3 years 1 day (3)

“She had no right to do this!” The Nurse carrying me whispered.

I heard a snort and a sight, but since I had safely buried my face in the folds of the nurse’s clothes I didn’t see who it was.

“She obviously can. She just doesn’t care. How such a person made it to such a high position in the family…”

“This batch of kids is half ruined, I tell you. They’ll be psychologically crippled for years.”

“It’ll be our résumé that will suffer for losing this many kids.” The nurse carrying me hissed.

“Boxwood! This isn’t about our performance record, it’s about what something like that does to the little ones!”

“As if arguing like this right in front of them were any better…” A soft voice that I had become familiar with scolded. It was our old Nurse, the one who had been with us for two years.

I looked up hopefully and wiggled in the grip of the stranger who was holding me, trying to get to that familiar presence.

“You shouldn’t be here!” The mean nurse who wouldn’t let me go didn’t seem all too happy.

“No, what the kids need now is someone they’re familiar with. It might dampen the psychological damage if they can be reassured. Especially these kids. Two of them were Yellow Carnation’s sisters and Fern was their first nurse.” The one who had used those difficult words before said nearly incomprehensible things again.

“But head Nurse…”

“Stay with this group. I hope they make it. Several of them have excellent prospects. Besides, I do not want to be the one who has to tell Lady Orchid that more of her daughters have failed to meet requirements, the reason why won’t matter to her.”

I kind of wondered who this head nurse was if she told the nurses what to do. I had never seen anything like this, except when Fern did it.

Strangely my brain was following such random thoughts instead of rerunning what had happened all of a sudden. I tried to think back, but a vase we passed caught my attention and then I thought about Fern’s behavior before again. Fern always told the nurses what to do. But the nurses looked angry then. I glanced at the other nurses and they didn’t seem angry about what the head nurse told them to do.

Everything was confusing.

I looked at my Nurse’s cloth and saw traces of blood. Fern’s blood. My head went blank for a moment and after that I couldn’t think anymore. I just stared at the red dots. Some had smeared where my head had been.

There was a wet and sometimes itchy feeling on my skin. I rubbed, but when I stopped and looked at my hand there was only more red. Desperately I started rubbing, but the blood wouldn’t go away. I wanted it gone, I wanted Magnolia to be back with us even if she was mean and spoiled, I wanted Fern back…I didn’t want this mean nurse.

Angrily, caught in her grip, I started hitting her to make her let go. “Down! Down! Down!” I demanded. “I hate you!”

She slapped me and in shock I started crying, begging the other Nurses to make her go away. I didn’t want to be with this mean nurse.

“Boxwood, my office, in half an hour!” The head nurse whispered calmly. But I still had to stay on the mean woman’s hip, no matter how much I fought.

After what seemed forever I noticed that the others had started crying, too. We cried and cried, even after they set us down in this new, foreign room and washed our faces and short hair with soft cloth, changed our dresses to cheerful blues and greens and yellows. The nice nurse who had carried Azalea and who hadn’t said a word before hugged and petted us together with our old nurse until my head hurt from crying and I got sleepy.

Finally I crawled under the covers of one of the new beds and fell asleep for my afternoon nap.