Mariamme
By Len Hazell

Nurse Le Clare, was chief night nurse at "L'asile de Sainte Jeanne pour les aliénés incurables". She was not pleasant company.
She lumbered down the corridor pushing the drugs trolley and jokingly pointed out the “monstres et bizarreries” in each room to sixteen year old, trainee carer Martha Dee.
Nurse Le Clare took an inappropriate sadistic glee in mocking the patients, which confused Martha.
“Next up, a real treat,” the big nurse rumbled.
She hammered loudly with her meaty fist on a room door marked 8-15 and then without waiting thrust the door open.
“Medi-time.” She bellowed.
The room was sparse and empty, a bed, a locker and a chair in which sat a girl.
She wore a navy blue dress and a matching shawl, drawn tightly over her head, clutched tightly in one hand at the neck.
Nurse Le Clare began sorting pills in to a small paper cup.
“Mariamme,” she bellowed. “This is Martha, who’ll be taking over the night shift, say Bon Soir.”
The girl ignored them and continued to stare out of the window.
“Never says a word,” said Nurse Le Clare preparing a small paper cup of water. “Been here as long as I have, probably longer, no one’s sure when she first came here. Are they you silly dumb chienne?”
She viciously pinched Mariamme by the nose and tilted her head back, forcing open her mouth so she could pour in the pills and water.
Mariamme coughed and choked for a moment and then settled back down.
“She looks no more than a child,” whispered Martha.
“She’s always looked like that apparently,” Nurse Le Clare sneered. “Lucky bitch never seems to age. Some syndrome or other.” She patted the patient just a little too hard on the cheek and lifted her face.
True the girl did look young, but something about her suggested great age and experience, perhaps it was the eyes.
“Moreover, there is no point in whispering,“ the nurse chuckled as she let Mariamme go. “She barely knows we’re here, Do you, you daft old putain? Her mind is so broken it’s shattered. Doesn’t speak French anyway. According to the boss, she does talk, but when she talks, it’s in some dead language called Middle Aramaic. He says that there is only this one little village in Syria that still talks it. Apparently someone contacted them about her but they don’t know who she is any more than we do.”
“So what happened to her?”
“Who knows, who cares,” The larger woman began preparing to leave, but then thought better of it.
“Hey,” she asked. “You want to see something really foutu?”
Nurse Le Clare crossed to the window, a huge grin spreading over her face. “When I tell you, start turning the lights on and off about once a second.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Nurse Le Clare opened the window and Martha heard Mariamme mewl.
“Don’t like the window open do you toots?” Nurse Le Clare signaled Martha to start flashing the lights, at the same time she began to waft the curtains.
Mariamme began to tremble violently, her eyes darted about, she chewed on her knuckles and strange tremulous words whimpered forth from her.
“Now watch this,” Nurse Le Clare ordered as she thumped heavily three times on the wall.
Mariamme, terror stricken, screamed “Oh Eloi, Eloi,” and fell to her knees clawing at her clothes.
Martha panicked put the lights back on, as Nurse Le Clare lifted the girl back in to her chair and settled her again, laughing all the time.
“If we’d kept on she would have stripped completely naked. Told you, she’s broken this one, and God only knows what l'a foutu.”
“That was cruel,” snapped Martha crossing to the girl.
Nurse Le Clare was already wheeling the trolley out of the room.
“Allez,” she ordered. “We’ve fifty other, sad sacks to stupefy avant le café.”
Suddenly, Mariamme’s hand darted out and caught Martha by the sleeve. Her face was a picture of struggle and concentration for a moment and then she spoke in fractured but recognisable modern French.
“Mon fils, est-il revenu pour moi encore?”
Martha released herself and patted the girl on the hand.
“I’ll tell you when he does,” she said sympathetically and departed, carefully locking the door behind her.