REVERIE

Emmy went into the treatment room to get an extra cannula for the paediatric registrar.
She was a nursing assistant at the Royal Children Hospital.

She looked out of the window and saw that the strange woman was there again.
She had started showing up in front of the hospital about a month ago.
She would come at exactly 10am and leave on the dot of 4.
And she had been seen by different people in different parts of the hospital.
The night nurse saw her at the east wing of the hospital, by the Child’s Services Unit.
Yesterday she had been seen behind the children’s games room and asked to leave when some toddlers began to cry and cling to their mothers at the sight of her.
No one knew who she was or why she sat on the concrete block at the hospital entrance everyday.
She didn’t have a bowl in front of her to suggest that she was a beggar neither did it really strike one that she was one even though she was usually dressed in faded and poorly fitting clothes.
Perhaps she was a relative of a patient on admission, thought Emmy. That was very possible.
Susan, the student nurse who was their ward fashion consultant had told them that the faded jacket the woman wore on Monday was a Hobbs and caused quite a few quid.

Emmy pulled herself out of her reverie, she picked up two blue cannulas and hurried out to the side ward where the doctor was trying to put a cannula in little Tim’s hand.
He had come in some minutes ago with dehydration from vomiting and diarrhoea.

The woman settled herself in front of the children’s outpatient clinic.
The entrance was decorated with children’s pictures and paintings and had quite a number of people loitering.
She preferred to sit in front of the ward because of the high number of people going about.
That way no one took special notice of her.
She would have liked to settle in her favourite place behind the children’s ward today but she did not like the way that nurse had stared at her.
She tried really hard to avoid attention.
She could not have anything ruin her plan especially as it was so close to materializing.
So far she had managed to go unrecognised for almost a month.
Except for that near miss the very first day she started coming to the hospital.
A child and his mother had strolled by, they looked like they had come to visit someone at the hospital.
The woman had stared at her for long as she walked pass.
Then when she got to her car instead of getting in, she walked back to where she was seated after helping her child with his seat belt.

‘Excuse me,’ she had said, her blue eyes intense with concentration.
‘Do I know you? You look familiar.’

The strange woman shook her head quickly looking away as she did so and lowered her veil to cover her eyes and brow.
She had made a mistake about her brows.
They were too well-shaped, someone who was down on her luck like she wanted people to think of her, would not have the extra change or be concerned about getting her brows neatly threaded.

She did not turn to look until she heard the woman walk back to her car and finally drive off.
Since then she made sure to avoid the main entrance of the hospital so as not to run into her again, she also started wearing large sunglasses that covered most of her face.
Even the clothes she now wore were the oldest and cheapest she could find at the thrift store four blocks from her home.

From her daily vigils at the hospital she had come to know his routine.
She knew what time he came to work and when he left.
She even knew where he went for lunch and who he had lunch with most times.
But her break had come just this morning.

As he was getting out of his car his phone rang and he had leaned on his car and begun a conversation with someone. She wasn’t sure who that was but she thought it was with a lawyer.

She was able to hear only his side of the conversation but that had been enough.
It was what she had been after, what had made her take one month off work and sit in old clothes in front of the freaking children’s hospital where he worked.
Immediately he was done with his call he disappeared into the hospital, she also decided to take her leave.
She reckoned that thirty minutes would be enough to carry out her mission and walked down the 400 metres to her rented Mini Cooper and got behind the wheels.
It would take only 15 minutes to get to his house from the hospital, she had that  timed last week.

And another 15 minutes to retrieve the documents and make the necessary amendments.
She would have to be careful this time so as not to be seen by his nosy neighbours.
Ever since he got a restraining order against her she had been very careful going about her plans.
She would go in through the back door, she still had a copy of all his keys. That was something he knew nothing about.
She hoped to succeed this time.
She knew him too well to know that he would not go over a document that he had already signed.

About six months later it was all over the news that the director of Royal Children Hospital had been found guilty of inflating figures in the cost for rebuilding the children neuro-surgical unit.
He was subsequently jailed for 14 months. His lawyers cried foul. Many of his colleagues and staff were ready to swear that he had never given them any cause to suspect duplicity in him but then the facts were there in the various documents.

It was his handwriting and his signatures on them, none of them could deny that.

A day after the new director took over Emmy stood at the same place looking out of the treatment room that October afternoon.
She was minding 5 year old asthmatic Ashley who was on a nebulizer.
Her attack had calmed down enough for her to fall asleep and Emmy was glad of the few minutes of respite that gave her.
As she stood looking into the back entrance in drove a gleaming white Range Rover.
Emmy looked on in curiosity.
Just then, the front door of the car opened and out stepped Karla.
Karla was a glamorous Lithuanian model and the ex-wife of the former director who was now in jail. Their’s had been an acrimonious divorce that had been all over the papers.
As she stepped out she turned directly towards her and locked her eyes with Emmy’s, and then to Emmy’s surprise winked, turned back again, got into her car and drove immediately away.
It was strange, thought Emmy, how the model reminded her of the strange woman who used to camp in front of the hospital but who had since disappeared into thin air.
It couldn’t be could it?
No, surely not.