Nurse Ellen Lindsey was one of that rare few group of others to remember him. The man from the Event last year. It was a little thrilling to be assigned to the team working on the case.

  For that last year and some extra it was her charge four nights a week to take his vitals,

change his dressings, and see that the medicine prescribed was what he actually received.

He was, as it turned out, her favorite patient. He never leered at her,

like most men would, patient of the hospital or not. He never tried to “Chat her up”

during a sponge bath. Never did he refer to her as a “Valkyrie,” “Amazon,” “Angel” nor any of other entirely tiresome and burdensome male fantasy terms she had lived with since puberty had mugged an unsuspecting Ellen all those years ago.

And most importantly, he didn’t complain. Ever. Nurse Lindsey was just as happy with this anonymous man as she could have been with the most courteous of men she had ever

met. Maybe even more so. Sometimes courtesy could itself be cruel.

Ellen had seen several of the doctors on call in the ward come into the room,

study the charts, and stutter to a stop as if they had become wind up toys run down. It

would usually start with Doctor Howell reading the charts, and the data pads in the room

and attached to the bed, and then reaching down to further examine the patient’s hands

and wrists. Then the blankness would set in.

  Howell was a specialist, and Ellen had often privately speculated that he would be writing another tedious Journal article on aberrant structural morphology, using this poor man as his stepping stone. But then he would wind down like an old fashioned clock, stutter to a stop and his mumblings about inherited traits, malformations, and developmental disease vectors would die on his tongue. Nurse Ellen would watch him stand still for a few long moments before he would straighten with a cleansing breath to refocus his eyes around the room. The round little doctor would turn on his heal every time, say “Finish up here,

Nurse.” And then exit the room as if he had forgotten a lunch date.

  It happened like that with every doctor who took more than a passing interest in the patient. Just today one of the older doctors, a great gasbag of a man, had come in, checked the patient’s charts on the room’s various data pads, made sure his tubes were all working well, and then froze like a horror movie zombie. He stuttered, and stammered for a few moments before looking at his watch and turning to leave.

  At first she found it creepy, but as it became more common Ellen had begun to

expect the phenomena. Now she just took it as the normal turn of events with this man in

the bed before her. Doctors would come in with an agenda, stare off into space for a few

moments, then leave, as if realizing that getting a tuna sandwich in the cafeteria was now the most important thing on earth.

  It was odd, but she liked it.

  This served her newfound purpose quite well. It was a compulsion, actually; but it was a compulsion quite the inverse of what she noticed in the rest of the medical staff where John Doe had been concerned.

Some nights while finishing up her rounds she would slip back into his room to sit by his bed, and talk about her day. Or sometimes she might stay with him, quiet as a shadow, making up stories of him in her mind. Who he was, what he did for a living, his family, what his favorite color was and if he liked foods like that Greek lasagna she had tried last week in the small, family owned sit-in near her flat. Moose-something-or-other… it can’t really have had actual moose in it, she knew, but…it was tasty, it had cinnamon and such all in…

  What would he think of her too plain and too oversized features? What would he

think of her? Where did he live? Where did he grow up? Iona? Bristol? Paris? Fargo?

All of her guesses were wrong. Except for the color green, it was indeed his favorite color.

Some nights talking became more nights, which then became every night she worked. It

never occurred to her how odd this was; she was not known for her loquacious nature. “Tight Lipped” was often a phrase used by others about Nurse Lindsey. The few people that could actually claim her friendship would have been stunned to hear her speak so much, and her family might have collectively fainted dead away at the thought of so many words issuing from her at one sitting. But, it never caused her a moment’s unease, all this talking to a stranger sleeping in her care. It just happened, the high and wordy tide finally coming into shore after a long absence.

  It had been while walking home after one very trying and troubling shift nine months after first starting to care for her favorite patient, Ellen noticed the tall dark men in the neighborhood for the first time. Each one had been model-pretty, darkly handsome, taller even than her sturdy two meter plus frame (2.042m, but she didn't care to bandy that about), and each and every one looking just on the near serious side of anger. Men walking around her Patch in uptight moods, and with outright hostility on their faces she found distasteful enough, but this profusion of belligerent, yet well-dressed men was far beyond the edge of that with which she was comfortable.

  The small city of Perth in which she lived had thus far escaped the heavy influx of organized criminal intent and interest those more metropolitan places like London, Edinburgh, and even poor Glasgow had seen. Yet as time wore on, more and more of these men began to populate the evening streets. Three months after first noticing them, on almost every street corner she could see as she walked to her home from work now boasted a tall, dark, stern looking (if exotically handsome) man.

“Odd,” was what she thought at the beginning. Later her thoughts turned darker, as the level of discomfort rose for her along with the numbers of these men.

  It was almost like that odd movie from year’s back, about the town being overrun

with daunting strangers. “The Dark Days”? ”Days of Darkness”? Something like that…

In a small town like Crawford, it was easy to spot the outsiders; more so as they

proliferated. All of the men shared another commonality, as well; fine white cotton suits. The local standard had been wool suits for as long as she could remember. But from the looks she was able to get here, these men all wore very lightweight cotton or linen suits. Much the same as the white cotton suits her grandfather was often pictured wearing while on the Queen’s business in Africa, Australia (Back when it was still called Australia) and points in the Middle East.

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  He never looked so good as these men did, she must admit. He was tall, to

be sure, but paunchy and very palely “British.” He was plainly six and a half feet of

shapeless dough with a walrus-like red mustache hiding a stiff upper lip. Not so, these

dangerous men lurking around her small town. Tigers trolling languidly through the

streets at night. Surly serpents with style, standing on corners awaiting an equally well dressed Eve to make her an apple of an offer.

  The looks on their faces said there was no offer; however, Eve, if she came along

would be taking a very large bite. The callous and disdainful looks they gave their

surrounds was enough to let her know she wanted nothing to do with any of them, no

matter how well tailored. But it was hard to say “Get thee behind me, Satan!” when you happen to be scared he wont, and possibly, maybe, more afraid that he just might.

  More and more as the months passed by during her walks home after each shift

she thought of her charge, Mister Doe. Nothing like these men. Barley five and a half

feet tall was her mystery man, where these men were all tall. Taller than even her in most

cases. And each of these strange invaders happened to be whip thin, as narrow of face as they were of shoulder. Not a rugby physique amongst them, all slender footballers and

track runners; Mister Doe had such broad shoulders she thought he must have been to the

gym almost daily wherever it might have been that he grew up. Maybe a distance swimmer.

  Though now his muscles were mostly gone soft, and atrophied as he long lay

abed. Ellen almost missed a step as she thought on the massages she regularly

administered to Mister Doe to help with the problems of lividity and bedsores. She

couldn’t say for sure that his muscles had withered down to nothing, but surely they must

have done so by now? While she could name the tens of patients to whom she had given

such care over the last few years, Ellen blushed at the thought of the muscle massages she

had recently given to her favorite. Never anything inappropriate; but once in a while she

would catch herself staring off into the distance, wondering what kind of first date they would have gone on, had they met in another world.

  Some fantasies just caught one’s attention, and refused to let go.

  Finally home to an empty flat.

  When originally shown the flat by an agent, in a touring presentation it was sold as “Here’s the kitchen, the master bedroom, the master bath, the living room, dining room, den, solar, receiving room, and guest bath.” While verbally quite grand, the reality was a three room flat, with one and one half baths. Some descriptions had to share rooms with each other. Salesmanship.

  Not even a cat, though fashionable with most single nurses she new, waited on Ellen to return home each night. They just wouldn’t feel right in the house. It made her sad sometimes coming home to such emptiness, but unlike many of Ellen’s co-workers she felt a cat would have been surplus to her needs. Another thing to take care of and she did that all day at work.

  And it might want to talk. Not to her, but she might feel impelled to speak to the cat on quiet nights, and that just would not do; next step down that road would be getting ANOTHER cat with which to talk. She didn’t fancy that, at all, slowly becoming the “talks-to-cats-lady.” Aside from her unexplainable fits of conversation with “John Doe,” talking was not her strong point, and talking with an animal just felt like a waste of effort. Even to the most sincere of cat lovers, the stoic felines tended to just sit and stare at people trying to talk to them. No, no cats, no dogs, no birds, and no rodents no matter what name by which they went. Gerbil, hamster, guinea pig, ferret were all, to her mind, just a clever ploy at good public relations on the part of rats. A successful ad campaign if ever one was; once again, Salesmanship.

  Books were her best friends. No betrayals beyond an author’s shortcomings. In all Ellen’s years of reading, never had she need to clean a litter bin, repaper a cage, nor let the various novels out at night to blight the neighbors’ bushes. Though on the nice weekends she would take her latest book on a walk with her about town. Such was Nurse Lindsey’s life from age twenty-two, then on into her mid thirties. She liked the life she had built for herself, regardless of her father’s mild disapproval. Her father had her study dance, even when it became obvious she would never become a dancer. She had hated every minute of it, but couldn’t bring herself to quash his feelings. His breeding told him women did best learning to dance and comport themselves in the ways best suited to “Ladies.” Ballet companies, however, had little use for dancers over two meters tall.

  Football was never allowed, and other sport was equally frowned upon by a man who had more class than money. “A good finishing school like your mother attended, that’s what you need.” He said such things with such metronomic regularity she and her mother just ignored them as more kitchen noise, like the kettle in the afternoon. She went on to nursing school over his protests, but he finally saw it as a good “womanly” profession; and beamed with pride when she graduated at the top of her class. “Because by God, if my daughter is to do some common labor, she’ll be the best at it there could ever be.” Mrs. Lindsey loved her husband, and so didn’t poison his tea when he made such statements, or expressed such views. She may have thought it, but never did it; and to her THAT was the line the evil and insane people crossed all too often. It was also, to her own mind at least, a show of true love, the way Mrs. Lindsey never slew her husband by any means up to and including bludgeoning, knifing, or smothering.

  Ellen even agreed.

  He still insisted they attend the ballet at least once whenever she was home for a visit. Memories of past family societal glories and delusions of an upper class life ever haunted him. She loved her father, and like all adult children raised to be thinkers, saw past his foibles to a man who only wanted the very best for his legacy. To have the things in life that he never quite had a chance at, he would have done anything; and she loved her father all the more when she had finally realized that. Most dads just screamed what they thought was advice at their daughters from the comfort of the parlor during commercial breaks on the old Celestra style telly.

  While she knew without a doubt that he would happily see her in the finest clothes, married to some member of the House of Lords, off at fox hunts, safaris, and every other privileged thing in the world she saw as ridiculous(many of which hadn’t existed in a century); she also knew it was the way he cared about her that gave him such hopes. Her mother was ever the more practical parent. As long as Ellen stayed off the drugs and could support herself without becoming a street walker, Mrs. Lindsey thought she had succeeded in raising a good human. No great longings for a Lord, or up and coming Barrister for a son in law. Just don’t become a junkie, a telephone solicitor, or a hooker, and Margaret Lindsey would hail it a job well done. Ellen's mother was just as much an "Old Empire Prude" as was her father, she was just more even-handed in how she ladled out her opinions on sex, gender roles, and money.

  Late dinner, book, bath, bed. Not an exciting evening, but it was all hers. Her routine this night Ellen had owned like a collector and valued it twice as much. As sleep slowly made a wandering path across her eyes and mind, tuning out all thought.

  Blissfully she was left once again to dream what dreams she would. A light knocking started at the front door. Gradually building to an insistent crescendo as time proved to whoever knocked without that sleep had not yet let go its hold on Ellen Lindsey’s soul. The monotonous sound woke her, and once she woke, true slumber would be kept at bay. As she sat up in bed, glancing at the room around her to be sure it was not a part of the last dream of which she had partaken.

Still, the knocking persisted…