Sincerely, Jennifer x

Staff Nurse Eden Granger – Entry Thirty

Second entry in this shift. It’s been a long old night, diary. I’m starting to think that it will never end. 

Every minute feels like a lifetime. Every hour is an eternity. 

She hums her song, and the call buttons cry out, up and down the ward. The patients wail and warble, all screaming the same thing. 

“Heal us!”

I try. Honestly, I really do. I try everything. The doctor comes round, but he just stares solemnly at me, his gaze, glacial as it greets the glum patients and all of the staff. 

The patients fall apart, one by one. Stable one second, flatlining the next. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m running out of patients, but I’m not running out of time. Time is as slow as I’ve ever seen it, and it is a cruel beast. 

The rain batters the windows, flowing down from the roof like a river of sadness, and I am consumed by my lonely duty to carry on. 

I don’t know what to do. I write it all down, hoping that I can rearrange the words so that they’ll make sense, but I can’t think straight when she won’t shut up. 

There are ten of the patients left on the ward in the state that they should be in. The rest, five or six of them, have joined Harry and Alice. They wander the ward, reminding us that she is here, flies flitting in and out of their rotting mouths as the clock mocks me with its slow ticking. 

She says that I’m healing, but the sickness goes on and on. 

She says that I am a healer, but they all slip through my fingers. 

“Heal us!” They cry. 

I’m trying.