Adam screams.
There’s blood. There’s actual blood where Victoria’s fingernails break through the skin of his face. He swears at her, tosses the syringe on the bed, and runs out of the room, clutching the side of his face. Victoria watches him, a satisfied look on her face.
“I better go check on him,” I mumble.
It turns out she didn’t get his eye, so he should count himself lucky. When I get to the bathroom, he’s got a wet cloth on the right side of his face. There’s blood soaking through it.
“What the hell was that?” Adam barks at me. “I thought you were clipping her nails.”
“I did,” I lie.
“Not enough.” He pulls the wet cloth off the side of his face and I see three bright red scratch marks across his cheek, oozing blood. “Jesus Christ. I look like I got mauled by a tiger.”
“Listen,” I say, “why don’t you let me give her the medications from now on? She won’t fight me like she does you.”
Even though those scratches on his face look very painful, he hesitates. “You can crush the medications and put them in the syringe,” I say.
“I’ll just inject it. I think she would prefer that.”
He puts a fresh piece of toilet paper on his wounds and winces. “All right. Fine. But just… be careful. I don’t want this to happen to you.”
It won’t. That’s one thing I’m sure of.
I go back to Victoria’s bedroom. She’s sitting calmly in her wheelchair, watching me. I go over and pick up the syringe from the bed. I shake it, and I can see white particles running around the fluid. Her medications, ground up.
“You don’t want to take this, do you?” I say.
Victoria shakes her head, her eyes never leaving my face.
I open up the window next to her chair. An ice-cold breeze shoots into the room. I hold the syringe out the window and press the plunger until the contents are dispensed to the ground below. Then I close the window again.
“Okay?” I say.
For the first time since I started working here, she smiles.
