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SNAFU Part 7

by Angharad

This is a work of fiction any resemblance to anyone alive or dead is unintentional.

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We were all rather tired the next morning, but no one seemed to want to talk about the events of the night. Both my parents stayed home that morning and after a light lunch, they took me to the station. I slept much of my journey back to Barbury feeling stiff and grumpy when I arrived there.

Upon arriving at my quarters, I was overwhelmed by the reception I received, they all seemed pleased to see me, and in some ways, I was glad to be back. My life could now get back to a degree of normalcy, well as close as it was going to. Despite the grumbles, I had an early night and awoke feeling much better, but I would need to, I had much to catch up on.

In terms of the theoretical side, I was up to speed if not ahead of most of them, what I had missed were practical things, learning techniques and actual hands-on training. So for the next month, this was what happened. I was very tired, it was surprisingly physical, moving patients, doing dressings, bathing and supervising patient’s toilet. I had worked on the medical ward dealing with infections and heart problems, now I was moved to surgical.

Well, it was supposed to be surgical, but I was there about a day and a bit when ITU called for help. I was despatched as the cavalry, although with my relative novice status I couldn’t think why. Surely they’d want more experienced staff, but it was me they got.

Intensive care is tough and very specialised. Patients have named nurses because some form of rapport is so important because of the serious nature of the illness. Stays may be short or long depending upon the progress of the patient, only the very sick are kept here, it’s too expensive to do otherwise. It can cost thousands of pounds a day to keep someone here on life support using expensive drugs and equipment and highly paid well-trained staff. It is also highly technical ITU nurses are technicians, monitoring all these machines and nurses, tending to the human need of their patients. Sadly even with all this, people still die and I saw several walk away from their bodies while I was there. I also saw others collected by what I presumed were relatives or friends. It’s hard to tell with spirit folk.

Some of the other staff began to query how I knew who was about to die when it seemed unlikely from the electronic monitoring. It took much badgering before I revealed my source, that I could sometimes see these discarnate entities. It spooked some of them and they avoided me, well unless they needed to make contact. I felt a little dejected. Having been part of the team elsewhere, rejection took me back to my school days and that naturally brought up all sorts of unwanted baggage. Astonishingly, I hadn’t yet caught up with Pam Davis. I did so in a most surprising way.

It was a Tuesday evening, well quite late night when the grapevine said that a nurse was on her way from casualty, all sorts of rumour abounded from accident to assault to kidnap by terrorists. In fact, it was inhalation of vomit.

Being a student nurse, meant I often acted as a gofer or helped setting up drips or physically moving patients into or out of bed. I also got the job of preparing the bodies for collection by undertakers. The latter because I seemed tuned into the dead and no one else liked to do it. I didn’t either, but someone had to do it, and it fell to me. The only creepy part is when you move a body and air in the lungs or body cavity makes a groaning noise, a burp or a fart. The first few times it frightens the life out of you, then it makes you laugh. There are few jokes in playing with the recently deceased, so you take laughs where you can find them.

So I had just come back from sorting out another newly dead body when I was called to help a nurse admitting a new patient. I wasn’t too happy, I should have been on my break, but that’s ITU.

“Curtis, can you gimme a hand?”

“Sure corp.” I went over to the nurse corporal who was standing by the gurney. Together with two orderlies, we lifted the lifeless patient onto the bed. Well, she was alive, but only just. It seems that a surfeit of larger, collapsing in the toilet and blocked airways caused vomit to be inhaled. It was maybe an hour or two before she was found. Not good.

Vomit is horrible stuff. Well, even non-nurses know that. It stinks and just a spot makes the rest of us want to follow suit. I hate being sick, I hate the smell of it, and I am not very good when I have to hold a bowl for someone who can’t hold their own - no pun intended. I go a delicate shade of green or sometimes blue through trying to hold my breath.

So we agree sick is yucky stuff. Stomach contents are designed to be in one’s stomach, not over the bed, the bathroom floor or in the lungs. It’s nasty stuff full of whatever the food or drink contains, plus any bugs therein, plus – and this is the worst bit, stomach acid.

Everything that goes down the hatch passes through an acid bath, hydrochloric acid to be exact, presumably because all chlorides, the salts of hydrochloric acid are water-soluble, which helps absorption. The guts are designed for it. Alas, the lungs are not. So if you put lots of fluid in the lungs, it tends to impede breathing otherwise known as drowning. If you put corrosive fluid in the lungs it tends to severely damage large areas of the sensitive lung tissue. If treatment is offered rapidly, this is minimised and recovery is fair to good. If treatment is delayed then the prognosis is not good, decreasing by the minute, especially if there is large scale inundation. In this case lack of oxygenation of the brain can cause irreversible damage quite quickly. This was the case in point.

As I helped set up the lines of the IVs and associated machines, I didn’t recognise who the unfortunate was. There was quite severe facial bruising from a fall and no one looks the same with a tracheotomy and intubation. It was only towards the end of the process when all the machines were attached and beeping, and the drips running, when the nurse corporal put up a name tab over the bed. It was Pam Davis, I nearly fell over and went all cold. The corporal noticed me and said,” You okay Curtis looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Ha ha.”

I began to sway and apparently went very pale. She grabbed me and I managed to stay conscious. “Are you okay?” she repeated her question.

“I’ll be alright, I just haven’t had anything to eat for a bit.”

“Sorry Curtis,” she said looking at her watch, “you’re a bit late with your break aren’t you? How long you got to do?”

I looked at my watch, it was nearly four in the morning. “I’m on until six.”

“It’ll be quiet now, gerroff to bed. Well, go on then.”

“Is she going to be alright?”

“Why do you know her?”

“Sort of, she was at my school I think.”

“Doesn’t look too good, probable brain damage. They’ll do an MRI as soon she’s well enough to leave the unit. Kidneys don’t look too special either.”

I don’t know what I felt. This relatively lifeless body had been the person who had caused such massive alteration to my life, an unwanted alteration. I had despised her most of my life, she was a bully and totally despicable. Yet she was also a human being and in the most awful situation. Despite the revulsion that my logic said I should feel, all I could feel was pity. If she was brain damaged, then she may be better off dying, because no quality of life that I could recognise, would be possible.

I walked over to her comatose form and spoke to her, “Hello, Pam, you’ll be alright now, you are in the safest place you can be. You’ve been ill, but we’ll do all we can to help you get better. So you just rest and recover as fast as you can.” I held her lifeless hand as I spoke, it felt cold. I squeezed it and it responded with what I presumed was a muscle spasm. I couldn’t tell. I watched her eyes as I talked to her, they were scanning back and fore under the closed eyelids, a little like REM (rapid eye movement) which indicates dreaming. I felt sick as I realised she could be locked in this nightmare for the rest of her life. I offered a silent prayer, trading my forgiveness for her recovery. Then I bade her goodnight and went back to my room to sleep.

The latter did not come with any ease. I was extremely tired and hungry, but I couldn’t face the idea of food. I chewed a sweet as I walked back to my room and didn’t even bother to clean my teeth, I just undressed and lay on the bed. My head was swimming with strange ideas, and I found it hard to get some point of reference to think things through logically.

I was aware of the irony. Here was the person I feared most in the world and she was less danger to me than a fly. But instead of feeling liberated and free I felt cheated again. Life had prevented me from confronting my fear and dealing with it, in the same way, it had destroyed my manhood. It took away any choice and I was forced to become who I had become. How could it keep on doing this to me, it wasn’t fair.

It seemed doubly unfair that it should prevent me having my say with the poor wretch who now lay in the intensive care bed. Admittedly, her own stupidity had created her situation, but I’d have to be a very hardnosed sort to take advantage of her when she was defenceless. She might have done it to me, but I didn’t work that way. To have kicked her when she was down was against all I believed in, and I thanked my parents for this fairness of mind. Some may consider it stupid, but it was how I felt. I fell asleep wishing her well once again. I knew no matter what the outcome of her illness, and it looked very bad for her, I knew she no longer held any power over me. Were she to recover 100% and grow to twice her size, she would never worry me again, let alone frighten me. I had at last moved on, and realising that I drifted into a deep and troubled sleep.

I found myself in a strange place. I was once more in ancient Egypt and at some sort of tribunal or trial. It began to dawn on me that it was a trial for the soul of Pam Davis. The crocodile waited with great anticipation, for any soul which failed the test – they were weighed against a feather, was fed to the croc and languished in the Egyptian version of hell or the underworld, rather than rising to their heaven to live in luxury for all time.

I was merely an observer to these weird proceedings, but my fascination turned to horror as I saw the scales in which her heart was placed begin to dip against the feather. I found myself screaming a protest. I was grasped by Anubis, the god of the dead and leader of souls, and was cast to the floor.

“How dare you interrupt these proceedings. By what right do you do so?”

“I am sorry, your greatness, but this person is not dead.”

“She is as good as, and as we want the day off tomorrow, we thought we’d hurry it along a bit.” (Well it was a dream!).

“So you are going to cast her to the crocodile simply as an expediency.”

“In a word, yes. Why should you care, after all, it was your mistress who caused her to be in this mess.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You are a servant of the Lady Sekhmet?”

“I am.”

“Well, it was your hatred for the woman for her treatment of you, which caused your mistress to destroy her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Anubis pointed at a large mirror and I saw myself cursing Pam, wishing her all sorts of horrible fate. It seemed to scan back over my life at a very rapid pace and I watched with horror as I relived the pain and hurt from those days. No wonder I wished her dead. But that was then, this was now, and I no longer felt that way. I felt ashamed of myself. If anyone needed to be fed to the croc it was me.

“How can we stop this ?” I asked.

“We can’t. You have brought this about and it will happen.”

“I don’t accept that”, I said, “I wish her no harm.”

“There is perhaps one way in which this tribunal can be stopped.” Said the jackal-headed god.

“Please do it,” I asked him.

“I shall summon your mistress. If it displeases her, prepare to be destroyed.” I thought perhaps I should have felt scared, but hey, when you are about to be destroyed every other day, even by the Eye of Re, you get a bit blasé. But I hid it well, they may not do flippancy here.

The lioness headed goddess arrived and was not in the best of moods, this did not bode well. “Your ladyship, this slave of yours wants to take back a curse she made some time ago and spare the life of this Pam woman.”

“Out of the question.” And with that, she turned to leave.

Without thinking I threw myself on the floor before her and begged for the life of my unwitting victim. The goddess stopped and regarded me with amusement. “I shall never understand, you humans, you ask for something and when we grant it, you change your mind.”

“I am sorry great and merciful goddess, but I cannot condemn another for an act which I forgive.”

“Oh so now you decide their fates as well.”

“No great mistress, but I cannot condemn another without condemning myself as well.”

“Fine, feed both to the crocodile, he looks in need of a good meal.”

“Please mistress, spare her and take me.”

“Why should I? Just because you have some form of death wish which occurs every few months. Why should I oblige you, why not just take some Prozac?”

I very nearly laughed at this anachronism, but it was a dream, and they do sometimes seem rather ‘Alice in Wonderland’, but instead of a white rabbit, we had a whole bunch of anthropomorphic Egyptian deities and a feather.

“So what if I do spare her, what will you offer me. I already own you until the end of time.”

“I have nothing to offer you, mistress.”

“It’s a pretty poor bargain from my point of view.”

“Ask what you will of me, mistress.” I was really struggling. I mean can you imagine what it feels like to be kneeling before some seven-foot-tall woman who has a lioness’ head? Weird doesn’t nearly enough describe it, especially when you know she has a destructive power even the USA can’t match for lethality.

“Take her place then and get out of my sight.”

I thanked her and found myself being manhandled back to the tribunal, whereupon my heart was removed before my very eyes and placed in the tray of the scales. I prepared to become croc fodder. I closed my eyes and waited. Suddenly there was a commotion and I opened them again. It seemed the unexpected had happened, my heart was lighter than the feather. I was as surprised as the rest of them. What happens now? I thought.

From the distance came a laughing that made the whole place vibrate and a voice which came from my mistress, “Let them both go, we’ll deal with them later.”

I woke up in a bath of sweat and I had sand on my hands and feet. In fact there was sand in the bed. This was very strange. It was daylight, about eight o clock and so I showered and went for some breakfast. Afterwards, I went back to the ITU.

“Hi Jamie.” It was Lt. Smith. "You missed all the fun last night."

“I was here ‘till four.”

“This was during change-over.”

“What happened?”

“A comatose nurse who has more machines attached to her than a formula one car, suddenly screams and gets up out of the bed.”

“What!” I felt a cold shiver go down my spine.

“I mean this woman has brain damage, knackered kidneys and no lung function worth talking about, screams and then gets off the bloody bed. We get her back to bed and start to disentangle machines and drips etc. and she is breathing by herself, her throat appears to have healed and instead of the last rites, we had to give her a shot to calm her down. I have never seen a raising of the dead, but I reckon we came pretty close to it a couple of hours ago. She’s been sent off for an MRI of head, lungs and kidneys. It doesn’t make any sense, but I should think miracle just about sums it up.”

“No one saw anybody unusual, did they.”

“One of the nurses thought they saw you by her bedside.”

“That was before I went off at four.”

“You didn’t come back?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, why?”

“’Cos it was me who saw you, Jamie. You seemed to be talking in some foreign language and then it all went crazy.”

“I was asleep.”

“You sure.”

“Positive.”

“Well, who was it? Another of your ghosts?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t care to mutter over some of the others, would you? They could do with some extraordinary help.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t me. I don’t know who it was.”

“Okay, so it wasn’t you, maybe you can explain how we found sand in the bed after our mysterious visitor, and a few animal hairs, which I have sent off for analysis.”

I just shrugged my shoulders. I had an idea, but no one would believe me. But I was delighted that whatever had happened had happened, even if it meant confronting my fears. Perhaps I dreamt it all. Could all of this be a bad dream? I pinched myself and it hurt.

It took me half the day to track down where Pam was. She was now on a medical ward. I went to see her.

I gave her the flowers. “Oh, thanks. Do I know you? You look familiar.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I think I should know you but I’ve been ill and it seems to have affected my memory.”

“No problem. I was on intensive care when they admitted you. I came to see you with my own eyes. Anyway, I’m glad you’re on the mend.”

“Hang on a minute, you were in my dream.”

“No, not me.”

“Yes, it was you. You saved my life didn’t you?”

“I’m a student nurse, I couldn’t save fifty pence let alone someone’s life.”

“I’m sure it was you.”

“You probably saw me in ITU and the rest was just a dream.”

“What about the sand?”

“What sand?”

“The sand they found in my bed?”

“I don’t know. I’m a nurse, not a geologist.”

“You look awfully familiar.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to go.”

“Jamie Curtis! Are you the girl I was in school with?” I knew I shouldn’t have worn my uniform with its name tag.

“Shush keep it quiet,” I hissed at her.

“It is, isn’t it?” she hissed back at me like a demented viper.

“What if it is?”

“You look really well.”

“Do I?”

“I like your hair up like that, you used to wear it so short before didn’t you?”

“Things were different back then.”

“Yes I know, you’ve changed quite a bit.” She smiled at me, and for one moment I began to wish I hadn’t bothered preventing the croc from having his dinner. I wondered if she would now blackmail me.

“It was you last night, wasn’t it?”

“In ITU? Yes.”

“No silly, in my dream. You saved me from a crocodile and a lion.”

“You were delirious.”

“No, I wasn’t. It was you, wasn’t it.”

“What if it had been?”

“After the way, I treated you at school, I was surprised you would help me.”

“I’m a nurse, I practise random acts of kindness.”

“You took quite a risk didn’t you?”

“What coming here? The road isn’t that busy.”

“No, you silly girl, in my dream.”

“I don’t know, I have enough problems with my own dreams.”

“It wasn’t a dream was it?”

“No, it was delirium.”

“If you say so. But thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

“To you maybe, I nearly died.”

“Nearly isn’t quite the same as actually doing it. Thank the doctors and nurses who looked after you. It was them who saved you.”

“You always were modest. I feel sleepy, this dying lark doesn’t half take it out of me. Thank you once again. Don’t worry, I won’t cause you any trouble ever again.”

“I know, Pam. Just get some rest, we’ll talk again.”

“Yes, Jamie, I think we shall.” She smiled at me and drifted off to sleep. I wandered back to my room, trying to work out exactly what was happening. Like I said before, weird did not do this stuff justice. It was mega weird.

My confrontation with the woman who had effectively destroyed my life was over. It had been a non-event. I wasn’t sorry. I had moved on. I was no longer the distraught adolescent who wanted to see her burn in hell, I had grown beyond it and I felt pleased. Part of me was no longer angry because it seemed that life did conspire to cause me to be female and I was beginning to accept it at the deepest levels. The cause, some past life pact with a deranged Egyptian goddess or much more mundane ones, were not as important. What was important now was the future, and that was another story.

Speculation about what might have been was a fruitless task but we all do it as if the other path would have produced a better outcome. Of course the grass is always greener, it's human nature to believe we would be better off if we’d done the other. Except, when you know that things don’t get any better, a feeling we rarely admit just in case it spoils our luck, tempts Providence and all the other similar adages.

Because I had always carried this feeling of being cheated around with me, like some enormous mill-stone, I had rarely felt, ‘this is as good as it gets’. I was too tied up with my lost potential to realise that apart from never having a family, things wouldn’t necessarily have been much different. Until the British Army got involved, and let’s face it, they could make a pantomime out of Proust novel. How we as a nation ever won a war, puzzles me at times. But then life is full of paradoxes, the army being just one of them.

So I spent my adolescence being small and relatively feminine in appearance while loudly protesting in my squeaky voice, that I was just as butch as most of the boys and some of the girls. On reflection, some of the girls were more boyish than I was, and naturally, most of the boys were too. I laughed at myself when I wondered how many of my contemporary teenagers at school still slept with a teddy, as I did, and how many of them had actually made the clothes he wore? I was well hard by any comparison. What a joke I must have seemed, small, sensitive and squeaky-voiced and sixteen. The only boy in the school without zits, no wonder the girls liked me. I was the only boy who didn’t have a face full of pus. However, they didn’t treat me like a boy unless it was as a much younger brother. They certainly didn’t see me as potential mate, and I must have been the only boy who regularly got asked to babysit. I had never thought about that before.

When I was fourteen I managed to save several hundred pounds to buy myself a laptop computer. Okay, it wasn’t state of the art but it burned CDs and got me on the internet and all the other things I needed it to do. So I was pleased with it and the envy of my peer group, most of them. What I had completely forgotten was how I got the money, by babysitting. I felt myself blush as I recalled this ancient memory.

So I was a goodie-goodie, we can’t help our natures. I did do things wrong and remember I did almost condemn Pam to burn in hell or the crocodile equivalent. So I wasn’t all sweetness and light, and I’m still not. I’m human, apart from the lioness thing, but we won’t discuss that.

I was fourteen and living in a close of nice four-bedroomed, detached houses, the house in which my parents continue to reside. The other residents were similar to my family, professionals with one or two spoilt brats and the odd child saint like me (joke).

The Johns were a doctor and his wife, and they set up a card school where they played for the chance to sleep with each other’s wives and sexually abuse the children. In reality, Dr Johns was a bridge fanatic and his wife was quite a player too. They had two young children Bill and Eluned (pronounced Ee-lin-id), Mrs Johns was Welsh. Bill was about five and Linnie, as I called her was about seven, so effectively half my age. Their regular babysitter was a girl called Janet who was nearly eighteen and off to uni when she wasn’t breaking the hearts of half the young men in the district. She was quite a looker, blonde with a curvy figure and dazzling smile. I fell in love with that smile but she was far too mature to even see me, a small squeaky pimple-free zone.

One day, the Johns were short of a baby-sitter at fairly short notice and as my parents were part of the Willow Close bridge set, I got volunteered. Four couples made up the bridge set, three of whom lived in the close and the fourth around the corner in the next close, which was connected by a footpath. Janet had had quite a local clientele for her moneymaking activities, by pure chance it fell into my lap, or should I say laptop?

Not the most salubrious occupation for such a macho man as myself, but hell we all have to make sacrifices to earn a crust. I blushed as I remembered the Hewetts asking my mum if her daughter could babysit for them. She thought it was quite funny at the time, but I went off on one and sulked for most of the afternoon. They had two daughters called Lucy and Chloe. The Hewetts were a bit pretentious even by Willow Close standards. He was a civil engineer from somewhere up north and she was a district nurse. Some bloody nurse if she couldn’t tell the difference between a squeaky-voiced boy and a girl.

To cut the story short, she forgave my anatomical deficiencies and I overlooked hers and her daughters’. They were all as plain as the pampas and had all the makings of a tribe of bean poles, being as thin as rakes. Even Mr Hewett, Len, was about six foot three of matchstick. He did, however, have one saving grace, he had a Cambridge blue for athletics being a one-time holder of the Oxbridge record for the 1500 metres. So I could respect him, and I did have a sneaking regard for his anorexic wife after she dealt with my cuts and grazes – I came off my bike, at about a million miles an hour crashing into the pavement and spilling my rare blood group all over it. How I didn’t rearrange my dental structure I will never know, but I did put my ivories through my tongue, and had a few cuts and grazes to arms and legs. Mrs Hewett sewed me back together and I had barely a mark a month later. Today I’m quite thankful she did such a good job.

Back to my tale of financial enterprise. I got the job thanks to my father volunteering me in Janet’s absence and I was apparently rather good at it, because they all used me at various times and I used to get five pounds an hour, plus food and fizzy drinks, so I did well out of it.

I also got to do my homework once I settled the various offspring down, so it worked out to my advantage in all sorts of ways. Again I blushed as I recalled being shown how to change nappies, slightly differently for boys and girls and how to make up drinks and things when necessary. I became quite the little nursemaid, but if I did a good job, I often got a bonus. To my shame, I sometimes enjoyed looking after the kids. Macho man has a tender side or getting in touch with my feminine side. Ha. What a joke that turned out to be. But I was quite good with kids, and for some reason, they seemed to take to me as well if not better than Janet.

It got to such a stage, that when they had a big bridge tournament all the kids would be brought to our house and I looked after all seven of them, with Linnie’s help, she being the elder stateswoman of the group. She used to love being my assistant. But I used to get very embarrassed when she said she wished she’d had a big sister like me. I think she only did it to wind me up, but she could have meant it, especially when my hair got a bit long and I wore it in a ponytail. She brought me a very pretty scrunchie one evening. I got it cut the next day and she was quite upset about it.

At age fifteen, I began to appreciate puberty had somehow missed me. I was still pimple free and squeaky-voiced. My peers noticed, my parents, did not. So I became ostracized by previous school mates. Thankfully I had my computer and I sublimated my deficiencies with electronic games or my studies. I still rode my bike, but it was on my own or shepherding groups of littlies from the close. Now I think of it, I have a memory of one of my classmates seeing me with three or four little ones and I was called ‘Nanny Curtis’ for a few weeks. Mine was not a normal childhood, thanks to the intervention of Pam Davis’ knee to my gonads.

I recalled that day. I still felt sick as I felt the bony part of her leg make contact with a very soft part of my anatomy. I know I keeled over finding it hard to breathe. The pain was unbelievable and I cried buckets. It was just the two of us, I was eleven and she was two years my senior. I shuddered as I remembered. Maybe I should have left her to the crocodile, she was evil to me in those days.

The things she made me do, then when I once refused she would twist my arm or punch me or on the final occasion knee me. Now I knew she had destroyed my emerging gonads, neither of us knew that then, and my suspended development happened. I still have the voice of an eleven-year-old boy. I felt the tear run down my cheek. This statement is not quite true because my voice did change slightly, especially after the hormones, but it was very little and I can and do sing soprano, albeit only in the shower these days. I reached my room and felt quite desultory, I had to leave all this behind and look to the future. But could I? I understood perfectly how abused children carry the scars for so long, effectively I was one of them and my doting parents didn’t notice, didn’t ask why at eighteen my voice had not broken or my stature had grown so little. Could they really have been so blind as not to see it, so rapt in their own lives? This was becoming too cathartic, I needed a distraction, I went back to work.

“Ah, Nurse Curtis. Could I see you in my office please, now?” What did Major Collins want? I walked behind him, my shorter legs moving far quicker than his long ranging ones. He beckoned me in and closed the door behind us.

“Please sit.” I sat as instructed. I had been in the office once or twice before. I remembered all the medical journals and textbooks on the shelves, plus the army memorabilia, a display of cap badges, photos of him with HM the Queen, Tony Blair and a large photo of a group of soldiers stood or sat in ranks, obviously a departmental and official photo. I had one of my final year in school, with all my contemporaries. I still looked like a girl.

“It has come to my attention that you, erm, that you see ghosts and dead people.” The Major was having a bit of difficulty with the concept, it possibly being beyond his map of the world.

“If I was to say I did sometimes, would it have some effect upon my career here?” I’m not sure if I had given the right response, or indeed why I had asked the question. Did I still want out? Perhaps I did.

“No, not unless it could be demonstrated you were having hallucinations or were psychotic.”

Well that’s alright then, I thought to myself, unless they think I am potty.

“It isn’t so much about that…. Well, I suppose it is in- a-way. It’s about finding sand and animal hair in an intensive care bed at which you were seen during the night.”

“I wasn’t there, sir.”

“But you were seen.”

“It was at the end of a long shift and I was fast asleep in my own bed.”

“You should have still been on duty.”

“I had been sent off early because I’d had no break and had laid out a newly dead patient beforehand, a job none of the others will do.”

“So you maintain you were in bed and asleep.”

“Yes, sir I was.”

“No one saw you?”

“No sir, I sleep on my own as per the policy of the nursing school.”

“Quite so. So you weren’t there?”

“No, sir.”

“Can you explain the sand and animal hair?”

“As I wasn’t there sir, no I can’t.”

“How do you think they got there?”

“I presume somebody put them there, sir.”

“But it wasn’t you?”

“No, sir it wasn’t.”

“Do you see dead people?”

“I fail to see the relevance of this, sir, whether I do or not, wouldn’t cause sand to appear in the bed of the ITU.”

“How do you explain Nurse Davis’ recovery?”

“Why should I have any better explanation than you do, sir? You have much more training, knowledge and experience than I do.”

“Yes I do and I have never seen anything like it in all my life. If I had been called to sign a death certificate I would not have been surprised because she was near to death. I have never seen anyone with half the problems she had, make a recovery like she did. It is extraordinary. It seems that when you are around extraordinary things seem to happen. Is this mere coincidence?”

“With all due respect sir, I am not aware of any other extraordinary event.”

“What about all the dead people?”

“What dead people, sir?”

“The ones you allegedly see.”

“Oh we’re back to that are we? Okay, I see dead people. That makes me crazy, so can you discharge me and I can go home and get on with my life.”

“Jamie, please don’t take that tone with me. I am witness to a remarkable happening. An event to which the term miracle could easily and rightly be applied. You are allegedly seen at the place. Sand and animal hair is found at the place, apparently arriving there mysteriously. You are alleged to see things which we mere mortals do not. I am asking you to help me understand something which I cannot. It makes no sense, it seems to turn the laws of science upon their head. Please help me to understand.”

“Sir, I don’t know why you seem to think I understand any better than you do.”

“We seem to be going around in circles. I believe you know what happened last night. Whether you had a direct hand in it I don’t know. I should like you to tell me what you think happened, on the understanding that it is off the record and does not go outside this office.”

I didn’t know what to do. I knew what happened, I knew why it happened. The hows were beyond me. What I also didn’t know was how much if any I could tell him.

“I’m really not sure what happened.”

“Were you there?”

“No, sir. I was not there.”

“But you would agree it was a remarkable if not miraculous event.”

“If you think so, sir.”

“Why, what would your definition of a miracle be then?”

“I don’t know, sir, I’ve not thought about them since trying to work out how the ones in the bible might really have happened.”

“Could they not just have happened by divine intervention?”

“If you say so, sir.”

“Are you an atheist, Nurse Curtis?”

“Not especially, sir, just not a believer in fairy tales.”

“I see, so you see the stories of Jesus as fairy tales do you?”

“Don’t I have that option?”

“Of course. I am just surprised, as you were seen praying at her bedside.”

“I keep telling you it wasn’t me.”

“Why the sand, Nurse Curtis? What was the significance of that?”

“If you’ve quite finished, sir, I should like to go. I was not there and do not know how, whatever happened, happened.”

I stood up to leave. “Please sit down again, Jamie, I’ll tell you when I’ve finished
.” I sat and folded my arms, demonstrating my displeasure.

“Ever been to Egypt?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“But you know about it, don’t you? Read lots about it, if I know you, Curtis.”

“Years ago.”

“Know anything about a lion-headed goddess?”

At this I nearly choked and I felt myself go pale. “They had all sorts of animal-human hybrids in their pantheon.”

“Yes, yes they did. But only one of them was seen coming out of your room.”

“What sir, when?”

“Last night.”

I was now in deepest cack. Who had seen it and what had they seen, or was he bluffing, if so how could he know about the Egyptian connection. Oh bugger.

“Sir, are you trying to tell me that someone saw someone with a lion’s head coming from my room? Wasn’t the same person who imagined they saw me in ITU when I was fast asleep in bed?”

“It was Captain Brice, would you consider her fanciful?” He had me there and he knew it.

“Well, sir, if Captain Brice saw a triceratops coming from my room, I should believe her no matter how unlikely it was.”

“But she didn’t see a triceratops, or a pink elephant, but a tall female with the head of a lioness and a sphere of some sort between her ears. It sounds remarkably like a description of the ancient Egyptian goddess called Sekhmet. Would you not agree?”

“Who am I to doubt my CO, sir?”

“Spare me the evasions and tell me what the bloody hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I am trying to be reasonable, Curtis, in dealing with a very unreasonable thing. You are the one person whom I suspect could help me in understanding this strange occurrence. I will ask you once more, can you tell me what on earth is going on here?”

“No sir.”

“Would you tell Captain Brice?”

“Tell her what, sir?”

“Don’t piss me about, Curtis.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“So why did you go pale when I mentioned your goddess friend?”

“Did I, sir? I couldn’t see that.”

“Are you into magic and stuff?”

“What conjuring and prestidigitation, sir?”

“You know full well what I mean. Mumbo bloody jumbo and raising spirits or Egyptian goddesses.”

“Sir, okay I’ll tell you what I know. I know nothing about all this miracle stuff. I was fast asleep in bed. I do know, however, were I to be into Egyptian magic or mumbo jumbo in your estimation, I would most certainly not be calling up Sekhmet. Do you know what she is capable of…”

“Do you believe all that stuff?”

“I have a healthy scepticism, but were I to experiment with the occult I would try something far less innocuous to call up, not the ‘Eye of Re’, the destroyer of nations.”

“So you do know something. Captain Brice was right.”

“I know a little about the deity to which you refer, along with bits about Jupiter and Hera, or Zeus or Ganesh or Shiva and lots of other mythologies. I used to read about them when I was a kid. That doesn’t make me the army’s version of Aleister Crowley or Jesus Christ. I did not raise the dead or call up a spirit. Can I go now? I have work to do.”

“I have asked our local museum to identify the sand and hair. You will not be surprised to learn the sand could have come from Egypt and the hair was from a lion or lioness. You may go, but until I find out what happened, do not consider this matter closed.”

I left his office feeling very vulnerable. Things were happening over which I had no control – a familiar situation, but not one I enjoyed. Others were being drawn into my strange world or the strange world which seemed to follow me. I had no responsibility for any of it, well very limited. Oh shit! Was it all my fault? How could it be? Just how could I be responsible for a psychotic, psychopathic, deranged Egyptian goddess? Even in my craziest moments I only wanted to destroy one person, and when it came to it, I couldn’t even do that. So how in the name of all that’s wonderful, could I be held responsible for all this?

I mean, what self-respecting goddess would become involved with me? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps manifesting as a little black dog and following Winston Churchill about, that would seem more credible. Plus the fact that he was as mad as march hare, makes it doubly credible. But someone like me? You have got to be joking. It’s like something out of ‘Ghost Busters’.

I worked my shift, it was miserable. I kept getting funny glances and sniggers. It struck me as ironic that this is possibly what would have happened had it got out about my change of gender. Now I had firsthand experience of what must have happened to some of the people I read about in my researches. I wanted to be angry, on their behalf. I wanted to be angry on my behalf. I also wanted to just run away. Several times I nearly said something but desisted because I thought it would make things worse. I nearly shouted, “Yes it was me who raised the dead, I’m a transsexual too, so fucking what!” But I didn’t.

I felt very alone because I couldn’t speak to my parents or anyone else who could understand. My gran would have understood. I wish she were here now. She always understood me.

Over the next week, I put up with the embarrassment and the accusing looks. I kept away from Pam Davis and everyone else. I was either in my room, off the camp or working. I avoided everyone like the plague. I had borrowed a bicycle from another nurse and used to ride out into the countryside and sit and watch the birds and bees or just sit. Sometimes I’d take a book with me. Always it would seem I had my leonine friend with me, although I didn’t see her. Well not until one gorgeous, sunny afternoon.

I was about five miles from the camp and hospital, sat on a picnic table near the river, reading a book. I started when unbeknownst to me, a shadow fell across the pages. I looked up. There before me was a young man.

“Did I frighten you?” He asked. He was about five foot ten and well built, with dark hair and a five o clock shadow on his cheeks and chin.

“You made me jump a little.”

“You’re very pretty.” He began the chat up, or so I thought.

“Look it’s a lovely day. Thanks for the compliment, but I’d just like to read my book.”

“Not good enough for you, eh?” he snarled at me like a rabid dog. His eyes, for I noticed them for the first time were dark and angry.

I felt very vulnerable and scared. “I didn’t mean it like that at all.”

“I know what you meant. You cock teasers are all the fucking same. All bloody talk and no fucking action.”

“I beg your pardon!” Now I was angry and scared. “I think I’d better go.” I went to put my book in my bag, but he grabbed it from me and threw it.”

“That’s what I think of your bloody book. Now darling, how about you and me get together.”

“Piss off and leave me alone, or you’ll….”

“Or you’ll what….. darling? Burst into tears or make me happy. Let me show you what your real mission in life is all about, let me introduce you to Mr Willie….”

“Take your hands off me, you bastard.” He had grabbed me and was pushing me to the floor. I was struggling and scratching at his eyes and face, but it didn’t stop him. In a few moments, he had both my hands under his one and was tearing at my clothes. I struggled but he was so strong. I screamed but no one heard me. I didn’t know what to do next. I was so scared.

“Sekhmet, save me,” I screamed. Why I don’t know.

“No one's gonna save you now you little cock teaser.” He ripped open my bra and began to fondle my breasts. I screamed again. I closed my eyes, trying not to look at him. I imagined the goddess standing before me.

“What the fu…?” was all I heard, but I felt a shadow fall across my face. Then I heard the sound of a blow and my attacker fell off me, screaming for mercy. Then another blow and he stopped making any noise. I looked and there before me was a large, blond-haired man.

“You okay, miss?”

“I think so.” I sat up and tried to recover my modesty and composure.

“I think we’d better call the police, don’t you?”

My response was to nod and then burst into tears. He patted me on the shoulder then walked a few yards away before calling on his mobile phone.

“Hello, it’s Sergeant John Anderson of the Royal Military Police, I’ve just interrupted an attempted rape and sexual assault at Riverside picnic site. No, I’ve got the attacker in custody, can you send assistance please, asap. Thanks.”

“You’re a redcap?” I said to my rescuer, in between sniffles, shudders and snorts.

“Sort of. Are you alright?”

I nodded my response while silently the tears trickled down my face. My whole body was heaving with the aftermath of the attack, and I promptly threw up, all over myself.

This meant he kept a respectful distance from me, which in some ways I was glad about. I didn’t want anyone near me except my mum or dad. He tried to make small talk, he also sat on top of the attacker, who was now groaning. Through my tears, I could see some blood on his face around his nose and mouth. My Florence Nightingale urges had temporarily left me as I had no desire to go anywhere near that bastard, except perhaps to hit him myself. But my rescuer had done a far better job than I could.

The police duly arrived and took us all away. I was examined by a doctor and seeing as my knickers were ‘intacto’ he only examined me for bruises and scratches to my face and upper body. I gave a statement of my recollection of what happened, signed it and left.

Sergeant Anderson was waiting for me. “You’re a soldier then, I saw your dog-tags.”

“I’m a student nurse, press-ganged into the army to save the world.”

“I thought it was the navy who press-ganged people.”

“Usually, but in my case, it was a special assignment.”

“So you’re special, are you?”

“Very, aren’t you?” I looked into his grey eyes and could have drowned in them. They were like two limpid pools, and I wanted to go swimming despite what had happened.

“Not really, just an ordinary bloke.” He smiled, his face lit up and my heart just melted. No one had ever had this effect upon me. How could this be happening? I knew nothing about him except his name, rank and occupation.

“Well ‘Mr Ordinary Bloke’, thank you very much for saving my bacon and much more besides. I’m really grateful.”

“How grateful?”

“I’m sorry?” It struck me that he had asked me a strange if not, inappropriate question.

“How grateful are you? I mean are you grateful enough to accept an invite to dinner sometime?” he smiled again.

“While I suppose I should swoon in your arms and sigh, ‘My Hero’, I’m afraid recent events have rather put me off strange men, if only temporarily.”

“I understand. But maybe sometime in the future?”

“Maybe.”

“They’ll be over from the hospital to collect you in a few minutes.”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked them to. I spoke to a Captain Brice, she’s coming for you. I’ve popped your bike in my jeep. I’ll drop it out to you later.”

“Jamie, what have you got into now?” It was Captain Brice. “Honestly, girl, whatever next?”

“She does this often?” asked my hero.

“No, good lord no, but she does tend to act as a catalyst.”

“Probably because she’s so pretty.”

“Something like that. You must be, Sergeant Anderson.”

“I am, ma’am, You, I take it are Captain Brice?”

“I am. How did you happen to come to the rescue?”

“This is going to sound crazy, but I was driving by when I could have sworn I saw a lioness walk through the bushes… Jamie, you alright. Come on, girl wakey, wakey.”

I found myself lying on the floor again, which this time felt cold and someone was patting my face. Atta girl, come on wake up, come on you fainted, but it’s okay now, you are quite safe. Come on wake up.