Everyone agreed she was a lovely creature to behold, and most did not resist an occasional temptation to glance discreetly at her elegant form whenever she was near.
“Mrs. Edward Reilly,” they whispered to one another. “Shame her husband passed away so early.” Hearing this, naive young men grasped eagerly at a faint hope beneath their facade of solemnity, erroneously believing that Ada Reilly was in some way a tangible hope to pursue. She was in her thirties at the most, and the set of her delicate shoulders expressed a weary but unmistakable air of hauteur. Ada seldom smiled after the death of her husband, and had instead adopted an expression of resigned detachment. Her clear gray eyes seemed to regard the world with forlorn apathy, as if long-dried tears had permanently formed a barrier between her soul and humanity.
“She’s still grieving, poor thing,” they explained to one another, sighing sorrowfully within their concealed conversations.
Six days a week, Ada Reilly would quietly arrive at St. John’s Hospital dressed in her usual plain blue nurse’s attire. She worked alongside her colleagues silently, but demonstrated an unwavering devotion to her patients that earned a tacit respect from both nurses and doctors alike.
“Her husband was sick,” they affirmed, shaking their heads sympathetically at her wordless compassion. “Very, very sick.”
Sometimes the nurses were understandably vicious towards Ada, their sympathy dampened by an indignant resentment that her frigid manner evoked. One perpetual source of gossip was Ada’s insistence on bringing a small orange cylindrical container of medicine wherever she went. As the nurses watched curiously from behind sheaths of medical forms, Ada would consistently disappear every hour to take her medication. The nurses could not reliably identify the contents of her orange container, as it was always grasped tightly in her hand.
“She’s hiding it,” they murmured to themselves.
“An embarrassing condition, perhaps?”
“The source of her beauty, most certainly.”
“How sad.” They laughed, half disdainfully and half enviously, with worn brown fingers arranged artfully over their mouths.
On Ada’s fortieth birthday, the mailman found her motionless in a rocking chair on her front porch, the life softly extinguished from her resting frame. Anyone who was curious enough to care regarded news of her death with intrigued sympathy.
“No children,” they mourned. “No family-nothing. Great big empty house all alone.”
Some added brightly, “Well, she’s with Edward now at least.”
“Good man, he was. And lovely wife.”
“God bless them.”
No one knew much about Ada Reilly, and most everyone wondered why she had passed so early.
“Sickness, perhaps? She did take medication quite often,” some recalled.
“Sick,” others agreed. “Like her late husband.”
Still they mused and muttered amongst themselves, generally arguing that while Edward Reilly was visibly ill and deteriorating, his wife seemed a perfectly healthy girl.
“Perhaps not perfectly healthy,” someone finally decided. “She never spoke.”
The doctors were undeniably mystified. They had known Ada Reilly to be a remarkably healthy woman who had shown no indication of waning vitality during her service in the hospital. She was, after all, only forty. After carefully scanning her body for signs of physical injury, the doctors at last opened her mouth. Upon examining Ada’s throat, they were horrified to discover that her throat was scarred and still raw, an obvious product of prolonged and constant lacerations.
“Something that she ate,” they reasoned, amazed. “Just what in the world was she eating?”
Grimly compelled to uncover the cause of Ada’s injuries, a team of doctors solemnly decided to prolong their investigations within her now deserted home. Eventually they stumbled into her small, musty bathroom and noticed a drawer beneath the sink labeled “Edward.” After a moment’s hesitation, the drawer was cautiously pulled open.
Inside the drawer was a scattered array of orange medication containers. Many of them were empty, but some contained just enough fingernail clippings to churn the stomach most violently as they were held up to the light.