A Victorian Virgin?

Victoria Buckley stood with her back against the wall next to door twenty-one. Her heart was pounding two hundred beats per minute. She felt her face crease as tears began to form in her eyes. She felt used and humiliated, even more so when she looked up and saw the wide smile on Colleen's face. "Why did you let me go in there?" she wailed, but the answer was plain enough. She quickly strode away back to the stairwell door, unlocked it hastily with the keys on her belt, and ran up the stairs, before the hot tears began to rush from her eyes.

Ned Hawke exited his room less than a minute later, fully dressed in a grey woolen suit. His brown hair was sleep-ruffled and his chin, cheeks and neck were dark with stubble. He regarded Colleen and Mary with pale, blue eyes. "Where did the other nurse go?"

"Back where she came from," Mary said, coldly. She thought Nurse Buckley had gotten what she deserved, but disliked Ned Hawke, as all the nurses did. She had personally been on the receiving end of his attention earlier in the month, but he had soon lost interest in her when she had been all too willing to oblige.

"Which is?" Ned Hawke queried. "She said there was a patient-"

Colleen cut across him. "Mrs. Gore, room forty-six. Nurse Buckley has left all the doors unlocked from here to there, so don't you worry about access. When you get there, you might like to tell her to lock them. Security, you know."

Victoria Buckley was stuck at the door adjoining the stairwell to the ward for rooms thirty to thirty-nine. She was crying so hard that she could not see which key was which. Her hands shook so much that she had difficulties in inserting the random keys she had been jamming into the lock. It was all Genevieve Gore's fault. All of it. She did not think to blame herself for switching off the light in the patient's room, contrary to all the advice Dr Hawke had given regarding that particular patient. Nor did she think to blame herself for leaving Mrs. Gore alone in the room for three hours, when she was supposed to check the patients every half hour. All she could think about was that if it wasn't for Mrs. Gore none of the terrible things that had happened that night would have happened.

The keys were slipping through her fingers as if they were water. Why couldn't she find the right one? She was about ready to scream when she heard footsteps behind her. Quickly she whirled about to face whoever it was.

Ned Hawke saw a woman with black hair, pale skin and a dimpled chin. Her eyes were a strange grey-blue color, rather like an overcast sky on a very stormy day. At that moment, she was not looking her best. Her eyes were swollen, red rimmed. Her cheeks were flushed red and wet. "What do you want?" she asked him in a strangely high-pitched, shaking voice. He saw that she was clutching a metal ring with at least twelve keys of varying size and shape in her hand, brandishing it toward him almost like a weapon.

"Are you crying because of me?" He asked her. "No, don't give yourself airs," Victoria snapped. She was hurriedly rebuilding the prickly insulation of severity and harsh words she used to protect herself from everybody.

"I'm sorry." The game was in play once more. He held out his handkerchief, freshly starched and folded from the pocket on the inside of his jacket. He had been saving it for a 'damsel in distress'.

Nurse Buckley ignored the out-stretched hand and turned back to the doorway. "Of course you are," she said, sarcastically. In an icier voice, she added, "You're dirty and disgusting and I don't like you, so leave me alone." Hardly the way to address a superior staff-member, let alone the nephew of her employer. She stared down at the keys. Her anger at Ned Hawke had cleared her eyes. Now she could clearly see which one belonged to the door. She inserted it in the keyhole, turned it and heard the magical click of the mechanism moving the lock. She took the handle, opened it and rushed forwards along the floor, not caring to hold it open for Ned Hawke. He had to run to keep up with her. Oh yes, the hunt was on. She might run from him now, but she would run to him just as quickly in the next few days. He had her on a string.

She stopped at the next door and unlocked it with the mechanical precision of somebody who had done it hundreds of times before. It was then that she realized she had not locked any of the doors behind her. She'd do that later, she decided.

The door to room forty-six was open. Buckley could hear voices from within; a man's voice to be exact. It sounded like Dr Hawke. She quickly wiped the remnants of tears from her eyes and entered.

Genevieve Gore was seated stiffly on the bed, her bloody hands folded primly in her lap. Her dark hair was draped over her left shoulder, the ragged ends falling to just above her left breast. Her nightshirt was hardly proper; Victoria Buckley could clearly see the form of her pert breasts, especially the hard nipple on the right. Dr Hawke sat indecently close to his patient, a bowl in one hand and a cloth in the other. Water from this cloth had dripped over Genevieve's clothing, rendering it transparent in places. He was carefully washing the blood from Genevieve's face, talking quietly to her as he did so. When Nurse Buckley entered, he looked up sharply and said, "Where have you been?"

"I went to fetch a doctor to examine her," Victoria answered.

"Didn't you know that there was nobody on duty tonight? You should have rung the bell for me, immediately, as Nurse Ramsey did," Hawke told her. He stared at his Genevieve, pale, shivering and unresponsive. Her face was bruised and bleeding, not to mention the terrible condition of her wrists. These physical injuries would heal quickly; he was much more worried about the wounds to her mind. She had not been in this state since she had arrived at his hospital. It had taken months to bring her personality back from the dark hole in which it had hid. He hated to imagine how long it would take this time.

"No, I didn't know," Nurse Buckley replied. "When I found that out, I went to fetch the interns."

"You'd been away more than twenty minutes when Nurse Ramsey contacted me. I have been here five minutes. What have you been doing in the time that has elapsed?" Hawke snapped. "It is an appalling lapse on your behalf, Miss Buckley. Look at the patient. What would have happened if she was seriously injured and you left her here, bleeding? She'd be dead, I tell you."

Ned Hawke came into the room behind Victoria Buckley. She was going to owe him for what he was about to say. "Uncle, you are being rather harsh. Nurse Buckley did not want to wake you because you had been on duty all day long and she thought that the patient's injuries did not warrant your intervention. She left another nurse watching the patient whilst she went and fetched me. She followed procedure exactly. My own lax behavior made her late returning to her patient. She had to wake me and wait whilst I dressed. I am a doctor, even though I have only had a few years experience, I could have dealt with the patient. There was no reason for the other nurse to contact you."

Stephen Hawke's eyes flicked from his nephew to the nurse. "That still does not explain how Mrs. Gore got into this condition. You're the ward nurse. You were supposed to check her every thirty minutes. It would have taken longer than that for these wounds to form. Why did you restrain her? I've checked her charts. All you have written is 'patient restrained'. There is not even a time logged in. This is very negligent on your part, Nurse Buckley."

"Mrs. Gore was abusing herself. I had to restrain her in accordance with hospital procedure," Victoria Buckley said.

"Abusing herself in what way?" Dr Hawke asked.

Victoria tried to think of a polite way to say it, but she could not think of one. She felt embarrassed that she had to say it, especially in front of two men. "Self abuse," she said.

Stephen Hawke clearly did not understand. "Abuse in what way, Nurse Buckley? Was she hitting herself?"

Victoria tripped and stumbled her way through the sentence. Her face was becoming hotter and hotter. "No. Um- The ar- Solitary vice. I restrained her for it." She averted her eyes from the Doctor's face when she said it. Her legs trembled beneath her like jelly.

"Masturbation," Ned Hawke said, loudly.

Dr Hawke frowned at his nephew then turned his head back to Genevieve. He tried not to imagine what she had been doing, but it was difficult. He wondered whether it was his fault for the things he had done to her earlier in the evening. "What time did you restrain her?"

"Twelve forty three. I was disgusted; I didn't think to write down the time."

"That's your problem, isn't it, Nurse Buckley, you don't think, do you? It's now nearly five in the morning. It would have taken more than half an hour to cause this damage. You must not have checked her every half hour." Victoria's nod was enough evidence toward that claim. "What else did you not do?" Dr Hawke snapped, sharply.

"I did everything in accordance to the rules," Nurse Buckley whimpered.

Anger rippled through Stephen Hawke's body. It was because of this woman, this nurse, that Genevieve was in condition she was in. She was mute, as she had been before. No comprehension shone in her eyes when he spoke to her. He feared that the person that he had known and loved was gone forever. "Liar," he shouted. "You must have done something else to her. People don't mutilate themselves in this way just because you tie them up. They might scream and shout, but they don't hit their faces against the wall and bite their wrists. You must have ignored her. She must have made some sort of noise."

"Please, she never made a sound," Buckley said. It was the first full truth she had told the doctor.

"Rubbish. You left her tied to a bed for at least three and a half hours. You never checked her, and you're telling me you never heard a sound, whilst she was doing this to herself," he gestured to Genevieve's ragged right wrist.

"She never made a sound," Buckley protested. "Never a single sound. Ask the patients on either side of her. They will have heard no more than I heard."

Dr Hawke was too angry to listen. "You left her tied to a bed for three and a half hours. You did not check on her. You let her do this to herself. You're supposed to stop this from happening!"

"Uncle-" Ned said.

"Oh, stop it, Ned. Don't try to protect her." To Victoria he said, "What else did you do to her?"

"Nothing!"

"That's the problem, isn't it, Nurse Buckley? You didn't do anything to help Genevieve. You left her there, in the-" Reality beamed on Hawke. "I know what you did. You turned the light off, didn't you?"

"Yes," Victoria admitted, reluctantly. She watched in fear as the Doctor's features disfigured into a snarl. His blue eyes seemed to pop from their cavities, pushed outwards by the clenched red muscles of his face.

Dr Hawke lost it. The nurse was standing there, completely smug with everything she had done, whilst poor Genevieve sat locked in her own mind. He wanted to grab her by shoulders and shake her until her own brain was turned to mush by contact with her skull, much like a chicken's egg shaken in a jar. He wanted to strike her so many times that her bones became nothing but grit within her limbs. God, he was so angry, he wanted to kill her. Only the knowledge that he would lose everything, including Genevieve, prevented him from throwing the nurse across the room.

"You knew she was afraid of the dark! You had been told specifically that the light in Genevieve's room was to be left on! You knew that there could be dire repercussions if you turned it off, but you did anyway! You left my patient tied to a bed for three and a half hours in the dark! Do you have any idea of the damage that you could have caused to her! You stupid, stupid bitch! How dare you!"

Ned Hawke watched in horror as his mild uncle transformed into a raving madman. The man was completely out of his mind and nobody had even died. Just because of this particular patient, this Mrs. Gore. He had heard about her, of course, but his uncle had never let him have any contact with her. Keeping her for himself, he thought.

He ran an appreciative eye over the patient. Pity about the bruises and lacerations to the face, she'd be nice enough to look at without them. It was her body that drew his eye. There was little to be left to the imagination with that thin nightshirt she had on, especially where the fabric was wet. Full of breast, narrow of waist and wide of hip, plump in all the right places and thin in the others. He loved working with the insane ladies, especially when they wore things like that. Not that he ever touched them, of course. That would be stretching the Hippocratic Oath a little too thinly. He stuck to the nurses.

His uncle wasn't finished in his tirade. He was beginning to repeat himself now, Ned thought. He'd heard the word 'bitch' about three times, 'you left her alone in the dark' several more times and 'how dare you' numerously. Before this date, he had never seen his uncle angry, even though he had worked with him for two years. It was frightening, to be honest, although Ned would never admit it. He wondered how the delicious Nurse Buckley was holding up.

She was standing with her arms at her side, her body as rigid as bricks. Her eyes were not wet, nor were her cheeks flushed. Her cleft chin thrust forward almost aggressively like a battering ram. Her full lips were shut so tightly together that he thought he could see the muscles about her mouth compress them. Finally, her eyes were clouded over with defiance. "She needed to be punished, Doctor," the nurse said in a lull between skirmishing words. Her voice was arctic cold. "How else would she learn that what she had done was wrong and disgusting?"

Stephen Hawke erupted into another rage. "You restrained her. That was enough for a punishment."

"The restraints weren't to punish her, they were to prevent her from doing any further damage. Had they been removed she would repeat the offence. She needed to be taught not to do it again," Nurse Buckley explained.

"And by turning off the light, you expected to do so?" Dr Hawke asked. "That is ludicrous. You could have told me in the morning and had me speak with her. She was an intelligible woman; she would have understood. Now look at her! Look what you have done!"

"I didn't do anything to her. She did it to herself," Buckley snapped.

"And whose fault is that, exactly? You turned the light off, kept her locked to her bed for three hours. That is serious malpractice on your part, Nurse Buckley!"

"You're basically saying that she has no will, that she had to cause that damage to herself. She didn't have to, she did it on purpose-"

"She did it because she was afraid. She was terrified! She fought and she struggled to get away!" Dr Hawke snapped.

"You are blinded by her," Nurse Buckley replied. "She is pretending that she is ill, when she is not. It is all to defy me. She is a wicked woman! She is a murderess! Yet, you indulge her and give her anything she asks for! She is a conniving witch who is taking advantage of you-"

"Enough!" Stephen Hawke shouted. "Get out! I want you out of my hospital by dawn."

"Very well," Victoria Buckley said. She turned and walked slowly from the room, listening to the solitary sound of her feet on the on the floorboards in the hallway. She snatched up her knitting from the desk, not caring that one needle came free as she did so, causing a wide ladder in the weave. She trod leisurely along the hallway to the door leading to the nurse's wing. Maybe she hoped that Dr Stephen Hawke would reconsider and call out to her. This did not occur.

Instead, Ned Hawke traced her footsteps to the doorway a few minutes later, having tried to convince his uncle to let the woman stay. He was unsuccessful, a thought that incensed him immensely. Ned was one of those determined people that took loss hard and would repeat a process as many times as it took him to master it. He was not ready to give up on Nurse Buckley, not because he liked her personally, but because she was his newest goal. The chase was still on, the hounds still released; he would have to think of a new way to ensnare her, even if it meant traveling to wherever it was she would go to from the clinic. His game was ever evolving; this was just the newest phase. He was rich, bored and had far too much time on his hands.

Victoria ascended the stairs to her bedroom. Having been employed for nearly three years at the clinic, she had been allowed to sleep alone, rather than in a shared bedroom. She was numb with the knowledge that she had lost her job, so much so that her every footstep was automated. She tried not to think about what she would do now. She would never find a position as well paid nor in such superior conditions. It tore her apart, to know that. The tears were flooding her cheeks now, the only physical sign of the raging tempest inside of her.

She stopped at her bedroom door and unlocked it hastily. She left the ring of keys hanging in the door and rushed inside. Nobody had seen her face, thank goodness. They all hated her, everybody did. She knew that now. Colleen, Mary, even Patricia Ramsey, who had lied about the time she had been away from Mrs. Gore to fetch the intern, Ned Hawke, stretching the elapsed period from ten minutes to thirty. All the nurses hated her. That knowledge was far more devastating than the knowledge that she had no income.

She glanced about her room. It was nothing but a cell, smaller and older than the rooms allotted to patients. The room was so restricted that she could sit on her bed and put her feet on the opposite wall. Several items of furniture were crammed into the small space. The bed was small and narrow with a gray blanket and white sheets, all property of the clinic. Immediately beside the bed was a chest of drawers, on which sat a photograph of Victoria's sister's family. The wardrobe at the end of her bed was too short for the other dress she owned, causing the skirts to lag on the base. She now opened the wardrobe door, causing the bedroom door to slam shut. There was a suitcase crammed to one side, property of her late father. She pulled this out and threw it onto the bed along with her spare pair of boots, one dress, a cape, a shawl, two skirts and two bodices. The wardrobe was now emptied.

She was now crying so hard she could barely see what she was doing. Her frantic hands folded the skirts quickly and placed them into the suitcase. They were plain, unbustled or caged in any way, so they packed down firmly. She tore the white apron from about her waist and put that in the case. In went the boots, dress and bodices, the photograph, her knitting, her bible, her brushes and hairpins, mirror, two pairs of woolen stockings, two nightshirts and a bed-coat, some loose drawers and stays. That was everything she owned. Her life fitted into a box.

Victoria wrapped her black shawl over her clothing, and adhered it in place with a plain hatpin. She climbed into her navy-blue cape and dropped down upon the bed, beside her box. She shook uncontrollably with misery, her hands hugged about her body. Tears tore from her eyes and spattered down her clothing. She had lost everything. Everything.

Ned Hawke wandered along the floor where the nurse's rooms were allocated. He had been here many times before, and was not worried about being seen or questioned about why he was present. Being Dr Stephen Hawke's nephew gave him a free rein, an excuse to be anywhere in the hospital. His own room was located in the separate wing of the Hawke household; he never brought a nurse there, it was too risky, even for him.

His pace was leisurely. He would let Victoria Buckley work herself into a state before he arrived. Thanks to his uncle, he had his prey in the exact condition he wanted her in. She was upset and vulnerable to attack. Her defenses would be down, the gates opened to anybody with a kind word and a clean handkerchief in hand. A nice, soft shoulder was what she needed to cry on. Ned was the man for the job, his armor polished to shine, his words suave, careful and charming. He would watch her melt before his eyes, right into his arms.