A Year and a Day

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Copyright Oggbashan October 2005

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

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Last Halloween I was returning from a visit to my elderly uncle in London when my life was wrecked by a train crash.

I was trapped in the tangled metalwork for twelve hours until firemen cut me free. Although my cuts were superficial I was not expected to live. My arms, legs, wrists and ankles had been broken. My chest was crushed. My internal organs were displaced. The hours I waited for rescue had damaged my heart.

I swung between life and death for a week before my body apparently decided I should live. Several months later I was discharged from hospital to go home to my wife. My wife Clare gave up work to look after me. We knew it would be a long process before I would be fully fit if I ever would be.

Clare installed me in the granny annexe we had built for her mother, Gwen's, final years. It still had the large hospital bed used for the last months of Gwen's life. We had bought at auction two years ago when the local nursing home closed down after the unexpected death of its matron and owner, Nurse Jones.

We had acquired many lots at that auction. There had been several heavy falls of snow that week and most of the dealers had not tried to force their way through the blocked roads to the viewing or the auction itself. Apart from a few speculative telephone bids the local villagers and I had bought everything for a few pounds. For a year my barn had been nearly full of our purchases from that auction. From time to time I would drag a few items out, clean them up, and put them in as auction lots when the dealers were out in force. It had provided a steady income.

When Clare had been looking after her mother Gwen the old lady had become confused. Clare had to do everything for Gwen and found that her clothes were suffering from the need for frequent hot washes. We had found some of the nursing aides' uniforms in a trunk. They were heavy cotton with tabards covering from neck to the top of the thighs. Clare would wear them to feed Gwen and do all the necessary dirty jobs.

Gwen complained that while I visited her daily, Clare never did.

"I only see the nurse, never Clare." Gwen had said.

We had other real nurses who visited from time to time. Gwen thought they and Clare were all one nurse despite their variations and build.

At least once a day Clare would change out of her aide's uniform into her normal clothes and 'visit' Gwen, after making sure as the 'nurse' that Gwen was not in need of any messy attention. Gwen was satisfied although sometimes she would still grumble that she saw more of me than her daughter.

I was Gwen's nurse during most of the day while Clare was at work. I wore one of a series of brown carpenter's aprons to protect my clothes. Those aprons were washed daily with the aide's uniforms. Gwen accepted me as her son-in-law even while she didn't recognise Clare dressed as a nurse. Old people's minds can be inconsistent.

Now I was installed in Gwen's granny flat, in that old bed. I fretted about my helplessness and our reduced earnings. I wasn't helping my recovery by worrying about our income.

Income? That was our problem since my injuries. As an antique dealer I needed to be out and about, buying, selling, collecting and delivering items. I couldn't. I was as weak as a new-born kitten and as useless. I had accident insurance cover for travel on public transport. That had paid the maximum amount for injury and apart from the bare allowance from the Welfare State that was what Clare and I lived on. Soon the money would run out and unless I could find some method of making money from my bed or wheelchair we would have to sell our home.

If only I wasn't so dependent on Clare. I needed her for everything. She was my nurse, not my wife. During the first few months after my return home she and our friend Helen had provided almost all the nursing I needed. Helen still drove us to the hospital for my weekly physiotherapy.

Three years ago Helen had lost her husband suddenly. She had been out with us for the evening at a local theatre group's pantomime. Her husband Alan had cried off. He had a heavy cold, or influenza as he called it, and hadn't wanted to go. He said he would go to bed early and try to sleep it off.

When we returned Helen invited us in for a coffee. She went to check on Alan and found him dead. The inquest had been a nine-day wonder in the town. Helen had found Alan with his head tightly wrapped inside her voluminous cotton nightdress. There had been some suggestion that he might have been experimenting with autoeroticism. A forensic scientist had disproved that.

It was demonstrated that Alan could have breathed easily through the single layer that was covering his head. He could have breathed through two layers. He could not have breathed through four layers but, large though Helen's nightdress was, it could not have been wrapped tightly around Alan's head with four layers covering his face.

The autopsy revealed that Alan had a weak heart. There had been minor symptoms that were significant with hindsight. They had not been sufficient to raise his doctor's concern until too late. The heavy cold, for that was all it was, might have been a factor. Alan could have died at any time without warning.

The coroner took the view that Alan was seeking comfort from his wife's empty nightdress during her absence and that Alan's heart condition was the sole cause of his death. Helen had to endure some local rumours for a few weeks. Clare and I were able to deny them. Alan had been alive when we left. He had been dead at least an hour before we returned and Helen had been continually in our company.

We had been friends with Helen long before Alan's death. We supported her through the inquest, the funeral, and beyond. She was still our friend. She had helped us to care for Gwen. Even after my need for nursing diminished Helen would take over my care from time to time so that Clare could have a break. As she had done for Gwen, Helen would dress in one of the nurse's uniforms, in a much larger size than Clare's, when I needed attentions that might soil her clothes. Neither needed to change now that I could move more than I had been able to when I came home but they still did. I liked looking at them in nurses' uniforms.

At first Clare or Helen had to feed me, wash me, ease me in and out of my wheelchair and visit several times each night to check on me. Almost every night my weakened muscles would go into spasm and I would thrash uncontrollably. Twice I fell out of bed before Clare found the old bed's sidebars in the barn. Even then I could injure myself by impact with the bars. I had broken my left arm twice. It had been so weakened by the previous fractures that it was brittle.

My spasms had returned in the last few days. Clare found a solution. She had tried wrapping me in a sheet. My struggles unwound it or worse tangled it around my neck threatening to strangle me. We tried a sleeping bag. I slipped down inside it and nearly suffocated. The satisfactory resolution came from one of those auction lots.

Clare had remembered that there were some different uniforms in that trunk or in another one. After a couple of hours of rummaging in the barn she produced the result to me.

"I thought so, Guy," she said. "this might protect you during your spasms."

What she was holding was a different style of dress protection. Instead of the loose tabard, she had found a sleeveless overdress that opened at the sides. While I hitched myself forward in my wheelchair she fed my head through the neck opening. She tucked the material down my back.

"Put your arms by your sides, please Guy?"

I did. There was a zip fastener on each side. She fitted the zip together on my left and pulled it down about a foot. She repeated that on the right.

"Now stand up, please."

I stood. I can stand, not for long, and not without Clare poised to catch me if I start to wobble. I can even take a few paces. That is far more than I could do six months ago. I had set Halloween, two weeks away, the anniversary of the accident as a target for being fully recovered. I wouldn't meet that target. Would I ever recover completely?

Clare closed both zips to their fullest extent. My arms were held by my sides. I didn't feel bound, just slightly restricted.

"Now try to wriggle that off," Claire asked.

I tried. My efforts raised the hem of the overdress a couple of inches. That was all I could do to free myself.

Claire tried to pull the overdress up over my head. It jammed on my shoulders.

"That's it!" she said triumphantly. "It won't tangle around you, you can't slide down inside it and you can't injure yourself. There are a dozen or so of these in this size so I can wash them frequently. Problem sorted and now I won't need to check on you every couple of hours. I, and you, can have an uninterrupted night's sleep."

She sat me back down in the wheelchair, kissed my forehead and then moved down to my lips. I would have thrown my arms around her. I couldn't. I was mummified into passivity as her lips claimed mine. When she stopped kissing me she held me to her cotton covered breasts rocking me backwards and forwards so that I was alternately blindfolded in her cleavage and then seeing again as I looked up at her face.

I enjoyed the kissing and cuddling. Before the accident Clare and I had been into mild bedroom bondage as part of our love play. We would take it in turns to be the predator and the victim. I had enjoyed surrendering to Clare, knowing that soon she would be as helpless as I was. Now I was always the helpless one. My dependency seemed endless. Just a few spontaneous kisses had aroused feelings that I thought had been erased from me. I wanted Clare, not just as my carer, but also as my lover, my wife and sometimes my victim. If I continued to improve even the last might become possible.

One scenario we had played frequently. Clare would dress up in one of the nurse's uniforms and bandage me into immobility, gagging me with her nurse's headdress, before raising her dress's hem and riding me to a climax. She would do that even when she had just come from looking after her mother, as long as her uniform was still clean.

The alternate scenario would be me capturing her dressed as a nurse and tying and gagging her before eating her pussy, ripping her bodice apart, licking her breasts, roughly impaling her and pounding on her hard as the bed protested. We enjoyed both versions and sometimes played both in the same night. Now? I was her helpless victim every time and she had to treat me gently. I resented my passive role.

I tried again to free myself from the clinging overdress. My fingers wriggled around to reach the zips. I edged one of the zips up a few inches. Left to myself I might have been able to get those zips unfastened in quarter of an hour or so. Clare stopped me. Her fingers nullified those hard won inches with a quick yank. She stood me up again and released me. As we lowered me back into the wheelchair she said:

"By the way, months ago I found something in the skirt pocket of one of the nurse's uniforms. It's a book written in shorthand. I can't read it. Nor can Helen. I'll bring it so you can have a look. It might amuse you for an hour or so."

The book was small and black. It was full of very precise shorthand written with a dark pencil. I put it aside until I was alone. Then I started to read.

I wish I hadn't read that book. I wish Clare hadn't found it. I wish she had thrown it away before giving it to me. It's too late now.

The book was Nurse Jones' personal and private diary. It wasn't continuous. All entries were timed and dated. Sometimes a day or two was missed; sometimes there was a gap of weeks. The latter pages had several entries a day until the end.

When the diary started a couple of years before Nurse Jones' death she confided her troubles to it. The main one was money. The nursing home had been profitable until the rules on public funding had been dramatically changed. Until then the residents had been mainly of low dependency. They needed hotel style care and some supervision to ensure that they kept themselves washed and cleanly dressed. The nursing element had been minimal. Nurse Jones could cover the nights with a couple of aides. During the day two nurses with four aides coped with everything.

The clientele gradually changed. Public money was no longer supporting low dependency cases. Nurse Jones' home only took in high dependency people. The amounts paid for their care barely met the home's outgoings even while the payments for the remaining low dependency inmates subsidised the others. At the time the diary started the strain on staff was beginning to show. Nurse Jones couldn't afford more staff.

The low dependency clients were gradually ageing and becoming high dependency. The high dependency ones deteriorated, creating more pressure. One case in particular needed twenty-four hour care that couldn't be afforded. Mr Akers was ninety-eight and very frail. He had to be handled very delicately or his brittle bones would break. He appreciated being hugged by the nursing staff. A prolonged hug could calm him more effectively than the tranquillisers he was too weak to take.

The third entry in the diary started with Nurse Jones visiting Mr Akers in the night. He had needed a bedpan. As usual she had held him to her breasts as she raised him from the bedpan. As she let go he collapsed in a heap. He was dead. His last act had been to ejaculate against her uniform. Nurse Jones looked down. His saliva shone on her right breast.

Horrified, she saw what she had done. Over careful to protect Mr Akers, she had pressed him too deeply against her breast and smothered him. At least he had died happy.

Nurse Jones had cleaned him up, emptied the bedpan, and then changed out of her soiled uniform into a clean one. She had put the dirty uniform with the others into the washing machine and, as usual, had set it going on the hottest wash. As the machine started she suddenly knew that all the evidence of her mistake was being washed away. The only trace of her error had been his saliva. That was gone.

Several pages of self-justification followed. The visiting doctor certified Mr Akers' death as cardiac arrest with subsidiary causes of the normal complications of extreme old age. His death was not unexpected. At his funeral his younger relations thanked Nurse Jones for her loving care. He had even left a small bequest to the Nursing Home. Nurse Jones' diary agonised over whether she should accept. She decided that it would arouse suspicions she couldn't answer if she refused.

At that point I became too tired to read. I hadn't read so much shorthand at a time for years. I wheeled myself over to the desk. I put the diary in my secure, combination locked drawer where I kept a book with all my passwords.

Putting the diary away I had displaced a long white envelope so that the drawer wouldn't shut. I picked the envelope up. There was some stiff paper inside. I pulled it out. It was a joint accident policy I had forgotten. It didn't pay out for injury, only for death. I wasn't dead. I looked through it carefully to see if there was any provision for temporary disablement. There wasn't. The death clause provided for payment if Clare or I died within a year and a day of an accident on public transport. If I was still alive on 1st November there would be no claim. I had no intention of dying in the next couple of weeks so I put the policy back into the envelope and under Nurse Jones' diary.

I locked the drawer, logged on to my computer and checked the progress of my sales on ebay. Those sales represented our only real income other than from the state and the eroding capital from the accident insurance. I had another message from that annoying person who wanted nursing associated items but NOT the uniforms I had. I was annoyed that a high bidder had withdrawn. I composed a stinging adverse feedback but didn't send it. Nurse Jones' diary was still at the front of my mind.

I searched the on-line archives of our local paper. A picture of Nurse Jones at a community event appeared on my screen. I copied it to a file and printed it. She had been a magnificently Rubenesque woman. I could imagine how easy it had been to smother Mr Akers accidentally against those large breasts. Her build reminded me Helen, who was still my most frequent non-family visitor.

Now I had seen a picture of Nurse Jones, I saw the resemblance. The head was very different. Nurse Jones wore an unusual medieval style headdress. When Helen dressed as a nurse she remained bareheaded. From the neck downward they could have been twins. When Helen held me against her breasts - I could have been held by Nurse Jones. Perhaps Helen wore one of Nurse Jones' old uniforms? That was an uncomfortable thought.

That night I went to bed early. I was tired from transcribing my impressions of Nurse Jones' diary into a Word document. Even the simplest things wore me out. Once I was in bed Clare confined me in that clinging overdress, shutting the zips to their fullest extent. Before tucking the bedclothes in she produced an office stapler. I didn't have one near my desk because my weakened hands couldn't operate it. I used large paperclips instead.

Click! Click! Clare stapled each zip just above the sliders. My hands and fingers were inside the overdress. If I could wriggle my fingers beyond its hem I still wouldn't be able to move the zip sliders past those staples.

"Don't worry, Guy," Clare said. "If you want me, just call. The intercom is on."

It was. It was an adaptation of a baby alarm. Any noise I made was picked up and transmitted to remote speakers in the living room or the bedroom I had shared with Clare. I couldn't hear her. She could hear me.

Clare tucked the bedclothes tightly around me before leaning over and kissing me. She raised the bars at the side of the bed.

"This evening Helen is dropping in. I might bring her in when I come to check on you. OK?"

I nodded. Helen knew me almost as well as Clare. She had seen me at my weakest and had done everything for me.

I was asleep in minutes. I was vaguely aware when Clare and Helen looked in. They both kissed me on the forehead.

That night I had a nightmare. I seemed to sense someone in the darkness of my room. I was Mr Akers, frail and weak, at the mercy of Nurse Jones. I was aroused by her presence, her perfume, her soft flesh cuddling me and yet aware of the threat she posed to my existence. Her cotton covered breasts loomed over me several times. Her strong arms lifted me until my face was buried between those breasts. I feebly struggled to breathe as her cleavage engulfed me. Time after time I was at the point of suffocation yet enjoying the sensation despite the overtone of menace. The next time could be my last breath in this world. The faint perfume from the heavy cotton was unfamiliar, certainly not anything I associated with Clare or Helen.

The nightmare was so real that I was thrashing about in the bed trying to escape from Nurse Jones' enfolding arms. Clare had imprisoned me so effectively that my strongest efforts were defeated. I lay there fascinated as the breasts lowered themselves again and again to smother me. I couldn't see the face wrapped in that white headdress. Was there a face? In the nightmare I lost consciousness under the breasts as I ran out of breath.

I woke up suddenly to find myself hugged against real breasts. These were Clare's breasts and no threat to me. They were wonderful, shapely, firm and proportionate to her build. I loved them even if by some people's standards they were on the small side of medium. Smothering me with them would be difficult if not impossible. Clare's familiar perfume wafted around me.