Fate of a Murderess

Part 5: In The Hospital

Jennifer woke to find herself in a hospital bed with bandages on her hands and feet, and aching all over her body, with sunlight streaming in through the windows. It had all been a dream, she thought as she looked around her, there had been a plane crash, her jet had come down and she had somehow survived to be brought here, with severe injuries in her hands and feet, and possibly in other parts of her body as well. In her coma, her guilty conscience had constructed these into a nightmare of revenge as the DeMoeiras sought to destroy their errant in-law. But now she was awake, and safe in the hands of the very best of American doctors and nurses. That there were no other people in the beds around her simply showed what wealth could buy you in America.

Then the wall opposite her bed seemed to dissolve, and was revealed to be a vast flat-screen television. James Edward DeMoeira's face gazed upon the almost-empty hospital ward.

"Yes, it was all true. You really were hung upon a cross for seven hours, and you really did die – well, almost! The genius who devised the infinitely repeatable crucifixion, Doctor Lucas Brava, is sufficiently gifted as to have revived you. We want to make sure that your hands and feet have healed as well as they are ever going to before we do that again, but after that, we will do it as often as we like, whenever we like. At last, it is possible to put a person to death over and over again! Rest well, and come back soon!" The picture faded to a still from one of the videos of Jennifer's crucifixion. It was near the end: the floodlights were already on, and Jennifer was hanging low on the cross, a grimace twisting her face.

Jennifer turned to one side and was sick over the side of the bed.

A young-looking African woman in a nurse's uniform came and cleared it up in a professional manner, and went away. Jennifer just lay on her back where she was. It hurt too much to move after the stretching and flexing that she had suffered on the cross. Only the deeply ingrained desire not to lie in her own vomit had pushed her far enough not to leave it in the bed itself. Now that that was out the way, she could only lie there and wonder what hope she had of surviving the DeMoeiras' crazed vengeance.

After a length of time that to Jennifer seemed to stretch interminably, the nurse returned. She was pushing a trolley table, on which was a steaming plate of wonderful food. Jennifer's mouth watered at the prospect. Maybe she would be given one last chance to enjoy life while she was waiting in the hospital, and she would seize it while she could!

There was also a bowl, which seemed to contain soup of some kind. The nurse helped Jennifer into a sitting position so that she could eat more easily. The movements hurt like hell, but Jennifer was grateful.

The bandages on her hands did not cover her fingers, so when the table was wheeled over the bed for her to start eating, she reached for the knife and fork herself.

The nurse mentioned, "The doctor say, I must not help you, and if you try to eat with your fingers, then I must take the food away immediately. But you may eat whatever you wish." Jennifer then discovered what had been done.

Her fingers would not respond properly to her wishes. After the horrendous damage done by Doctor Brava's nails, she had no way of flexing her middle two fingers on either hand, and the index finger was much weaker. Her hands were utterly crippled. Only her thumb worked properly. She simply couldn't control her cutlery well enough to start on the sumptuous foods that were piled onto the plate. Then she looked at the soup. A tiny plastic spoon rested by the bowl, but the soup itself smelled horrible, and looked like gruel more than anything. Weeping with frustration, Jennifer picked up the spoon and balanced it in her hand, using her thumb and index finger to control it. She dipped it into the soup and lifted it to her mouth. The soup tasted just as bad as it looked, but the nurse seemed to approve: "Good choice. The doctor says it has all the nutrients you need!" Dr. Brava, it seemed, had condemned Jennifer to feed on this filth while a beautiful plate of gorgeous, mouth-watering delights sat so close and yet so untouchable to her. Humiliated and broken in spirit, Jennifer reluctantly ate the rest of the soup, knowing that it would be all she would ever taste ever again.

As evening came, the nurse brought Jennifer the same non-choice of meals. She guessed that the nurse herself must be allowed to eat whatever Jennifer did not. That must be why she was so keen on Jennifer taking the horrid soup instead.

The nurse changed Jennifer's bandages, applying some form of salve to keep the swelling down, and then tucking Jennifer in and closing the curtains. She switched off the light and left Jennifer in darkness.

* * * * *

At dawn, a giant James Edward head yelled, "Rise and shine!" into the ward and woke Jennifer. Then it went away. Jennifer was awake again.

That day, and the ones following it, unfolded in exactly the same way. The nurse changed Jennifer's bandages and reapplied the salve every morning and evening. Jennifer had three meals a day of the gruel. The nurse made sure that Jennifer had use of a bedpan as and when necessary. Nothing else happened, except that the soreness began to dissipate in Jennifer's mistreated body, and the pain in her hands and feet seemed slightly less.

On the sixth day, however, as she was changing Jennifer's hands in the evening, the nurse spoke to Jennifer: "Oh, I feel so scared for you. They are going to perform some terrible operation: even worse than these," and she gestured at Jennifer's hands and feet, "Oh, I do not want to help them prepare you for it!"

"Please, you must let the world know that I am here. Say that Jennifer DeMoeira is alive and held prisoner here. Take a swab of my saliva: they can DNA test it and prove that what you say is true. Then I will be rescued and you will be a heroine!" Later that night, the nurse did as Jennifer asked, and made the swab and put it properly in a sealed tube. She said that she would go for help immediately.

When Jennifer awoke the next morning, to James Edward's noisy wake-up call, she found that she was no longer the only patient in the DeMoeira hospital. The nurse was lying on the next bed, her wrists and ankles held by broad leather straps to the head and foot of her bed.

"I'm ve-ee ho-ee. Vey hau' me," the petite African said to Jennifer. It took Jennifer a moment to realise that they had cut out the woman's tongue. She had tried to say, "I'm very sorry. They caught me." Jennifer had always been good at understanding speech impediments, but this one was so severe and so evil in its cause.

"Vey boo 'oo me wha' vey boo 'oo 'oo."

"These?" asked Jennifer, raising her hands.

"Uh-uh. Wha' I warm abou'."

"I'm so sorry, I should never ever have asked you to help me!" Jennifer sobbed in return. For the first time, she thought she realised what the term "greed" really meant, what she had become, and why she deserved to be punished. It was things like her callous disregard for the poor nurse's safety in her eagerness to escape.

The new nurse proved to be none other than Eleanore, and she wielded a syringe that she aimed directly at Jennifer.

"Lucas says that you've recovered enough for your operation, honey," drawled Eleanore, "And silly bitch over there is still in quite good shape even after they caught her trying to leave the compound. So it's nighty-night time for you two!" It didn't sound at all like the Eleanore that Jennifer remembered, but then, she had never realised that Eleanore was a professional sadist and member of a family of torturers, either.

The injection stung, but was very effective, and Jennifer knew no more.

When she came round, she was strapped firmly to her bed, with an IV tube in her arm. The giant TV sprang into life, showing James Edward once again.

"The doctor tells me that it will take a few weeks for you to recover from his second operation, during which time you will not be permitted to eat or drink anything. All your nutritional needs are provided by that tube. We have hired a new nurse, who will be much less inquisitive and much less eager to help her patient.

* * * * *

Jennifer's bandages were changed just as before. There were no more torments with the food, since she wasn't to have any. Her bodily functions were at first handled in the same way, a bedpan providing the receptacle for the waste. After a couple of days, however, there was nothing left in Jennifer's bowels, so a catheter was set up permanently to drain her urine. Jennifer began to wonder if the idea was to bore her to death.

On the fifth night, a new torment began. There was no need any more for James Edward's head to wake Jennifer, for at 9pm, 12 midnight, 3am and 6am she would wake herself. Her own screams would fill the room as the TV sprang into life showing the video of the first operation that had preceded her crucifixion. Her voice tearing the air as the nails were hammered home, and each time shattering the sleep that she hoped to gain. Soon, her dreams were of nothing but giant nails bearing down on her, and she would wake, screaming, a few seconds before the television started its ghastly show. In the day, James Edward started to show the final cut of the crucifixion video, all seven hours of it. By light and by dark, Jennifer was confronted by the images of her torture.

Then, after two or three weeks (Jennifer had lost count), the routine changed suddenly. At 2am, an hour earlier than usual, she was woken by screaming: but it was not her own. She focused her bleary eyes on the screen in front of her. It was not her own Nailing that she saw, but that of another woman. She was about 5'7" to 5'9", with long, shining chestnut hair that spilled over the top of her cross-table. She looked fit and strong, but was just as helpless as Jennifer had been. The video seemed to skip when they moved to her feet, and Jennifer guessed that they had not wanted this woman to slip into the same sort of fugue state as Jennifer had reached. They had obviously paused a while after doing her hands, and then come back for her feet.

What Jennifer had not anticipated was that the girl on the screen would take more than four of the special nails. She was turned on her side, and a fifth nail was lined up, before being struck hard and savagely through the horrified girl's breast. The sixth nail went through the other breast to balance it out. Jennifer's screams joined those of the victim on-screen when the breast-nails went in.

At 4am, and at 6am the same video was shown. Jennifer's conditioning was so great that she was awake for the opening of the 6am showing. She got to see the woman walked across to the cross-table and laid upon it by two guards dressed as surgeons. She noticed that the woman had no body hair, and there was a ring through her nose, piercing the fleshy wall between her nostrils. She was the only white person in the picture, the others being black. Jennifer wondered if there was a reason for that.

At the end of the 6am showing, James Edward appeared on the screen.

"You know, Jenny," he said, "That was all thanks to you! You gave such a good show on that cross, and of course when Lucas did his hammering, that several dubious regimes have seen fit to order from us the equipment for the Brava Nails Process. We named the nails after the good Doctor, because he invented them, and the process of putting them in after the nails themselves. Elegant, eh? And you just witnessed the first-ever commercial use of the Brava Nails. We never thought of that thing with the breasts, but then, there isn't enough flesh on yours to make it feasible, and they were originally designed with you in mind. Abigail, that's the name of the woman you just saw, and those who follow her, will be just a lucky bonus for us. Anyway, thank you for being such a good model for our wares!" And he was gone.

The routine returned, with a mixture of Abigail and Jennifer on the nighttime viewings, and the Jennifer crucifixion on in the daytime. Jennifer hoped that that meant that Abigail was already dead, and her suffering over, but she doubted it very much. The whole point of the Brava Nails was so that a person could be "executed" in a horrible way, many times. Maybe they hadn't filmed Abigail's crucifixion. Eventually, they decided that the swelling had stopped in Jennifer's hands and feet, and the bandages could come off.

Then, after six long weeks of broken sleep and non-stop replays of her own and Abigail's agony, Jennifer was immensely relieved when they came to get her out of bed.