“But I think we’re supposed to keep it from the other patients,” Geoff said. “Don’t want to upset them, do we?”
I felt my stomach turn over and so I went to the toilet. Another legacy from my crisis at the Wicklow is irritable bowel syndrome which, in my case, manifests as painful abdominal cramps. I have it to this day.
I said to Geoff, “I’m just going to the loo.” And then I rushed off.
I sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, put my hand in my pocket, and took out the letter from Saudi Arabia. It was a very nice letter, very concerned. The person who signed his name just “Fahd” was very sorry that his old friend Frank was so ill and would do anything necessary to alleviate his suffering. Money was, he said, no object, and he would make sure that the best doctors in his kingdom were made available to his old friend. The letter finished, “I suppose this means that you haven’t been down to your house in Padstow of late. Such a shame. It is so very beautiful.”
Every part of my body shook. I must have looked down at that letter at least five times to check that I wasn’t hallucinating. But every time I looked at it, the import of what it said hit me even harder. Someone had to know about this! But who? Pat, her cronies, the doctor, even apparently Frankie’s solicitor obviously all knew each other and, if Frank was right, Pat at least had her eye on his little cottage in Padstow. The cottage I now knew existed. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia had confirmed it to me, King Fahd who was Frankie’s friend!
At the very least Frankie himself had to know about this. Even if he was in a coma I could read what the king had written and maybe that would bring him comfort. I should have put the letter straight back into my pocket when I came out of the cubicle, but I didn’t and so it was in my hand when Pat and Tracey came towards me.
“What have you got there?” Pat asked as she put a tubby hand out towards me. “Geoff said that the post came ages ago. Is that something for me?”
“No,” I said. “It’s...” I dried up completely, just stood there looking at her dumbly.
“Well, it can’t be for you, can it?” Tracey said. “You’re agency.”
Geoff had to have seen me do the post. Cowed to Pat’s will, he obviously tittle-tattled for whatever praise she might be giving out. Stupid, poor, weak Geoff!
“Who’s the letter for, Julia?” Pat asked.
I looked down at it and noticed that my hands were now sweating. “It’s for Frankie,” I said. “It’s from his friend.”
“What, the king of Saudi Arabia?” Pat laughed and, as she did so, I watched the normally fat and jolly mask slip. This was a face that could have curdled milk. “Give it to me.”
“No,” I said. “It’s for Frankie.”
Pat, thunderous, clicked her fingers. “Give!”
“No,” I repeated. “It’s for him and anyway, Pat, if you don’t believe that Frankie knows King Fahd, what is the problem? What’s the problem anyway? What are you afraid might be in a letter from King Fahd to Frankie Driscoll?”
Pat’s small blue eyes almost disappeared into the depths of her face. Encouraged by her obvious discomfort, I pushed it even further, too far. “I know about the cottage in Padstow,” I said. “Is that why Frankie’s solicitor was here last night, with you? You know, if Geoff is going to be your snitch you should really train him in the art of what not to gossip about, too.”
For a very brief moment, I thought that I’d won. Stupid. Hospitals are tailor-made for bullies — the tiny staff toilets were miles away from anywhere and besides, the TV in the day room was, as usual, blaring out at the heavily sedated patients who stared open-mouthed at it. It was Tracey, right behind her boss, who punched me, but it was Pat who sat on my chest while I desperately tried to cling to a letter from a king.
“Give it to me, you bitch!” Pat cried as she clawed at my hand with her French-polished fingernails.
“What are you doing, Pat?” I yelled. “Upping Frankie’s insulin dose until it kills him?”
Diabetics can have too much insulin. That is a fact. Pat’s face, briefly, became very white.
“The doctor and the solicitor are in on it too, aren’t they?” I said, attempting to capitalise on her obvious fear.
But then she smiled. “Prove it,” she said and then she hit me and I lost consciousness.
I don’t actually remember Pat taking the letter from King Fahd out of my hand, but I never saw it again. That day, the day of Frankie’s death, and many more after it, became just blurs of faces, voices, and vague impressions. I stated many times that I wanted to contact the king, if for no other reason than to inform him about Frankie’s death. But I was never allowed to do so by either my doctors or my nurses and later on that year the monarch, sadly, suffered a stroke.
I was detained formally under the Mental Health Act for twenty-eight days. Once in treatment for my “violent and disordered behaviour,” I opted to stay for another month, for the sake of my family. They were really worried about me. I would keep on about Frankie, who was a patient who had loved his hospital and had willingly given all his worldly goods to it. The only “conspiracy” that existed, my doctor said, was the one that the unbalanced chemicals in my head had created. They had produced King Fahd just as surely as they had produced the fact that Frankie had been murdered. I carried on with my story for a while, but when I realised that to continue would do me personally no good, I gave up. People do.
Some time in 1995, I don’t remember exactly when, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I haven’t worked as a nurse or anything else since. Pat and her cronies are long gone now and quite what the hospital did with the windfall they received from poor old Frankie, I don’t know. Sometimes I fantasise about going down to Padstow and seeing who might be about. Pat, Tracey, Janice, the doctor, the solicitor.
But I never do. After all, even if they were all there, what would that prove? Even with medication, I am not “sane,” whatever that is, and so who would even bother to listen to me? Not that I’m making excuses. I let Frankie down and in doing so I perpetrated a great sin. Father Dale forgives me every time I bring the subject up in confession, which is weekly now. But God is another matter. He doesn’t forgive me because the bullies won, because He knows, just as well as I do, that Pat’s challenge for me to “Prove it!” was an admission of her absolute guilt. Not that any of that really matters anymore. That Frankie died without ever knowing that his friend Fahd cared about him is what makes me really bitter. That the hospital took his house is one thing, but to take, or rather conceal, a genuine expression of human warmth is quite another. That is evil, that is twisted, and one day, maybe not soon, but sometime, I will go down to Padstow, I will find Pat, Tracey, Janice, the solicitor, and the doctor and...
And perhaps I will do to them what they did to poor old Frankie. After all, mad or not, I am still a nurse, I still know how to hold a syringe...
© 2008 by Barbara Nadel
Turkish Delight
by Edward D. Hoch
Unlike other stories in Edward D. Hoch’s Stanton and Ives series, which are all narrated by Stanton, this one is told in the third person. This, the author explains, is because the duo get separated in the course of the story and he wanted to cover both viewpoints. We recently asked readers to write and name their favorite Hoch series and Stanton and Ives, along with Nick Velvet and Dr. Sam Hawthorne, were often mentioned.
“Turkish bath,” Walt Stanton announced as their plane circled for a landing at Istanbul’s airport.
“Turkish towels!” Juliet Ives countered in their attempt to name all things Turkish.