The Sandman

138

This is madness, Anders is thinking as he shuts the door behind him. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s gone in to see a patient and is now standing in her darkened room. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that it actually hurts.

He can just make out her figure in bed.

She’ll be sound asleep for hours yet, practically unconscious.

The door to the rest-room where My is sleeping is closed. There are two guards by the most distant security door. Everyone else is asleep.

He doesn’t actually know what he’s doing in Saga’s room, he can’t think ahead, all he knows is that he has to come in and look at her again, has to come up with an excuse that will let him feel her warm skin beneath his fingers.

It’s impossible to stop thinking of her perspiring breasts and the look of resignation she gave him when she tried to get away and her clothes pulled up.

He repeats to himself that he’s only making sure everything’s OK with a patient who’s just taken a sedative.

If anyone spots him, he can say he detected signs of sleep apnoea, and decided to go in and check, seeing as she’s so heavily medicated.

They’ll say it was an error of judgment not to wake My, but the intrusion itself will be regarded as justified.

He just wants to make sure everything’s OK.

Anders takes a couple of steps into the room, and suddenly finds himself thinking of fishing nets, lobster pots and fyke traps, large openings leading you on towards smaller ones, until eventually there’s no way back.

He swallows hard and tells himself he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s exceptionally conscientious about his patients’ welfare, that’s all.

He can’t stop thinking about the time he gave her the injection. The memory of her back and buttocks are like a great weight inside him.

He walks slowly over and looks at her in the darkness. He can see she’s lying on her side.

Carefully he sits down on the edge of the bed and folds the covers back from her legs and backside. He tries to listen to her breathing, but his own heartbeat is pounding too hard in his ears.

Her body is radiating warmth.

He strokes her thigh softly, a gesture that any doctor might make. His fingers reach her cotton underpants.

His hands are cold, they’re shaking and he’s far too nervous to be sexually excited.

It’s too dark for the camera in the ceiling to be able to register what he’s doing.

He lets his fingers slip cautiously over the underpants and in between her thighs, and feels the heat of her genitals.

Gently he presses a finger into the fabric, running it along the lips of her vagina.

He’d like to stroke her to orgasm, until her whole body is crying out for penetration, even though she’s asleep.

His eyes have got used to the darkness and now he can make out Saga’s smooth thighs and the perfect line of her hips.

He reminds himself that she is fast asleep, he knows that, and he pulls her underpants down without ceremony. She groans in her sleep, but is otherwise completely still.

Her body is shimmering in the darkness.

The blonde pubic hair, sensitive inner thighs, her flat stomach.

She’ll carry on sleeping, no matter what he does.

It makes no difference to her.

She won’t say no, she won’t shoot him a look that’s pleading with him to stop.

A wave of sexual excitement crashes over him, filling him, making him pant for breath. He can feel his penis swelling, straining against his clothes. He adjusts it with one hand.

He can hear his breathing – and the thud and roar of his heartbeat. He has to get inside her. His hands fumble with her knees, trying to part her thighs.

She rolls over, kicking gently in her sleep.

He slows down, leans over her, pushing his hands between her thighs and trying to spread them.

He can’t do it – it feels like she’s putting up resistance.

He rolls her over onto her stomach, but she slips to the floor, sits up and looks at him with wide eyes.

Anders hurries out of the room, telling himself that she wasn’t properly awake, she won’t remember anything, she’ll think she was only dreaming.