Mad House

At the nursing station, I caught the end of their conversation. "And do you hear Sally's latest coup?" the head nurse told the nurse manager, "she's excused on religious grounds from changing and showering on arrival and departure. Now, Nurse Sally is allowed to wear her white uniform home."

"Doesn't work for the rest of us," the nurse manager shook her head, "We're required to bare it all and soap up under the gaze of the voyeurs and transmen. Only the shower nurse who works in a thong would enjoy that."

Noticed by the nurses, I was ordered to report to the portal where I went through registration. While reading documents I was asked to sign, I was urged to hurry. The Registry Nurse was insistent, "My shift's going off duty." In response, I shrugged my shoulders unconcerned.

The papers were snatched from my hand. The Registry Nurse growled, "Marked refused to sign. Have the MD declare her commitment Involuntary." My hospital gown swept away, I was positioned to stand for a nude photograph "to show your corpus departed from Davis no worse for the wear from the time you were welcomed here," the Registry Nurse smirked.

Passed down the line, I arrived at the next station to see the shower nurse remove her thong and start strutting hips swinging in unison with her id badge dangling from her neck. "Truly a modest girl," I commented. The barber removed his white tunic and followed after her. Heck what distinguished the shower nurse from me? Only the badge dangling from her neck made the distinction.

Further down the line, the physical inspection station was vacant, as was the room where the incoming patient was forced to strip. Discarded patient clothing, rifled through by staff for money and valuables, was piled up in movable trash cans. From the incoming holding area, I was ushered into the staircase by an orderly and ordered to a side room that resembled a traditional medical office with an examining couch, medical cabinets, and a white counter. But for a small cell where I was ensconced, one could expect to find the friendly family doctor standing reading a chart.

Two nurses looked at me in the holding cell. "We're supposed to do a physical on her, but it's almost quitting time. We can just copy her chart upon reception. Add five pounds. That's what they gain here on the average. Prepare the hypo -- Let Sally struggle with the patient to administer the tranquilizer -- and we're out the door."

"Leave her alone -- until Sally comes to wheel her to the transport point," questioned the colleague as she prepared the hypo and left it on the counter, carelessly close to the cage. It was a quitting time error. "Shouldn't we at least cuff the patient?"

"What if she resists? Why should we have to fight her? She's Sally's problem. Besides, dressed like that," snickered the nurse as she threw a penetrating glare at me, clinically appraising my body from head to toe, "this patient's going nowhere. Clean pubis. I brought the goo out. We won't need it."

"But what if Sally needs help," the colleague protested.

"Sally spent the whole afternoon sleeping on a cot in the ER. Let Sally earn her `plivileges' by dealing with this patient," the nurse roared, "With the crackdown on OT, Sally, the OT Queen, isn't going to be so anxious to sit in the ER if she's told no time and a half."

At 4PM the nurses slipped away. They chatted in the hallway for a second. One nurse said, "Staff lockers are right across the hall. My locker is next to hers -- unlucky 13. We don't need to run into Sally on our way out."

As soon as the door slammed shut behind them, I grabbed the syringe and crashed like a comatose patient on the bench with the syringe hidden under my arm.

Summoning my courage, I reminded myself of a pre-nuthouse poem, "Playing possum, lying in wait, steeling myself for the pounce, the risk is awesome, when you're the bait, only one thing counts, if you're chancing fate, the opponent trounced, by a measure zero -- sum."

Out in the corridor I heard argument, Sally was being told that the Doc, after a thorough exam, in the ER found nothing wrong and classified her as "manipulative and malingering. You wasted three hours with a fictious report. Either you make up the hours or I'll order you transferred."

"Not fair," Sally insisted, "I have my `lights.'"

"You'll find yourself `light' out of here unless you do what you're told," the supervisor said, "Your 'light' is to submit a claim for OT and let the Metropolis Health Council decide whether you should get OT, but now, do as told. Too many people here have had to pick up slack for you. I had two nurses standing by to assist you with the patient, but they went off shift, because you dallied the afternoon away tying up the time of ER personnel better devoted to patient care. The patient is a political with no history of violence. See to it. Next time I'll see you get a really hardened case."

Sally squeezed a litter through the narrow doorway, muttering under her breath, "unfail, `disclimination!'After looking in at me sprawled on the bench, she opened the gate and entered to poke me, "Time get up. You big shot `lebel.' Special tranfel, by self. They need body. You elected."

After feeling my limp wrist for a pulse, Sally declared "Need to see `chalt.' What dlug. I check chalt." There Sally made the mistake I was waiting for. She turned her back. I sprung up and stabbed her in the butt, giving her the full dose. She staggered, took a few steps. In a moment, Sally lay face down partly on the stretcher, her legs dangling off.

I had no time to reflect on the irony that I had been locked up without ever having committed a crime. I committed my first crime to get out.

I set to work. Off came her white loafers and anklets. I held the loafers up. They'd be a tight fit, I figured, but I could squeeze in them. I lifted her white nurse's dress to slip her panties off. I stretched them. They'd fit. I rotated her on her back and unzipped the zipper that ran down the front of her dress. A full bush, hmm, I mused, the goo is on the counter. I pushed the dress off her shoulders. Back on her belly, I whisked the white dress from her body and unhooked her bra, pulling the straps off her arms.

Rotating Sally onto her back, I positioned Sally on the stretcher, splaying her legs. I quickly dressed in her clothes and hung her id badge around my neck. In case someone came looking I needed to look like a nurse.

To apply the goo to depilate her bush, I donned latex gloves. Working the goo, I massaged her mound, her vaginal lips and lips and her clit. Sally cooed, her skin reddened as I stroked her clit. I felt my temperature rise, my pulse quicken. Sally's clothes tightened on my body.

Afraid I might cum, I took a deep breath and broke off contact. I counted to 10. When I heard the fizzle vaporizing her public hair, I applied a wet towel to wash the goo off. Having stripped Sally naked, I admired my handiwork. Without her uniform, Sally had become just another plain Jane. Sally will make a fine addition to the institutions up yonder when her claim to be a kidnapped `nulse' is treated as part of her mental disease.

I had just finished strapping Sally down when an orderly entered. I nodded when the orderly asked if she were ready. As the orderly wheeled Sally away, he informed me. "Director said you can start your vacation when this political is shipped. Be elsewhere! Go!" he commanded, "before the director changes her mind."

I mused, when Pharaoh said go, Moses did not hang around to savor the moment.

I retrieved Sally's bag from her locker. Taking a deep breath, I walked to the check point where my key card authorized an exit. I stepped out of the building into the promise of a brilliant sunset. Standing on a landing of the crude concrete steps of the staff entrance, I looked toward the loading dock where I saw Sally's stretcher lowered into an awaiting ambulance.

I took a deep breath of fresh air. It was intoxicating. I had no reason to feel remorse. It was the law of the jungle. To maintain cohesion, the herd sacrificed its weakest member. Survival of the fittest, indeed.

Merry had said most escapes fail because the prisoner hasn't thought out where they need to go, once they've broken out. I had a place to go: Sally's flat at least for a couple of days to take my bearings.