In general, young Anson Johns had done a good job as a hospital orderly during the worst part of the prerevolutionary bad times. He cleaned up blood, vomit, feces and urine from floors. His rooms and hallway might not be spotless, but they were as clean as those that other boys were assigned. He delivered the linen when it was available and he moved patients to their rooms from OR, or emergency OR, or Intake; and he moved the dead ones to the morgue on the bottom basement floor. A few times, he helped recovered patients to the hospital door. But there weren't many recovered patients because the street people had to be just about dead to even qualify for admission.
"It could be worse", he often thought. He might have been assigned to cleanup in the morgue, or, even worse, he might have drawn the drug cart and have to fight off the entire hospital staff, from interns on down, who wanted illicit supplies to feed their respective habits or manias.
So the orderly's job wasn't half bad by comparison, plus it gave him a chance to observe those he admired most: the debonair young medical students.
Anson never questioned that he would be one of them some day. That he would be a doctor had already been decided by his wealthy mother, and Anson, like thousands of her employees and other people, never questioned her.
The best part of the job he had discovered only recently. "Jane Doe" was her name, or rather it was her label, just as it denominated every other female street person who came to County in such a shape that no other name could be divined. She was a pale young thing, who, Anson could tell beneath her scratches and bruises and smudges, would have been a radiant angel had she not been awarded at birth, or dealt later, a brain that only worked on involuntary functions. She was motionless except for an occasional blink and a constant sucking of her thumb.
Jane doe lay with her eyes open and her body catatonically rigid while Anson, with every moment he could sneak away from his duties, wiped away her dirt and grime, removed her wastes, fussed over her and tried to make her comfortable. For which, in his young imagination, she would someday be deeply grateful, when the sleeping princess woke.
One fact that fed his fantasy was Jane Doe's assignment to one of the few private rooms. If she weren't a person of some import, he reasoned, she'd be out in the auditoriums with rows of others. Her room assignment also gave Anson hope that Jane Doe would receive the care she needed to survive while most others died.
He was wrong about the room assignment, as he found out when, carried away with his fantasy, he stayed quite late one evening.
He had finished brushing her hair, fluffing her pillow, and killing every bug within three feet of her body; then he sat quietly on the edge of her bed, just to watch her breath.
When he heard people at the door, he realized that he was about to be caught in his reveries -- he quickly scooted beneath the bed, more afraid of being teased than fired.
Into the room swept ten black polished shoes and the hems of 10 quality trouser legs. From their light step and the gay banter that filled the room, Anson realized that his cherished patient was about to receive the attentions of five of the young doctors-in-training. He lay still and listened.
One gleeful, mocking voice spoke above the others: "Now my dear young Saviors of Humanity, you see before you the unusual bonus of which we have been speaking. Someone has cleaned her up and I think I can promise you this is better than I had thought.
'As I remove this grimy sheet you see before you a live, homo sapiens, gender female, aged about fourteen. Legs, as you can see, rigidly shut together, as for that matter rigid is the rest of her body, in a state known as catatonia. Try to separate those knees there -- you see, you can't. I tried. In fact, I thought of bringing up the jack from my automobile to separate those knees, but given her general solid-state, one- piece construction, I don't think it would be worth my time.
'You can, however, as I now demonstrate, remove her hand from her mouth. But, as you can see, when released, that thumb goes right back into that wet hole, her mouth.
'It was this one talent of this Miss, or Mrs., Doe that gave me the idea for the therapy that, while it won't help Miss Doe, will work out just fine for us humanity saviors."
Anson was startled when the nearest pair of trousers dropped softly around the shoes. Then one shoe ascended out of view, then the other. The bed over Anson's head sagged with new weight and motion. The exposition continued:
"Now if one removes the patient's hand and pins it over here, like so, and I substitute for the patient's thumb my golden pud, like so, then the patient, as you can see, continues her sucking and everybody, doctor and patient, feels-just-fine!
The oration stopped except for the man's animal grunts. The hospital bed finally stopped shaking, then the shoes resumed the floor; Anson saw a single hand raising the trousers back over the man’s legs.
"And now," the voice continued breathlessly, "I invite you, my colleagues, to a new plateau of bedside manner, and horny doctor therapy." His voice rose to a flourishing finish, "Fellow physicians, heal thyselves!"
Anson lay on the cold floor in shock and horror as each of the young students, amid much playful teasing, mounted the bed and sodomized the helpless girl.
When at last they were gone, they left behind a young man who, until that moment, had seen little of life and had formed no resolve for his role in it.
Anson wept as he cleaned the jism from Jane Doe's face. For her part, she went on sucking her thumb and staring ahead blankly. For a moment, he imagined a tear in her eye, but realized on looking closer that she showed no reaction to the ordeal at all. Anson sobbed his desperation to overcome these brutish future practitioners of medicine, to heal this victimized Princess, to be a better person than he had been before and better than those he had formerly idolized.
His tears wet her checks as he kissed her gently.