The Nurse by J. Corrigan (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

By then, and despite my loss of reason, I knew that if I wanted to live, I had to go to A&E. ‘Mum, call 999.’

She sat beside me. ‘No need for that. We’ll do as Mark says.’ She touched my forehead and I wanted to feel her love. ‘Shall I call Daniel?’

‘No! Don’t you dare.’ I was disconnecting then, and it was a not unpleasant sensation.

She didn’t call an ambulance, but helped me back to bed.

I only found myself being rushed into theatre at the NHS hospital because Tom had an early shift on his placement at a GP surgery nearby and had popped by very early to see me. He ignored my mother, who was trying to call Bluefields again, and dialled 999.

I woke in the recovery room encased in a silver heat blanket; it was as if I were in a spaceship. I felt no pain, but I was shaking so much I could hear the trolley on which I lay rattling and banging as if I were on a fairground ride.

Part of Samira’s placenta had been left inside me and I’d haemorrhaged badly.

To save me, the surgeon had taken away my womb.

49

Theo

26 April 2016

As Rose comes to the end of her story a long, heavy breath escapes from Theo’s throat.

The way Rose was treated was shocking, appalling and callous in equal measure. Why didn’t she disclose details regarding her relationship with Daniel, and about Samira, to her hearing judge? To her barrister, or her husband?

Theo takes hold of her hand. Her eyes filled as she came to the day she woke up in the recovery room of an NHS hospital. Theo can now decipher her motivation for her crime. In a moment of injudicious madness, she committed murder in Queen’s Hospital high dependency unit.

‘So you see, Theo. You see now? I was Abe’s nurse, something I never wanted to be on so many levels. Ed had been sabotaging my attempts to pass my degree out of spite. Daniel abandoned me the moment I stepped into that hospital. Before then, even. They took away my career and they took away my ability to have more children.’

Theo squeezes her soft hand in his. There’s a profound pain in her eyes, but something else lies in the depths of them too. Something she’s not telling him. ‘There’s more to the story, isn’t there, Rose?’

She nods; her words seemed to be trapped deep inside her.

‘How did you know Abe was Daniel’s son?’

She gasps, withdraws her hand from Theo’s. Her face is resolute as she steels herself for what she is about to say. ‘Because on the day Abe died, his mother came to see him in the hospital. I met her.’

‘And you recognised her?’

She nods once. ‘It was Abigail.’

Something electric fizzes through Theo. Something not unlike rage. ‘Daniel’s sister?’ He remembers the scrap of paper that Rose found in Daniel’s bedroom all those years ago with A’s birthday scribbled on it. The pink envelope on the passenger seat of the MG.

Ed wasn’t going to see his mother. He was going to see Abigail.

‘The woman who was introduced to me as Daniel’s sister, yes. When I saw her at Abe’s bedside, my breath left my body. My life disappeared in an instant, became nothing in a moment. Abigail was Abe’s mother.’ She holds her stomach. ‘She was not Daniel’s sister, but his wife.’

His wildest theory, the one that only passed through his mind fleetingly, and a speculation he disregarded as being too ludicrous, too fantastical, turns out to have been born out of tragic fact. ‘Rose—’

‘After seeing the woman who had pretended to be the sister of my baby’s father, the hatred inside me overflowed. Abigail Deane was the mother of this young man, while I could never have children.’

Theo studies Rose’s face, which is corrugated with grief. But none of this is an excuse for such a terrible and premeditated revenge on an innocent man.

Every thread of his body is still telling him that Rose is not a murderer.

‘I fell for the wrong man, Theo. I saw the man I wanted to see. It wasn’t until Samira, and afterwards, that I saw clearly.’ She looks at him. ‘Maybe before, maybe I saw before, but I was pregnant. Perhaps I didn’t want to see.’

‘I’m so sorry, Rose.’ He rakes his hand through his hair. And he is sorry, but then he thinks of Natasha, of Mia, of Abe, and the conflict living inside him writhes. He wants to share with Rose his schism, but instead he says, ‘The mistake with the placenta… the operation afterwards?’

‘Mark resigned. I didn’t pursue it further. Tom wanted me to, but it was pointless. I’d lost my child, and my womb, and nothing… nothing would bring either of them back.’ She falters, ‘Mark Stephens emigrated to Australia soon after he resigned.’

‘Yes, and was killed in a car accident in the Outback less than a year later. I’ve already looked into him, after you mentioned him in our earlier meetings. There were questions at the time from the Australian police regarding the cause of the collision. As far as I know, the case is still open.’

Rose shakes her head. ‘I regret what I did, Theo. I want you to know that. I regret it every day. Every moment.’

‘You should have made that clearer. Why didn’t you, Rose? Why?’

‘I was guilty. I’m here.’

He nods, and for moments silence encases them.

Theo rests his elbows on the table. ‘Why did you cool off towards Daniel? You were in love.’ He coughs. ‘The whole thing was terrible, losing Samira, the loss of future children, but why? You didn’t know about Abigail then.’

‘Our relationship was so wrong.’

‘Why didn’t you tell your barrister about Daniel and Abigail deliberately misleading you?’

Her eyes fill with desolation. ‘Abe was dead. I couldn’t undo it.’ She pulls at the sleeves of her jumper and then wrenches at the skin around her nail, drawing blood. She wipes away the tear that stands proud on the smooth skin of