Author's note: This is my entry for Cornconic's Random Title writing contest. The category I chose was 'Hospitals'.
I came to my shift to find the other nurses and orderlies already engaged in conversation. The news is a certain patient is being transferred to a room five wards down, which comes as no surprise to anyone. He has been staying in a room in this ward to have his numerous injuries treated. The number and severity of his wounds have been the subject of hospital gossip ever since his arrival. The receptionists and nurses in the emergency room told us that when police paramedics brought him in, it was clear right away that he was in bad shape. Further examination painted a more and more horrifying picture. His face, weakly wincing from pain, bore numerous bruises and cuts, including two black eyes and split lips. Both eye sockets had suffered damage, with one of them being fractured, and his nose and jaw had both been broken. When a doctor examined the inside of the patient’s mouth to check if any teeth had been knocked out or loosened, he discovered puncture wounds on his tongue, seemingly from a large needle. Both his wrists bore abrasions. His right hand was relatively unharmed, with only some scratches and punctures. His left hand, however, was deep purple, almost black, due to bruising; the fingernails were also broken. This was apparently a result of the hand being forced through some kind of wringer or otherwise subjected to crushing and pressing. As if that weren’t enough, the fingers had also been dislocated and sliced at some point, and further examination indicated that the area underneath the fingernails had likewise been pierced with some kind of needle. His left arm bore stab wounds from some kind of blade, lashes from some kind of scourge, and burns from a cigar. His left shoulder had a design freshly carved into it. His right arm, again, had much less damage. His back and abdomen were both bruised, leading to concerns over possible damage to the spinal cord and the abdominal organs. Both legs were covered in the same type of wounds as the arms; his right knee had also been both broken and forced out of joint, apparently as a result of repeated blows from a hammer or a metal pipe. His feet had thoroughly burned, top and bottom, with a cigar as well, and this combined with the knee injury had left the patient temporarily unable to walk on his own power. Even longtime residents were taken aback by the extent of the patient’s injuries. One of the ER nurses told us the wounds must have been made out of sheer malice.
After his examinations and surgeries, he was questioned by the police. The patient had been missing for several days before calling for help. Using a notepad to communicate, he told the officers that he had been abducted and held captive by a certain business rival of his. The business rival wanted him to sign over the rights to a new project that was expected to be highly successful. This was why his right hand and arm had been mostly unharmed. When he repeatedly refused, the rival inflicted the numerous tortures and injuries. When the patient still refused, the rival angrily carved his business logo onto his shoulder before abandoning him. The patient was eventually able to escape his bonds and crawl to a phone. It was a shocking story, but the biggest shock was yet to come.
The patient was consistent describing the abuse he had experienced, but other details of his story changed. This began to make the police suspicious and they launched a more thorough investigation. This investigation eventually revealed that the tale about being captured and tortured by the business rival was a lie. While the patient actually had gone missing and actually suffered those terrible injuries, the truth was that every wound, every single one of them, had been self-inflicted. This was the real reason his right hand and arm had much less damage: he needed to have that hand and arm available to continue injuring himself. This whole ordeal had been a warped attempt to ruin his business rival by framing him for kidnapping, attempted extortion, assault, and battery. It’s no wonder, then, that he’s being moved five wards down to the ward for the psychiatric patients. I can only wonder if examination by the doctors there will reveal what happened to him, what filled him with so much hatred and bitterness, that he would harm himself that badly in order to attack someone.
Narration[]
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