"It's nice to see you again, Nurse Riley." Jackson mocked me.
"Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing about you." I retorted.
The last time that I'd seen him in the office, he'd been wearing the doctor's white coat, but now he was dressed in the patient's blue uniform. The few top buttons of the uniform's shirt were open, the sleeves folded shy of his biceps and that made all the tattoos visible that ran down the length of his arm. I was at such a distance that I couldn't tell what the tattoos were about and that made me curious.
Jackson chuckled a low rumble, the type that was best suited in an office cubical rather than a mental asylum. Looking at him, no one would think he was crazy but that was the truth. He was bat-shit psycho, just as Ken had mentioned. What's even scarier was that he seemed like the kind of guy who could easily blend with the normal people if they didn't know about the demons that befriended him.
"Come on, don't be like that. We still have that coffee date you were talking about." He passed me that lopsided grin, obviously teasing me. "Shall I pick you up at four?"
I folded my arms across my chest and gave him a hard stare. I was not in a mood for jokes anymore, not after what he had pulled last time.
"I thought yesterday was a good enough reason for you to quit working as my nurse. What made you stay?"
I placed the tray of food on the table beside his chair and quickly backed away, maintaining a safe distance. He continued. "Do I scare you, Nurse Riley?"
"You wish," I said. The way he called out my name gave me chills.
He laughed; the sound of his laughter had a boy-next-door vibe. "Then why are you standing so far. Come a little closer."
"Thanks, but I'm good. I don't think I need my skin chewed out."
"Are you sure about that?" He asked, brow arched. “There are fan clubs all over the internet dedicated to me. The women who are part of that fan-club want me to dissect them."
"And I'm supposed to be impressed?"
He smiled again. "Well, aren't you? It's not every day that you meet a guy who can be sexy as well as handle the sight of guts and a severed head without throwing up."
"I would say the men who are disgusted by the sight of it are actually normal, while you are quite the contrary," I said.
Jackson laughed again. "Psychopaths are actually pretty normal." He said grinning and then added, "Sometimes. A psychopath can be a loyal husband and a lover, a good father and everything that you dream about. Just don't peek into their basement."
"Guess you forgot to add that they are also pathological liars and lack empathy."
I watched his jaw tighten and his dark chocolate brown eyes staring at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking from his expressions but I sure as hell knew I'd said the right thing to tick him off.
And why exactly was I finding pleasure by stepping on his foot?
Just when I thought things had taken the wrong turn, his expressions mellowed.
I decided to tease him further. "So which type of psychopath are you? Hannibal Lecter or Patrick Bateman?"
"Neither. I'm more like Dexter Morgan."
"Dexter Morgan didn't chew people out."
"I forgot to add the part that I can be a bit more harmful."
I couldn't help but laugh. "If you weren't so crazy, I'd say you were interesting."
He continued to stare at me like he could peek into my soul and read all my thoughts, and then he asked me the question that I'd least expected him to, "Do you have a boyfriend, Nurse Riley?"
"I do." I lied, quite surprised by my ability to lie so easily.
"Who is the pathological liar now?" He asked.
Aaron was right. Jackson was smart, intelligent and someone I shouldn't even be having conversations with. "Even if I don't have a boyfriend, it's not any of your business."
Jackson grinned. "I'm starving. What have you got there?" he asked, pretending to peek into the tray.
"Well, it's not human meat if that's what you were expecting." I retorted.
If he was fuming inside, and dying to kill me, he didn't show. Well, he deserved a bit of taunting after how much trouble he'd caused me. Jackson smiled at me as if I'd just complimented him. "You must be a psychic!" he exclaimed.
I was disappointed the insult didn't have an effect on him. I took the lid off the food tray and placed it in front of him. It was the usual; mashed potatoes and gravy with some salad. I instantly felt bad for him. The hospital needed to make variations with the food and I needed to put a word in regarding it to the hospital cook Mrs. Dorian. I arranged things on his table neatly and also made his bed while being aware of his eyes following my every move. After that, I decided it was time for something that I most dreaded.
My heart began pumping through my chest. I'd never felt this nervous while taking care of a patient before and yet, I realized that I was shaking. Maybe it was because of what happened with Dr. Paul that I feared would repeat with me. Jackson's eyes were on me, watching my every move. And his restraints weren't even in place. He'd been pretending to be restraint all this time.
As if I had a premonition of what was to occur, I backed away but not fast enough because Jackson climbed to his feet. I opened the door to make a run outside but he closed it shut while I was still trapped between his arms. I turned to face him and realized just then how tall he actually was. I could smell the detergent mixed with soap.
I was shaking and Jackson was liking it, his smile told it all. If I'd never experienced fear, well, I did now. My resolve to stay strong seemed to have slipped into oblivion.
"What are you gonna do to me?" I asked.
He moved closer, his body pressed to me and his face inches away from mine. Softy, he whispered. "Well, that's the question I'm asking myself. What do I do with you, Nurse Riley?"
"No, Jackson...Please!"
The wolfish grin was back.
Jackson was so close that I could feel his minty breath fan over my face. I tried to act like I wasn't scared at all but it wasn't working. I felt raw fear claw into my skin like never before and I guess he sensed it because he was grinning at me like a lunatic. It seemed like he could read my mind and my body. He raised his arm towards me and I cowered in reflex. I felt his fingers move slowly down my arm in a teasing way."W-what are you doing?" I asked him."You're scared of me, aren't you?" he asked."No. I'm not scared of you."Jackson laughed. "You don't sound so confident." He leaned in very close to my ear and whispered, “I can hear your heart beating out of your chest.”"If you try anything, Jackson. Just anything at all, I'll scream."He moved closer, leaving absolutely no space between us. Our bodies were pressed against each other with the exit right behind me but I couldn't move, not when a six-foot-three giant was t
When I woke up the next morning, I had a severe headache. Even though I'd managed to throw up all the medicines that I'd consumed last night, I realized some remnants of it must have remained inside my body. I looked out of my bedroom window and noticed it was still drizzling. The clock read nine a.m. so I had about an hour before my shift started. I was working a twelve hours shift today because Aaron had literally pleaded me since they were short-staffed. Majority of the nurses preferred to steer clear off Jackson and I couldn't even blame them.Due to my unusual shift timings, I was never home and so Ken and I rarely got any time to spend with each other as a family. Scribbled notes, texts, and phone calls were the only communication that went on for a few days now and I blamed it on my transfer to the Mental Health Wing.I pulled myself out of the bed reluctantly, making a beeline for the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, I was dressed in my Nurse uniform, seated at
"Jackson, that's enough!" I shrieked, but it was too late. Mad-Dave's face was bloody and his eyes were rolled back, a tooth fell to the floor.Cody, the Man-child didn't seem to be bothered by this. He just casually threw us a look as if we'd just disturbed Mister Panda and his television time together. I seized Jackson's arm and tried to pull him away but his eyes spelled murder. It was like he was possessed. Jackson was too muscled and strong; he didn't even budge when I pulled him. I needed to tread slowly out of this situation; one wrong move and I'd probably end up looking like Dave."Jackson," I called out to him. "You need to calm down. Dave is a bully; he's just messing with you."Jackson turned his furious eyes at me. "Nobody fucking talks about my mother like that!" He yelled at Dave.It was funny how one nasty word about his mother had driven him into a fit of rage when he was the one who'd killed her in cold blood. Maybe Jackson had some seri
When I drove to work the next morning, I saw some police cars and a wide yellow tape wound around the area. Media vans and TV reporters swarmed the premise.What the hell happened here?The sun was coming down too harshly; I retrieved my sunglasses and wore them, that way no one would find out who I was staring at. I glanced up towards the troublemaker’s window, Jackson was staring right at me, he smiled and waved. I didn't bother waving back. He was back in his old room.I approached the entrance slowly. Paul appeared to be stressed and talking to a police officer who was scribbling something on a memo, his co-worker sipping on a latte. I entered the hospital building to find all the nurses being questioned.A group of people had already crowded the elevator area so I decided to take the stairs. I climbed up, two at a time when Marvin almost crashed into me on the third level. He grabbed both my shoulders as if stopping me from walking fur
Detective Alicia led me to a room that was now set up with a bunch of equipment and there were a lot of people in the room being questioned, others were going through files and papers, typing on their MacBooks. A young officer looked up from his laptop towards me and back at the screen."Please have a seat, Miss. Frazer." Detective Alicia pointed at the chair as she settled in the chair across from it. She had a memo pad and a pen in her lap. "How are you doing today?""I'm good, Detective. Thanks for asking.""I have some questions so let's get it over with." She said. "How was David's behavior usually?""He liked to pick fights with the other patients. Harassed most of the staff. Frankly speaking, I don't think anyone here would miss him in the slightest." There, I said the truth. Just because Dave was dead, didn't mean we had to pity him. He had it coming for a long time.Detective Alicia nodded, scribbling something in her notepad. "When he had
Jackson had tried to commit suicide, but thankfully we’d reached on time to save his life. He lay in the hospital bed breathing through an oxygen mask, an IV connected to him. As his nurse, I felt responsible for what happened to him. If I hadn’t let him out of my sight, maybe this wouldn’t have happened at all.I watched Jackson as he slept peacefully, despite how chaotic his life had become. His chest moved in a constant slow rise and fall. Any normal person would easily peg him as Hollywood worthy. He should have been at one of the movie sets; sitting in his private room, reading the lines he was supposed to recite and sipping on fresh juice that the errand boy brought him, instead, he was. Bat-shit insane and convicted of murders. Besides that, he was so damn unpredictable and that’s what made him even more mysterious.I doodled in my diary; Mysterious, Unpredictable and Drop-dead gorgeous.Instinctively, I brushed the dark l
"What are you going to do to me?" That's the first thing I asked him after I'd handed him the scalpel. He was assessing it curiously like he hadn't seen a blade in his life before, “Jackson, I asked you something." "Relax, Nurse Riley. I ain't gonna touch a single hair off your pretty little head, well, unless you want me to," he grinned, quickly hiding the scalpel underneath the hospital bed. "Now, there's one other thing I need from you."He wrote down a number for me and gave me instructions on what I was supposed to do. "Are you nuts?" I almost shrieked at him. It was hard to keep my voice down. "If someone finds out about it, it's going to be a criminal offense. I could go to jail for this.""I assure you that if you follow my instructions, nothing will happen to you but if you want to refuse, that's fine because one way or the other I will find my way out of here and when that's done, baby brother will be home waiting for you." H
I couldn't stop the sobs that raked through my chest. Why did it have to happen to me? The worst feeling was how Aaron had looked at me with so much disgust. He was my superior, but more than that, he had been my friend. The only man I looked up to and it killed me how he'd dismissed me out of his office. The accusatory look he'd passed me. He trusted me, but there was a shadow of a doubt where he wondered if I could possibly betray his trust.I pulled out the paper tissues and blew my nose into it furiously, still crying.If I saw Jackson in front of me right now, I'd strangle him with my bare hands.I heard a sound coming from a few cubicles down from mine. When I'd entered the bathroom, I hadn't paid attention enough to notice if anyone was using the other toilets because I thought it was obvious no one would. I'd purposely walked into the ladies' restroom that belonged to the old wing situated close to the new wing. It was separated from the rest by a passag