Several nights later Beulah was sitting in her cubicle.
It was just after midnight. She had completed her rounds of the aged care ward of the Fort Sumter Hospital. After the recent passing of one of the patients there were now ten men under her care.
The youngest was in his fifties but he had lost a leg in the last war. The oldest was in his seventies. There was one bed ridden patient, the rest were able to move around the ward and the adjacent recreation room without her assistance.
There were twenty beds in the ward so every patient had an empty bed next to his own. Each bed had a curtain that could be drawn around the bed to create some privacy for the occupant.
In some ways Beulah had more freedom here than when she was assigned to a private home. The patients actually spoke to her, wanted to know something about her. In a way the patients were prisoners here too. Most of them knew that they would live out their lives in this building. Beulah was kept here by the electronic obedience devices that were permanently attached to her body.
There was a necklace linked to the communication buttons at the bedside tables in the ward. If a patient required assistance he pressed the red button and Beulah received a small dose of pain. When she attended the patient she hit the red button again and the pain stopped. It wasn't severe, about the intensity of a flea bite but it was constant until she hit the button. It was also cumulative. If two or three patients hit the button at the same time the pain increased proportionally.
Beulah also wore a pain bracelet on her ankle. This was controlled by the Matron and could inflict pain by degrees. The minimum was the equivalent of a mosquito bite; the maximum was agony so intense that it was lethal. Beulah instantly obeyed every whim of the Matron.
Beulah sat in her chair. She was watching a news programme on the Hospital information channel. A new statue had been unveiled somewhere in the national capital. It was a spring in Atlanta. The President made a speech about the battle of Gettysburg, how the defeat of the Union Oppressors had guaranteed the way of life that we all took for granted.
Beulah was thinking about the colour of the trees when she felt the familiar pain around her neck. She jumped up and headed onto the ward. She looked for the red light and went to bed number six. She tapped the red button and the pain stopped.
She looked at the face of her patient. He was in his early sixties. He was overweight. He was balding and needed a shave. His cheeks were red and blotchy thanks to years of alcohol abuse. He smiled at Beulah. The few teeth that he had left were rotten. He smelt like an ashtray. His name was Bobby. Beulah stood there, waiting for instructions.
Bobby shifted his obese body so that he was on his side, facing her. He pulled the sheet up. Beulah saw that he was naked. She looked at his hairy chest and bloated stomach. He was so fat that his pectorals were like big floppy breasts. Bobby cupped one of his hairy pectorals. He looked at her and said "Suck this, bitch".
