At Pilgrim Hospital, Chapter Three

After about a minute, Presh came out from where the payphones were. A sudden soft noise from the ground floor made her jump.

Slowly she walked over to her bag, and then sat down, taking especial care to tuck her skirts neatly underneath her.

The shortcut home through the unlit corner of the churchyard could maybe wait.

That much Presh had gathered, even if everything else still left her stumped.

Turned out puns weren’t any help either. After the last words spoken by the cowboy, there was nothing remotely amusing about that blackness which waited beyond the hospital windows.

He and his Splitsville had said they were here for Sonica. It was one of the few other parts of their discussion Presh had been able to comprehend. That meant they’d be back when their search came up empty, and then she could demand they tell her in plain terms exactly what they knew. In the meantime, the safest place for her to be was beneath these bright lights.

Unless…

Presh cast a pining glance back in the direction of the telephone nook.

There was always a chance Robin had come home.

It was a long shot, Presh knew. It would have to have happened within this last hour.

Yet she wanted Robin here with her, and immediate concerns were but the beginning of her reasons why. Presh rose and went over, reaching behind her for a ten pence piece.

It pained her to be reminded of that day at the toy department. That first day. When she’d caught him looking. They’d been on their own at last, and everything was right.

She extracted the coin, letting her elastic snap back into place, and with her other hand lifted the receiver.

Insert money. Dial number. The telephone at Presh’s house was ringing.

Come on, Robin. Be there. We’ll start again.

Functioning phones, considerate staff, and Sonica properly looked-after…in such a well-run hospital you wouldn’t have expected draughts. Presh shivered.

It was no good. The phone kept ringing. With a sigh she replaced the handset.

Her ten pence clattered out again into its little box, and she made to put it back.

The anticipated hemline wasn’t there. Fingertips expecting to negotiate a route under it touched down instead on the soft silk which was the seat of Presh’s panties.

That was strange.

Her skirt was still there in back, because she’d felt it when she moved. It was however too low down, tickling an unaccustomed spot almost at the middle of her thighs.

What had happened?

Presh turned her head as far as it would go and looked over her shoulder to try and see.

A man was standing behind her, twice her height, naked, and grinning.

Presh whipped from the payphone in less than a heartbeat but the man moved faster, for his was a timed response to hers. Some metal contrivance rode on his wrist, and Presh heard a snipping sound as this shot by. Scissors? The thought came to her like a gleam on steel. Another heartbeat and he’d finished the job. Presh blinked at her feet to see them encircled by a loop of beige cloth which had been half her tunic.

She was standing in her knee-length boots and what might as well have been a T-shirt, for all that it covered her deep red full-fitting silky ones.

Why, this was preposterous, she must look like…

It was another funny foreign-language term.

The man wore those things on both wrists. Even as “go-go dancer” neared the tip of Presh’s tongue, his follow-through with the other arm dashed her tee to a crop-top.

Presh decided on reflection the etymology class could wait.

She bolted in her knickers, a bare split-second before the telephone wound up permanently out of order.

END OF CHAPTER THREE