Saved By The…….

I was in that strange time, between sleeping and waking. I had the feeling that I had been in a deep and dreamless sleep. A thought struck me.

“Wanda doesn’t want to be my girlfriend, any longer.”

That was odd! We had been close for some months but had never progressed beyond an occasional kiss on the cheek unless she had beaten me at something. Wanda was very competitive. She had beaten me at every sport and every game we had played. I stopped drinking after she drank me under the table one night. The only time she would hug and properly kiss me was when she had wiped my hide at something new.

As I got closer to being awake, I realised that I wasn’t in my own bed. Far from it. The sounds I heard were familiar to me from the hours I spent at work. As I concentrated, I could hear the monitor making its distinctive sound as it started a set of observations. I could hear the chatter from the nurse’s station. When I opened my eyes, it was as I expected.

Obviously, I was in hospital, and when Suzanne, a nurse I worked with, came into my line of sight, I knew it was the one where I worked. She saw me looking and smiled.

“Good, Doc. You’re awake. You have had us worried for a while. Doctor Ridley will be happy that you pulled through. Have this sip of water and then I’ll check what you know.”

She put a straw in my mouth, and I sucked at the sweet nectar. She then went through the series of questions to see if I had all of my memories. I was able to remember my name, date of birth and all the other things she asked. Then she said that there were a lot of friends who would be happy that I was awake and sounding good. Then she fiddled with the drip, and I slowly faded into sleep, once more.

As I returned to wakefulness, again, her last words came to me. A lot of friends, she had said. As far as I knew, I didn’t have a lot of friends. There were a lot of people that I talked to during my work as a young doctor in the ED of the hospital. Suzanne, I remembered, worked the Recovery Unit, so I must have had some kind of operation.

Wanda was the receptionist in the ED. She was very good at finding the serious cases from the trivial walk-ins, with her no-nonsense manner. There were a few of the nurses that she would have a social drink with, as well as two of her old friends, from school, who would visit the hospital. Ruth was in the police, and we saw her a few times a week when she brought in victims of crime. Tina was a paramedic and was in and out almost every day. Both were single, Ruth because of the pressure of her work, and Tina because she was a committed lesbian.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Ruth standing beside me, in her police uniform. She smiled at me and asked me if I was up to talking a while. She held up a recorder to show me that it was official.

“Hello, Ruth. It’s nice to see you. At the moment, I can’t tell you which train it was that hit me.”

“That’s all right, Bobby, I’ve done this sort of thing before, and you’ll probably remember things as we go along. Now, tell me about the last shift that you worked, here, it was Halloween?”

“The shift was usual, busy, and I finished at six. Wanda had gone at five, her usual time. I remember, now. We were both going to get ready for a Halloween party at the usual hotel. She had said that the theme was the ‘Witches Brew’ and that we would all get plastered.”

“Very good, Bobby. We were all to come as witches. Most of the day shift from the ED were there. Now, take me through the time after you left work.”

“I stopped for take-away on the way home. I don’t like to drink on an empty stomach. After that, I took a long time getting ready. Wanda had insisted that, because it was Halloween, I had to go as a witch, nothing else was allowed. I think that she must have wanted to humiliate me, again, so I had taken a lot of care to look the best I could.”

“You can say that, again. You were stunning, and that may have been why you’re here.”

“I had hired a Red Witch costume. I already had most of the things needed to transform me. I took a lot of time getting ready. I’d never been out, dressed as a woman, before. It was odd as I walked to the hotel, I got a lot of looks from guys, but none said anything bad.”

“That’s because you looked as if you’d just stepped out of the pages of Playboy. When you walked into the bar, it took us a while to realise who that gorgeous girl was. When Tina saw you, she gripped my arm so tight, it left a bruise.”

“The last thing I remember was my worry that I wouldn’t make the grade. I saw the three of you at the bar and was going to join you. I saw Wanda say something and she pulled something silvery out of her bag. That’s when the train hit me. I’m sorry, I can’t remember any more.”

“That’s all right. I can fill you in with the rest. As I said, you came in, looking like a young Jane Fonda as a Red Witch. Wanda did say something, just the one word. “Bitch”. That’s when she pulled out her trusty twenty-five caliber pistol and shot you. Tina rushed to your side and then started CPR while I took Wanda down. I think she was going to put another bullet into your head. She is in the nutters room at the station, right now, screaming that there was no way her meek Robert was going to be prettier than she is.”

“She shot me, from point blank range! How am I here, in hospital, rather than a coffin?”

“Those small caliber guns don’t have a lot of stopping power, especially when they’re loaded with sub-sonic ammo. She shot you right over the heart, aiming at that realistic and impressive rack you were sporting. When Tina saw that there wasn’t much blood, she shouted that she thought that the impact shock had stopped your heart, rather than putting a hole in it. She worked wonders, all the while muttering that she wasn’t going to let you die on her, just when you had walked into her life. She was right, they took the slug out that night, I have it at the station, as evidence.”

“So, what was it that slowed it down. It certainly felt like I had been hit by a train?”

“You must have spent a lot on that breast plate you had on. The bullet hit you smack bang on the nipple, and they tell me that it was a fraction of an inch from ending your life. The silicon that they use in those high-end forms is good stuff, and it took a lot of the momentum off the bullet. You, Bobby, dear, was saved by the gel!”

Marianne Gregory © 2023