Something was terribly wrong with this cabin. It was crammed with boxes stuffed with syringes, steely utensils, drugs, and gadgets I knew nothing of.
As she moseyed outside, singing under her breath, something dawned on me: Maybe the nurse wasn’t so altruistic after all. Maybe this was HER fault.
On cue, she re-entered the cabin carrying a roll of duct tape and a fresh pair of handcuffs. Before I could react, I was restrained.
“You’re not going anywhere, Mr. Draper.” Her voice was unsympathetic. “This is your new home now.”
I protested.
She clubbed me over the head with a blunt object. A sky of stars surrounded my field of vision. Then I passed out.
When I awoke, it was full-dark. I was alone.
….
The crows snapped me awake. Their incessant cawing reminded me why they’re called a murder: they sounded like stabbing victims. Surely, an omen. I would’ve preferred an old-fashioned alarm clock thank-you-very-much.
Darkness enveloped me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Deep down, I wished for this all to be a bad dream. Soon I’d wake up, and everything would be how it once was: my wonderful wife Tara and our delightful daughter Daphne by my side. One happy family. I wished for this with all my heart.
I was cuffed to the chair; my hands locked behind me. My shoulders and wrists hurt like hell. I was shirtless; my shirt lay beside the fireplace. Also, I needed to pee. I looked out the one-and-only window. The sun was peaking over the tops of trees, ready to begin a new day. A terrible day, most likely. Meanwhile, I drifted in and out of consciousness.
The sound of stomping caught my attention. Someone was marching around the cabin, someone big: The nurse.
“Hello?” I called out stupidly.
Silence answered me. At least the crows went back to whatever hell they came from. My eyes darted across the cabin. A big brown box lay open on the Chesterfield. Syringes and vials and other sinister-looking devices spilled out of it.
Oh dear god, I thought, gloomily. I’m in a whole heap of trouble. I jerked and thrashed about.
A large and looming shadow approached the front of the cabin. The crunching of branches and leaves was louder than an airplane. My heart flew from its chest as the door handle turned. The door opened and the nurse entered. She was carrying an axe. Her face was soaked in sweat.
How could this be the same nurse I’d come to admire? The real question was: How could I’ve have been so stupid? Of course she had ulterior motives; I could only assume they were malevolent.
Something told me I was about to find out.
Nurse Jodie trampled towards me.
“Good morning, Mr. Draper. Did you sleep well?”
I held my tongue.
She towered over me, the largeness of her body letting me know who’s in charge here. That, and the ax, which she haphazardly tossed next to the fireplace, beside my crumpled-up shirt. Her arms were folded as she waited for a response. Her eyes burning into mine.
“Where’s Daph?”
The nurse chuckled. She wiped her hands on her scrubs. Why the hell was she still wearing her work clothes?
“All in good time, Mr. Draper. First, there’s something I need of you.”
She lumbered toward the big brown box and rummaged through it, until she found what she was looking for: A knife.
Except this was no ordinary knife. No, this was a scalpel.
Why not use a gun and kill me properly? Like an ordinary villain? I hate knives. Seeing her holding that torturous device reminded me of Reservoir Dogs; that icky scene where the undercover cop gets cut to pieces by a psychopath. I’d pay a million dollars to have that thought removed from my mind.
The nurse glared at me. I didn’t trust the smug smirk stamped across her face. It was as cold as it was ugly. She came at me knife first, then stuck the blade under my nose. It smelled of rubbing alcohol.
“Blood,” she said, flatly. “I’m taking your blood, Mr. Draper. I hope you don’t mind.”
Her free hand clasped my neck; her other hand tore off a chunk of my shoulder.
I screamed with all my might. The pain was egregious. Seeing my blood dripping from the small silver blade was revolting. Crimson drops spurted freely, while the nurse chuckled. The delight on her face was deplorable.
“Hold still,” she ordered. “You’re only making this worse.”
I closed my eyes and wished the pain would stop.
It didn’t.
She smiled as the knife dug deeper into my shoulder, moving around, making awful scraping noises, as it found bone and marrow. She sang sweetly under her breath, as I squirmed and screamed in agony. My blood slowly filled the vial.
She removed the bloodstained scalpel, capped the vial, then slapped a gauze across my fresh wound.
My arm hurt more than life itself. My teeth were chattering non-stop, my legs shaking violently. I’d never experienced such pain. The handcuffs made everything worse.
Outside, something crashed.
The nurse bolted upright. Her eyes darted to the small window above the filthy sink.
“Wait here,” she said.
She scooted outside.
“Wait here?” I complained. Like, where else would I go?
She marched around to the back of the cabin. There must be a deck out back, because I heard her talking. My daughter! She’s out back!
Instinct took over. Ignoring the insurmountable agony in my mutilated shoulder, and the blood gushing from it, I stretched out my legs as far as they could go, trying to reach the axe. Maybe, just maybe, I could free myself.
I kicked and jerked and rocked back and forth; my body spasmed and squirmed. The axe was just out of reach, but that didn’t stop me. The chair griped and grumbled, before breaking apart. I fell hard, smashing my head in the process.
The nurse came back, fuming.
“Now, now. Why’d you go and do that, Mr. Draper? You’re being a very bad man.”
My body stretched across the dusty cabin floor, hands behind my back in cuffs. I was leaking blood by the bucketful. She picked me up with one hefty hand, suspending me mid-air, as she pondered what to do with me.
She tossed me on the couch, as one would a remote control. At least it was a soft landing.
She grimaced. “Don’t you go getting blood all over my sofa!”
She went to a different brown box and produced some medial supplies. Then she bandaged my bloodied shoulder properly, humming quietly to herself the entire time. Just another day at the office.
When she finished with my wounds, she said, “You’re coming outside.” Then she picked me up, and carried me out back, like I was a small child.
The day was moist. Morning dew clung to the greenery like glue. The cabin was surrounded by tall trees, and nothing else. There were no neighbors. It was eerie. A gaggle of geese honked somewhere in the distance; a jaybird squawked nearby.
Stuffed into a foldout chair, confined to a straight jacket, was Daphne. She looked terribly uncomfortable. And heavily sedated. A stream of drool dripped from her lips; her eyes like tiny slits, opening and closing at random.
Beside her was Skip. His filthy tee-shirt was barely holding on by a thread, his face a cratered mess. His drooping eyes suggested he hadn’t slept a wink. At least he wasn’t shackled.
He shot me a grimacing glance. The sorrow in his eyes was heartbreaking.
The nurse plopped me onto a yellow lawn chair. I winced as a million invisible razor blades repeatedly stabbed my arm.
“Oh, quick yer griping,” the nurse snapped. “I’ve still got plenty of blood to take from you.”
She stood proudly over us. Her gown was stained in the color of my blood. There was more dirt in her fingernails than the back roads that lead to hell.
Skip sulked.
Nurse Jodie grimaced. “Shut up Skip! I shoulda killed you first thing I got here.” She kicked him in the knee. “Why they call you Skip the Joker anyway? You ain’t funny.”
He flinched.
“Well,” the nurse said, towering over him. “Ain’t ya gonna answer me?”
Skip bit his bottom lip. “But I am funny,” he pouted. “When some psycho hose-beast isn’t keeping me hostage!”
The cabin gasped.
The nurse slapped him straight across his face, popping another zit in the process. She wiped her hand across his tee-shirt, making a foul face.
“Talk to your mamma like that?”
“Sure do,” he grinned. “Mamma taught me well.”
I couldn’t believe it. Skip was finding his courage.
The nurse went ballistic. She started choking him; Skip’s face turned redder than the blood splattered across his ripped-to-shreds tee-shirt. For a moment, it looked like Skip was a goner. She was going to kill him right in front of me and Daphne.
Something told me I’d be next.
Then, in a fit of desperation, he kicked her in the shins. Hard. The surprise on the nurse’s face was genuine. She stumbled backwards.
Skip jumped to his feet. Without a second thought, he fetched a pointed branch, and stabbed her in the eye. Again and again and again. Blood and gore exploded from the nurses face in every direction. Her eyes splattered like pancake batter.
Skip went on a warpath. A lifetime of being bullied played out right before my eyes. It didn’t matter how much the nurse outweighed him; his pure, unadulterated fury was more than she could handle.
“AAAAHHHHHHHH.”
Skip wouldn’t let up. He stabbed her repeatedly with his spear until it was nothing but a twig. Then he found the scalpel.
I tried to look away, but couldn’t.
The nurse collapsed onto a folded chair. Her body like a mountain, her grisly face a mess.
Skip dug the steely edge into her wrist, slicing it like a strawberry.
Nurse Jodie jerked suddenly, then cried. She reached out and grabbed him suddenly, and with incredible force. The scalpel dangled dangerously from his fingers, threatening to let go. Now a monster with no eyes, she stole the weapon from his hand, carving up her hand in the process.
Skip snarled. “Fuck you, bitch.”
Skip slammed his foot down on hers. Then with one quick motion, he grabbed her wrist and jammed the scalpel into her throat. The nurse’s head fell forward, half on, half off. Her tongue fell from her face like a tired dog.
That was the end of Nurse Jodie.
Skip smiled. Then he freed Daphne, who was blabbering about nothing, going in and out of consciousness. He helped Daphne inside the cabin, then returned with the keys to the cuffs.
Skip seemed fully alert. I was glad one of us was.
Without warning, the sky opened up; rain fell in buckets, washing the blood from our hands.
After bringing me inside, he dangled a shiny set of car keys.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
I applied my shirt in anguish. The pain was astronomical. Then I peed. I desperately needed a hospital, although that was the last place I wanted to be.
Skip buckled Daphne into the passenger seat, then placed me into the back. He turned the key in the ignition.
The engine sputtered. So did my dreams of making it out alive. He smacked the steering wheel; the minivan roared to life.
We drove.
“Good thing for GPS, you know?” he proclaimed, sounding like a smartass.
On the way to the hospital, Skip spilled his guts. Turns out, Nurse Jodie confided in him during the middle of the night.
“That’s why I play dumb,” he boasted. “People underestimate me.”
Apparently, the nurse hated amnesia patients. In them, she saw her mother. Moreover, she saw her own failed attempts at saving her. Turns out, her mother had visions; many of which came true. Like how she knew of her husband’s mistresses. Or how she knew that she’d skipped school to hang out with her friends and smoke cigarettes.
There were many other such incidents.
The nurse pondered this for years. Does amnesia come with certain perks. Like super powers? Nurse Jodie wanted to find out. She spent years stealing powerful medicines and using them to experiment on certain patients. Patients like Daphne. She was monitoring their results, keeping tabs, until she found a combination worth noting.
Thus, the nurse had been pumping Daphne with a cocktail of drugs, inducing strange behavior in her, and causing Daphne to gain super-human strength and random oddities.
As Skip spoke, I went in and out of consciousness. At one point, I was floating above my body – above the minivan – watching the scene play out. The entire backseat of the SUV was painted red. I was dying.
…
I didn’t die, but I would have, if not for Skip. He rushed me straight to the ER, just in nick of time.
Three years have passed. I still talk to Skip from time to time on social media. He’s filled out quite a bit. His face cleared up; his voice deepened considerable. He’s now a handsome young man. And tough as nails. You’d be hard-pressed recognizing this version of him.
My daughter still doesn’t remember me. But at least she’s no longer angry. In fact, she’s becoming more loving every day. She even calls me Dad, but only on Father’s Day. The rest of the year I’m same-old Chuck.
Small victories, right? I’ll take what I can get.
Daphne decided to become a nurse. I’ve mixed feeling about this – jeez I wonder why? – but I gave her my blessings. That, plus a pile a cash to pay for her schooling. What’s a dad to do, you know?
…
She texted me this morning. It’s official: She’s now a nurse. And she’s coming home. Apparently, she bought herself a used car (with my money, of course), which she found on Craigslist. It came at a bargain, she told me. She couldn’t pass it up.
It’s a Camaro.
The forecast calls for torrential rain. This worries me. So does her final text, taken outside a MacDonald’s. With the text came a pic of her modelling on the hood of a shiny red sports car, making the world’s silliest duckface:
This is you’re fault Chuck ;-).