Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee

Author:Edward Lee [Lee, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-01-12T15:13:33+00:00

Chapter Nine

I

"Call it," Diane said.

"Heads," Jessica answered. She knew her luck. She caught the coin and frowned. Tails. I lose.

Diane was polite enough not to laugh out loud. "Tough luck, sister. This is what we get for dropping out of high school."

"Yeah."

"You get to wash the Sack!"

That's what they'd dubbed Faye Mullins. The Sack. Because that's what she looked like.

Diane was just getting off-shift. "At least she shouldn't be acting nutty today. Didn't make a sound all night. The Prolixin hit her hard this time."

"You probably slipped her a double dose just to keep her quiet during your shift," Jessica suspected.

"Me?" Diane's grin sharpened. "That would constitute an extreme occupational dereliction. Of course, if you think I do stuff like that, you can turn in a written complaint to the ward director."

Jessica got the joke. They all did it sometimes, they had to. Some of these patients just took too much out of you, and no one gave a crap about them anyway. They were lost and had somehow landed here. The families paid the in-patient bills to keep them shut away. Out of sight out of mind.

But Jessica wondered who was paying the Sack's bills. No living relatives were listed on her admittance form. Doesn't matter to me, she realized. 1 just get paid to wash their dirty butts.

She trudged into the dorm. That's what they called them. Dorms. Like a college. This was no college. But any employment was better than none. Changing bedpans, mopping vomit, and sponge-bathing bedridden or incapacitated female patients was the most regrettable part of her job description.

In the dorm she wheeled the cart to the bed. "Hi, Faye," she tried to sound cheery. "Rise and shine!"

There was no response from the woman in the bed. She looked dead-eyes slitted, head lolled. Her mouth hung open to show crooked teeth and foamy saliva. But she wasn't dead, she was just zonked. All the better for Jessica; she'd be a lot easier to wash if she wasn't spitting or trying to bite her. So far, at least, they hadn't had to four-point her or put her in a bed-net or straitjacket.

Her cart's casters squeaked when she brought her wash buckets around the side of the bed.

Oh, Jesus. Even Jessica had some remaining pity. Faye Mullins was a wreck of human flesh, insensate. Her hair was a pale-brown tangle, eyes silently delirious. "Come on, hon, hitch it up for me, okay?"

Jessica got her leaned up on the bed and managed to drag her wrinkled white gown off. Long flat breasts sagged like flaps over the stomach roll; hair shot from the creases of her armpits. Detachment, Jessica forced the thought. That's what the doctors and RN's always said. Sometimes it was easy, when the patient had lost enough humanity.

Grim-faced, Jessica sponged Faye's body, sometimes averting her eyes.

"No more, no more," the patient murmured. "I don't want to do it anymore."

Nuts. "You don't have to do anything, hon."

"No more crack my God please no more crack. .

Jessica wilted, trying not to imagine what horrors the woman had witnessed.

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