Janine was still chewing on the last piece of her apricot jam ‘sandwich’ when Nurse Tomoko stopped the wheelchair in front of Doctor Shepherd’s office door. The nurse took out a handkerchief, wiped the patient’s mouth, and dabbed at the front of her hospital pyjama-top. Nurse Tomoko flipped open the lid of her pocket watch. Thirty seconds to go.
The watch disappeared with her handkerchief as fast as the thought of being late had crossed her mind, and she wiped Janine’s fringe from her black‘n’blues. ‘Spick ‘n’ spa—’ the nurse took a step back, her heel tapping against the office door; that look of rage—the eye of the beast—had returned, and was burning bright in Janine’s swollen eyes.

‘Come in!’ The voice behind the door, though muffled, was shrill.

Nurse Tomoko shivered, and stepped away from the office door. A feeling of nightmarish reality crawled through the marrow of her bones. I’m trapped between the eye of the beasts and the voice of doom, she thought.

‘Come in!’

Nurse Tomoko, spurred on by the urgency in Doctor Shepherd’s voice, leaned forward and grabbed Janine by the shoulders, ‘Now, you listen to me, Janine Wilkinson; take a deep breath before you answer any of her questions,’ the nurse whispered, ‘Speak clearly. Be calm. Deal?’

Janine’s eyes were unmoved, focused on the black and gold embossed letters on the stained glass office door. Nurse Tomoko wasn’t even sure the patient had heard her instructions, but there was no time to repeat them. The door opened and there stood Dan-the-Man opened with a smirk on his face: ‘There you are, pardners!’ His voice was dripping with condescension, ‘The good doctor was just getting a leetle anx—’

‘Oh, shut up, Danny. Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can take the whole cowboy-slash-Mexican talk routine.’ Doctor Shepherd’s face was obscured by a pile of folders on her desk, but her voice was firm; Janine’s face had turned ashen, and her knuckles hospital-sheet white over the wheel spokes. She was hyperventilating and Nurse Tomoko could see Janine’s mouth going dry.

‘Everything will be all right.’ Nurse Tomoko’s voice was frail, and she doubted her own words.

Dan-the-Man had also picked up on her state of uncertainty—there was a look of satisfaction in his eyes when the nurse tried to push Janine into the office and the patient’s fingers caught in the wheel spokes.

Janine’s facial expression, however, suggested that she had not felt any pain; she simply placed both hands over her face and started sobbing through her fingers, forcing out thick streams of blood over the back of her hands and forearms with each exhalation.

‘Danny, please bring in the patient; the new nurse seems to be unable to do so,’ Doctor Shepherd said.

Janine covered her ears, caking her hair with blood. She started shaking in the wheelchair, and then tried to get up. Nurse Tomoko placed a firm hand on her chest and pushed her down. I have to do this, Janine; I’m so sorry, honey.

Janine was stronger than Dan-the-Man had anticipated; he grimaced as he held down her arms while Nurse Tomoko looked on in horror as the blood on Janine’s hands and fingers seeped through the front of her pyjama-pants, her mouth contorted and blood-smeared. Each No! she tried to utter was no more than a wheeze. The nurse took a breath and used the attached wheelchair’s leather strips to strap down Janine’s arms and feet; Dan-the-Man pulled tight a leather strap over her chest.

‘I see you have a lot to learn, Nurse Tomoko. Don’t you think the patient should’ve been strapped in before you brought her here? Did you read what she got up to in the Kruger National Park?’

‘I—’

‘Need I remind you that she has a history of psychopathic behavior?’ Still seated, Doctor Shepherd picked up the pile of folders from her desk. She bent down to her right, and placed the folders on the floor beside her desk. She groaned as she sat up straight again, shaking her curly black hair back over her shoulders. Then, adjusting her dark-rimmed glasses, she scratched at the dark, comet-like facial blemish that stretched over her right cheek with the little finger of her left hand as if it were an itch. With her right hand she picked up a golden fountain pen, and tapped on the cover of the only remaining folder on the glass top of her desk.

‘I’ve read the patien—’

‘I know you have, Nurse Tomoko. Is there anything else?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You are dismissed, Nurse Tomoko. I will conduct the MSE, thank you very much. I’m afraid your presence might jeopardize the examination,’ Doctor Shepherd looked over the rim of her glasses. ‘Let me also remind you that we are a professional establishment; those nails of yours will be clean in the morning. That will be all.’

‘As you can see, Doctor, the patient is in no state to take the MSE. May I suggest—’

‘No, you may not. I suggest you leave the room immediately. Danny, please escort Nurse Tomoko out of my office.’