keep them away from me. Help me, please.”

I walk closer to Lisa. Sweat drenches her long hair. Her eyes look like they saw the darkest horrors and are filled with a despair I sadly understood way too well.

“Lisa, you’re safe here. No matter what it is that scares you so much, I promise you, it can’t reach you.”

Her glassy eyes look through me, focusing on one point on the pure white wall behind me. There’s nothing, at least nothing I can see. But for Lisa, that’s the place that holds her darkest fears.

I have no right to tell her that what scared her isn’t real. I’m not even sure my monsters were not real. As I watch the girl fighting against her restraints, I take a deep breath, hold it, and count to ten.

“I’ll tell you a secret. A few years ago, I was here, where you are. I was the patient. I was so scared. I clawed at my skin in the hope I could escape.”

Lisa stops screaming. As I check her file, I’m sure whether she can hear me. Her eyes look eerie. As she turns her head, the grey pupils shimmer. She continues to stare through me, or at least it feels like it.

“Ivy, they are real, and they’re never going to give up.” Lisa’s voice was ice cold.

---