Nurse Janyps Pt. 01

The work sent me here. Being that it was a quasi-governmental corporate job, the company provided everything, all I had to do was show up - corporate apartment in a corporate apartment complex with corporate furniture, a couple pieces of southwest prints on the wall like you'd see in an auto insurance office. Not very homey, but I wasn't looking to start a family, or anything else, anytime soon. New in town, no girlfriend, closest friends and family two states away, yeah it sucked, but hey, pay me enough and I'll live in a cardboard box for you.

I'd only been living here long enough to unpack my bags and hadn't had much of an opportunity to explore my new town, but from what little I was able to glean from coworkers who had been here longer than me, the neighborhood I was now living in was called Pill Hill - "Hill" because the neighborhood was at the base of a large hill, and "Pill" because the top of the hill was crowned with two large hospitals and several buildings, no more than twelve stories high, housing doctors offices and clinics. I was told by my next-door neighbor that I'd get used to the sound of ambulances and Medevac helicopters coming and going at night; joke's on him, I normally drank myself to sleep, so I figure I wouldn't care about the noise (I'm what's called "high functioning").

After four days in my apartment and my car still in transit, boredom and not wanting to spend another night drinking tall boys alone while flipping channels got me out the door and walking around the neighborhood Wednesday evening. Aside from the hospitals and doctor's offices, Pill Hill is mainly residential, older craftsman-style houses mixed in with apartment blocks and complexes like this one. To the south was a commercial area I hadn't explored beyond the gas station where I bought those tall boy cans. It was a warm night and the walk would do me good. Across the street from the gas station was a shopping center; in the last space on the left, was a tavern: Bloodwork. Good - given the choice, I'd prefer to drink amongst people, because you never know who you're gonna run into - man, truer words were never spoken, I would learn soon.

I walked in and pulled up a stool at the bar. The cheeky name kind of gave away that I was in a hospital worker bar; the 7a opening hour and people wearing scrubs did it too. Medical staffers milled around me, looking like orderlies and surgical techs and phlebotomists and CNAs, only one or two carrying themselves like doctors; in other words, the people who actually ran Pill Hill. I didn't work in the medical field - my lving in Pill Hill was more coincidence than by design, and I got the feeling that the other patrons knew I wasn't part of the club. No one engaged me, but then again, no one was outwardly hostile either, and the Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox was just loud enough to not interfere with my thoughs. I ordered a PBR and a shot of Jameson; I was going to like Bloodwork.

I got to the middle of the label on my can when she sat down next to me. Her barstool was swiveled away from me, so my first impressions of Janyps were of her back, in a blue-green surgical scrub top, dark-brown chestnut hair with blonde highlights scooped into a neat but hasty bun, like it was assembled reflexively after the end of a shift, held in place by a green rubber band. She was pecking out a text on her phone. Slight love handles gently puffed out the sides of the scrub, suggesting a soft, warm plumpness to her. And then, Janyps swiveled towards me and I took her in.

Janyps was short and honey-colored, probably Latina, maybe Filipina. She had high cheekbones and bangs, and soft brown eyes. She wore no makeup other than lip-gloss (but then again, who puts on makeup after twelve hours of emptying bedpans and changing bandages?). On that alone she would've passed as cute, but the two treasures squirming under her scrub top pushed her well beyond cute.

Her surgical scrub top - as plain and enticing as a burlap sack - did its best to hide them, but it had its limits. There was only a hint of the beginning of cleavage visible, but there was no denying the massive titflesh lurking under the blue-green cotton. Having been a boob man since I could remember, my thoughts raced to their size. I wondered if she was wearing a practical no-frills work bra with sheer tan polyester cups, or something more flirty in white lace. Her lumpy scrub pants gave only a hint to what had to be sculpted thighs and calves. I must've looked like an idiot. Luckily, she broke the ice.

"Um, hello?" she smiled.

"Sorry, I..." I stumbled, "I'm Matt," I said, trembling slightly. She held out her hand.

"I'm Janyps."

"That's an unusual name," I said.

"Well my mom wanted me to have something unique that I'd have my whole life," she said.

She ordered a Cape Cod, I ordered another beer. We chatted briefly. She was an RN at First Presbyterian, the larger of the two hospital complexes on the hill. Nursing was her passion, and although her heart was in Pediatrics, an aging population pushed her into the Geriatric wing, where there was more demand and more money. She was early thirties and single. She loved children but was childless, largely on account of her profession's demand. Her life was a never-ending series of twelve-hour shifts, four days on, one day off, sleep, clean, repeat. Wednesdays were her Fridays, and when she did go out, she rarely went beyond Bloodwork. I found everything but the childless part believable - how could a woman who probably looked like a fertility goddess under those scrubs not have a kid? Still, probably a thought best kept to myself for now.

It was late. Janyps finished her Cape Cod, and I finished my second beer. She thanked me for the chit-chat, but the need for sleep was pulling her down. I shook her hand, and she said goodnight before she walked out the door to her car. The night was still warm.

Over the next few weeks, even after I got my car back, I made it a point to go to Bloodwork in the hopes of seeing Janyps. My hope paid off; she was a Wednesday regular. I'd like to think she wasn't before, and just started coming by on Wednesdays to see me as well. We even exchanged numbers, but I only texted her to let her know I was on my way to the bar. We talked about her life and work, mainly because it was more interesting than mine. There was a particular patient of hers, Mr. Anderson, that she had taken a liking to. He was in his 70s, with pink skin and a shock of white hair on his otherwise bald head. He had kind eyes and loved to talk about his life. He crewed a bomber in his youth, and married soon after the war ended. His wife passed some years ago and his children were grown and preoccupied with their own lives and families, so he was lucky if they came to visit during the holidays. He had a cardboard box where he kept his photos and old letters to his wife, and he liked to show Janyps its contents or reading her the letters. She said she didn't mind, she even enjoyed tending to him because he broke the monotony.

"He says he has something special for me. He won't say what it is, even when I ask him. He says he likes to keep me guessing."

"So when do you find out what it is?" I asked.

"He won't say anything more than 'soon.'"

"You looking forward to finding out?"

She sucked the last of the Cape Cod she was sipping on through her straw, which slightly jiggled her bosom as she drew the last drops from the bottom of the tumbler. "We'll see."

The folllowing Wednesday she was at Bloodwork, but out of her lumpy scrubs and poured into a paisley-patterned yellow sundress with a plunging neckline and a hem that ended a few inches above her knee. I finally got to take in her body, or as much as the sundress would let me. Her massive orbs were as soft and pale as I thought they were, and there was just the hint of scalloped black lace bra cup peeking above the neckline on her right breast. On the left breast, a tiny strawberry-colored mole no bigger than a pinprick mischievously shimmied everytime she moved. I almost asked out loud how she didn't topple over while standing. Her legs were like a gazelle's, her calves perfectly curved. She was wearing makeup, and her hair was down, which drew my eyes to her neck, around which, circling like a ring, were several small and pale-yet-noticeable bruises - hickeys? Her perfume smelled like daisies and rosewater. Janyps was dripping lust, and she probably wasn't even aware of it.

"What's the occasion?" I asked, my cock beginning to stir the more I drank her in.

"My sister and her friend are taking me out to celebrate another friend's promotion. They say I don't get out often enough, and they told me to dress like I was going to have fun. They're picking me up from here."

"Ahh, girls night out," I said, shifting my stool to hide the erection trying to chew its way out of my fly.

"Kinda," She said. "Bloodwork is more my speed. I was hoping they'd take the hint and have the party here." Janyps ordered a Cape Cod to sip on while she waited. "By the way, Mr. Anderson told me today he'll give me his surprise tomorrow."

"Any hints?"

"No," she giggled. "You sound more interested in it than I am."

"I do like surprises," I said. "Good surprises, not bad ones."

We talked more about her day, when the screen on her phone came to life and glowed. She looked down at it, tapped a few letters, and slurped up the last splashes of cranberry juice and vodka.

"They're outside, I gotta go," she said. She hopped off her stool, and smoothed her dress over her hips. By now I had worked up the courage to touch her beyond just shaking her hand, but I needed to disguise it as concern so as not to come off creeperish (I was beginning to like Janyps and didn't want to blow it by doing something stupid). I reached my hand out to her neck and gently brushed one bruise, below her left jawline. "Before you go - what's with the bruises on your neck?"

"Oh, these things?" she said. I noticed she threw her head back slightly to give me a better view and feel of her neck. "I'd tell you but it'll make me blush."

"Tell," I said.

"Well... my scumbag ex liked to put a leash and a collar on me, and sometimes he'd jerk the leash too hard. Well, two nights ago he drunk-texted me, and I was dumb and went over to his place to make sure he was okay, and well, three Smirnoff Ices later..." She then smirked, bit her lower lip, threw her head back, and pantomimed an invisible cruel hand jerking an invisible leash attached to an invisible collar around her neck.

I think the whole bar heard my jaw hit the floor. She leaned in to kiss me on my neck. "Now think of something else. Good night, Matt."

"N-next Wednesday?"

"Sure. See you then."

I showed up Wednesday to Bloodwork, at the end of her shift. Today was going to be the day I was going to ask her out, maybe to that new fondue place downtown, this city does not begin and end in this bar. She wasn't there. I texted her, "where u @?" No response. I showed up next Wednesday, and the Wednesday after that, and the Wednesday after that - no Janyps. I called the Geriatric Wing at First Presbyterian to ask if she was there. The answering nurse told me no one by that name worked there, and hung up on me before I could get in any follow-up questions. Text messages, each one more frequent and sounding more desperate, went undelivered and unanswered. After the fifth Wednesday, I gave up. Janyps wasn't interested anymore. I figure she met some guy at GNO and moved on. Besides, it's not like I had a choice. Meh, after a while being dumped transitions from hurting to annoying. If Janyps could move on, so could I. But I had grown accustomed to Bloodwork. I liked having a bar within walking distance, and the bartenders knew my name now. I was a regular now, and this was my local. There would be other nurses, maybe not other Janypses, but other nurses.

On the sixth Wednesday, I walked into Bloodwork. The stool where I sat when I first met Janyps was open, but the stool where she had sat was occupied by a big black guy. He was wearing the same color scrubs as Janyps, and through the reflection on the mirror behind the bar I read his name tag: "FIRST PRESBYTERIAN - GERIATRIC - M. JONES."

During one of my conversations with Janyps, she mentioned an African-American coworker she called Jonesy. When things got slow, she, Jonesy and another co-worker named Rick would sit around the nurse's station, shooting the shit and telling jokes. Jonesy would do this thing where he would approach her from behind, put one of his thick arms around her upper chest, the other around her waist, shout "huggy bear!" and shake her. Of course Janyps would giggle, not knowing the hypnotic effect the sight of her massive breasts swaying as if caught in an earthquake would have on others, much less that was exactly why he would shake her. Jonesy would then tickle her on one of her love handles, which would make her giggle and squirm more. I pictured Janyps' huge melons framed by Jonesy's black arms, quivering against the cotton scrub top. Holy shit, what if this guy was Jonesy? The coincidence was too much to ignore, and the curiosity was eating me, I had to know what happened to Janyps. The bartender has just served M. Jones a 24-ounce mug of cheap American beer, $2, the special tonight. He took a sip, then turned his attention to a text message he just received.

"Excuse me," I said. He softly grunted "mmm," but didn't turn his attention away from his phone and took another sip of his beer. "Sorry to bother you, but I couldn't help noticing your nametag. Do you work in the Geriatric Unit it at First Presbyterian?"

He didn't turn to look at me, but his eyes in the mirror let me know he thought I was the dumbest motherfucker in the bar. "No, dumbass, I wear a name tag with my employer's name in it, and the unit where I work, just to pick up chicks," he probably thought. He looked like he was about ready to get up and move to a less-annoying part of the bar - I had to keep his attention.

"I ask because I have a friend that I think you work with, a nurse named Janyps."

Jone's body relaxed and his eyes got slightly big, and he looked me over and smiled.

"Damn, you know Janyps?" he said.

"Yeah, I met her here. We had this thing, we would meet here Wednesday after her shift."

Jones smiled even more.

"Damn, you must be Wednesday. She mentioned a guy she'd meet here on Wednesdays but she never told us your name, so me and my boy Rick, we just called him - I mean you - Wednesday."

"My name's Matt, and I hadn't heard from Janyps in a while, and I was wondering if she was okay."

"Girl can't help it, Wednesday, girl can't help it." Jones took a sip from his mug. "She's gone."

My heart sank. "She's dead?"

"She could be, but I wouldn't know, because she's gone."

"Well what happened to her?" I asked.

"Wait, you don't work at First Prez?"

"No, I work on post." I was hoping he wasn't hearing my voice tremble.

"Aw, so you didn't hear what happened to her."

"What... what happened to her?" By now my quivering voice had betrayed me, I didn't know what happened to her but I had to know, and M. Jones was my only tie to her now. My bottle was empty. "Buy yourself another beer, Wednesday. This'll take a while."

"So most of what Janyps told you is true, especially when we would joke around. You knew she was an H cup? A motherfucking H cup. Man, I loved doing huggy bear, seeing and feeling them bounce and shit. And yes, she did have a fondness for Herbert. She did that, she'd develop a shine for some of her patients. She was just that sweet, y'know, girl can't help it - who she was or how God built her like a rack of ribs. But the rest of us caught on that this Herbert Anderson guy was a straight-up perverted-ass dirty old man motherfucker. Like he'd do shit like drop a pencil onto the floor, and he'd ask her to pick it up, and she would bend down to get it, and he'd straight-up stare down her shirt. Lucky motherfucker stumbled upon what he'd probably waited his whole life for: a girl like Janyps who liked him and didn't see him for what he was.

"So, the day of the surprise, yeah, we knew about it too, and we were just as curious as you and she were. Janyps walks into his room, and there's a paper bag lying on the desk next to him. Motherfucker says something like, 'Nurse Janyps, I'm not gonna be around much longer, and you are closer to me than my own ungrateful children. I want you to promise me you'll grant me my last dying wish, which is in the bag.'

"Now, of course, Janyps being Janyps, she smiled and said, 'of course, Mr. Anderson. Can I see what my big surprise is?'

'Of course!' he said. 'I think it's time.'

"So Janyps opens the bag, looks into it, and her smile turns into a shocked gasp, and she says, 'Mr. Anderson!' and turns to look at him, but by now his kindly smile is gone and he's grinning like the devil with a boner and shit, and he says, 'you promised, nurse.' And her lip begins trembling and a tear rolls down her cheek, but she did promise, and Janyps always kept her word. She was really proud about that. 'Now get in the bathroom and change and quit wasting my time, which I don't have much of left.' So Janyps walks into the bathroom with the paper bag. I know all this because of the security cam footage.

"So, me and Rick was at the nurse's station, bullshitting, when we hear 'moo, moo, MOO!' and down the hall comes Janyps, crawling on her hands and knees, and she's wearing a white bikini with black spots on it like a cow, and cute cow pattern high-heel shoes, and a headband that had cow horns and cow ears. She's also wearing a cute blue nylon collar with a cute little cow bell on it, and she's on a leash. At the other end of the leash with a tight-ass grip on it is that Anderson motherfucker, wearing only a robe, smelling like shit, his face all trusted and red and shit. And he's got that leash pulled tight, and he's smacking her ass with a ruler, and it's making loud cracking noises, like you can hear them on the other end of the wing, crack-crack-crack! and tears are streaming down her face, and every now and then he'd jerk the leash hard and smack her ass more, which made her cry and moo more. Man, I heard rumors that Janyps was submissive - whatever you told her to do, she'd do it. I was there when the last guy she dated just came up to her and grabbed her. Damn, if I had known you could do that to her, I would've done it myself a long time ago. So Anderson kept walking Janyps down the hall, turned down the exit, pushed the doors open, and they was gone."

"And?" I asked.

"And what?" Jones said, "that was it, they was gone. I haven't seen either since. Anderson was checked out the next day. Motherfucker kept telling Janyps he wasn't long for this world. Man, fuck that shit - motherfucker was in to get some hemorrhoids removed."

"Well why did you let Anderson just take her like that?"

"Cuz I was so stunned I didn't know what to do? Guess in retrospect I should've done something, cuz damn I do miss that girl and I wish I'd've thought of that first. Rick just stood there open-mouthed and shit, then he got up, said he needed to go to the bathroom now. The next day we get a memo from admin telling us that Janyps no longer works here, and we'd all be getting reassignments of her patients. Some guys from admin came by to look at the security cam footage from that night, but that was it. I called and texted her, but she never responded, and her facebook and instagram are deactivated. It's like Janyps was just some butterfly, blown in through one window, and out the other..." By now Jones' beer was halfway gone. "a butterfly with huuuge tits."

By now I was a wreck. I had gotten used to Janyps in my life, and I couldn't believe what had happened to her. I was working up the courage to give her a hug just to feel the warmth of her chest next to mine, and now I wouldn't even get that. She was gone.