Annie clutched her teddy to her chest tightly and felt every conceivable option she could have had in her life melt into a single inescapable necessity. Standing there focused with all her attention on the pristine Nurses' uniform hung on the handle of her mother's wardrobe with such austere purity Annie made a decision. A contract, an unbreakable pact, a statement of intent with herself known to no one and it would remain that way until the attainment of her station and all its relevant trappings. It wasn't the first time this had happened, the standing and the staring that is, in fact it was becoming a daily occurrence. Whenever her mother took the bright new uniform out of the wardrobe before packing it into a bag and heading off to work for the night sure enough it would not be a long time hanging in wait before Annie would find herself in her mother's room looking up in wonderment at the uniform just out of her reach. She wasn't quite sure what it was in the deliberate, precise, starched creasing, the garish white of the fabric or just the sheer blandness of the garment in general but whatever it was it had progressively transfixed her in a way she had never, in all her four years in the world, experienced before. From it's lofty perch the dress looked down on her and as it did so it became more than just a uniform, it was a symbol like the way a suit of armour made a knight so did this outfit made her mother into something more than just a parent, just another woman in another flat in an overcrowded city. It's regularity of design from buttoned up collar to flared hem bereft of tags or adornments gave no quarter nor asked for any from whoever might happen to see it, it was what it was and made no apologies for it. This was more than cotton and stitching, this was a vocation, this was something you stepped into rather than put on and with it came all the baggage of tradition, propriety and maternalism of the role built in. Of course Annie could not articulate all this, at best all she could manage something of a reverend hush, an acknowledgement of the garment's function and meaning. All this was lost on her mother though, who sat beside the wardrobe at her dressing table in her lace and nylon applying makeup and seemingly ignoring the presence of her young daughter and her furry pedagogus. So focused in fact that when Annie spoke it made her hand slip and send a stray slash of red lipgloss up her cheek.

"Mommy what do nurses do that doctors can't?" Annie asked. Annie's mother paused for a second to wipe off the errant slash of crimson on her face then replied and reapplied all at the same time.

"It's the other way around honey, nurses only help the doctors and the patients to get better," she said without looking away from her harshly lit mirror. She reached for a tissue and repeated the side-to-side motion of the small, reddened brush along her upper lip.

"Well what do doctors do that nurses can't?" said Annie shifting on her heel as she spoke, clutching to her well-worn teddy for support.

"Well doctors can do operations on people to make them better."

"What's an op-er-a-shun?" said Annie, her brow furrowing with the effort of such a long and new word.

"That's when they open you up and take out whatever bad things have made you sick," replied her Mother, indifferent to her daughter's obvious shudder at the thought of such a messy and violent thing. Instead she turned her attention to applying a tasteful amount of rouge to her cheeks with a small red puff from one of the many decorative tin boxes that lined the table. It gave her pale face a pointed, bruised look, which accentuated her hard, angular features. She smiled into the mirror to check for gloss on her teeth, a smile that exposed no laughter lines or wrinkles about the face at all.

"That's ick. Does it hurt much Mommy, when they do that? Cut you open? Do people scream because it hurts so bad?" said Annie, obviously concerned that making people better could be so brutal, messy and unladylike.

"No no no. They put you asleep whenever they do that so you don't feel a thing. You sleep all the way through and have nice dreams instead," said Annie's mother turning to look at her inquisitive child.

"Could you wake up when they open you up, like in a bad dream when you wake up real quick?"

"No dear that doesn't happen."

"But if you did, would it hurt?" said the child shifting awkwardly on the spot, squirming at the thought of such a thing ever happening.

"Well…yes I suppose it would but that never happens so don't think about it."

"Don't you bleed when they open you?" said Annie, determined to get the full facts.

"No little one you don't".

"Why not?"

"Because you can't bleed when you sleep honey that's why."

"Oh. I still think nurses are better. They don't hurt people like that do they?"

"No honey they don't do that, they only help."

"I like that, helping, I like that. I could help, like you," said Annie finally, and after that briefest of conversations she decided that nursing was indeed the only option for her. Just like her mother who always looked after people with her pristine white uniform with the slit up one side and her perfectly kept makeup and pretty underthings. Annie's decision became complete and unswayable. She decreed she would be a nurse… just like her mother before her.

While ideas, fads and fashions are quick to enter the mind of any child and even quicker to leave when something newer and more exciting arrives on the horizon this was not so with Annie and her nursing ambition. Every day began and ended with a simple statement of intent from her that one day she too would wear the simple white uniform and help all those who needed to get better. To remind herself of this she used many techniques: She used Prayer. Annie's constant calling to God to hear her call and guide her easily into the position she most deserved and wished for in life. Not one day would go by without either an invocation to the Virgin Mary, a prayer to the devotional statue of the child of Prague (pronounced Pray-ge) above her bed or even better to Saint Jude whom her mother seemed to be a big believer in and prayed to almost on a daily basis. Annie used self-reinforcement, which at her young age amounted to little more than recurring chants of her mission statement during empty moments in her bed or when she was sure no one was watching ("I will be, I will do it, I will be good and work hard" and so on, she would say with squinted eyes and clenched fists). Lastly Annie developed a fanatical devotion to all manner of daytime medical drama wherever she could find it, memorising any and all jargon she came across and pointing out which patients were most likely to die next as a result of another surgical error thanks to some random infidelity or addiction on the part of he surgeon.

All this was fine in and of itself for an adult but the preferred medium of the child is not rooted in the mental but rather in the kinetic, more specifically in the worlds of play the child constructs for itself and Annie eventually found this to be the most rewarding of all her motivational methods.

Annie introduced her ambition to her internal world by taking a favoured doll; a soft, hollow plastic thing called Tiffany with big wide happy eyes and chipped lips and fashioned for it a small nurses' uniform made from scraps of white cloth by stapling them together to form a tabard of sorts which she marked with a large, clumsily drawn red cross.

It was small, measuring no more then ten inches in height and delicate in the way that well-used plastic toys and their synthetic garb can be but to Annie it became her all. This toy, this fledgling example of nurturing and purity soon came to have an equally notable effect on all the toys in Annie's room. Nurse Tiffany (as she was re-christened) had an instant effect on all the other toys in Annie's possession who as it turned out, all apparently were suffering from longstanding untreated ailments. A clinic was immediately set up and Tiffany began to triage her charges and treating them as necessity demanded. Each visit was a tender and understanding affair with a consoling, semi-posable hand on the shoulder of ill teddies and worried mannequins who, as misfortune would have it, would find themselves reporting all manner of undefined upset stomachs or unnameable viruses.

Tiffany would regularly dispense kind, supporting words to the ill and occasionally dispense medications on behalf of the great booming disembodied voice of the cruel doctor (supplied by Annie in her more guttaral moments). Should that fail then that same sepulchral voice from the depths of Annie's larynx would be left with no other option but to threaten surgery if the chemical approach did not work. Naturally enough such a warning served to purge any illness from even the most poorly of Tiffany's patients. It showed that even the hollow and the imaginary can demonstrate some form of hypochondriasis.

Needless to say there was little reference to operations or any other form of violence amongst the toys as they all seemed pleased with their progress under the ever-watchful, jewelled eyes of Nurse Tiffany and her shapely form hidden under her layers of tissue and cotton, marked out from all the others with tabard and hat. So impressed with Tiffany's progress was Annie that the little nurse began to face problems of a greater and greater complexity than the conventional medical issues that affected every family. Having seen enough television to know what people look and feel like when their bodies were wont to bleed and drip Annie took to simulating such traumatic corporeal insults thanks in the main to a red felt pen, which began to mark the exposed innards of every doll in Annie's collection. Tiffany therefore expanded herself and became a healer of all manner of soft tissue injuries and bleedings as required. She carefully used unctions and ointments of every description (notably a most potent mix of neat disinfectant and icing sugar) to sanitise each wound and applied bandages of ripped cotton and plasters fit for giants when compared to the patients they were used on. These massive plasters stuck to fur and hair leaving massive bald patches on everything they were put on and when the marker ran out Annie became so confident in the abilities of her little nurse Tiffany that she took to these same toys with an odd savagery, as big a challenging as she felt any nurse would every have to face.

Thus armed with a conventional pair of well-worn household scissors Annie raised the bar for her little Nurse once again by creating a range of amputations for her nurse to deal with. Dislocations as well as full and partial loss of limbs, hands, feet and even once a head were made realistic by ketchup or purees of various descriptions began to make an appearance amongst Annie's collection of toys (for there was more than just bleeding to think about when it came to excretia) yet even these atrocities were no match for the healing skills of the nurse doll and her meccano wheelchair. Thanks to the lifesaving efforts of the nurse doll there were never any fatalities amongst the toy community in Annie's world. It seemed there was no limit to the miraculous healing one could achieve with sellotape, plaster, pins and staples when coupled with a smiling demeanour and a plastic expression. However Annie's bedroom began to look more and more like a Victorian hospital and less and less like the rest place of an infant girl obsessed with nothing but the well-being of others. It was indeed an odd way for such a small girl to live and it did not go unnoticed but any interest in the continuing health of others was seen as a virtue by Annie's Mother and nothing was said to discourage Annie, it seemed the perfect simulation of her intended future life. Often her mother would look in on Annie playing, her clothes reddened and dripping. "You must really like that uniform," she grinned and Annie would smile back broadly and say that she was going to be a nurse one day too. Sometimes they would even play together with the dolls and make up things to be wrong with them, mentritus of the liver, headachiness of the backbrain, bad curriness of the stomach to name but a few, all were noted, treated and added to Tiffany's repertoire of disorders.

It made Annie feel closer and closer to her mother as they shared a profession in common and it was obviously something that was reciprocated. Annie knew her mother was every bit as passionate about nursing as she was herself as in quieter moments during the night Annie would creep out of bed and wander quietly into other bedroom to find her mother in the white uniform with her makeup and thin legs dancing to some imaginary music and spreading herself out on the floor, twisting and turning as graceful as anything in Heaven and Earth. How she danced and glided and moved so fluidly without melody ot act as a guide, beautiful, frivolous and free in front of her mirror with only her own glance to judge her. Annie knew what that felt like, how good it felt to play on her own. She thought that nurses must all have the most extraordinary lives in the way they danced and wore makeup and looked after people so very well.

As with most obsessions emulation and play alone eventually became insufficient to keep Annie happy. No matter how many mannerisms Annie endowed her doll with, no matter what type of mock injuries Tiffany treated with her messianic ability to heal without the surgeons scalpel, no matter how many toys were dismembered in the name of ambition nothing came as close as what Annie wanted for herself: to wear the uniform. Sure the doll had one itself but what good was that to Annie when a real "live" uniform could be found only next door to her room. Of course it was sacrosanct and it was not her own but the longer she played the more it dawned on Annie that she could never be really happy until she tried it on for herself. Annie had to feel the robe on her skin, share in the responsibility her mother felt all the time, to cement the commonality between mother and daughter and let its overbearing size be damned. She didn't care if it reached the ground when she would put it on or that the sleeves would fall to her wrists, it was the principle of the thing. To wear the cloth was to know the person beneath it and Annie needed more and more to know as much as she could.

She mulled over it for days, trying to find the right time to ask but the right time never seemed to arrive. Annie dared not simply blurt out her wish, could not, how could she? This was more important to her than anything in the world and she assumed it would be the same for her mother who always took such care with her clothes and makeup and was always in transit from one place to the next leaving Annie with nameless girls to poke and prod her and plat her long hair endlessly and bribe her with sweets if she was good enough to go to bed early and get out of their hair. But any thought put into the matter only increased Annie's curiosity until it reached a critical mass, a point of no return. Annie awoke one night to the sound of creaking in her mother's room she felt this would be her only moment to put on the uniform, to feel it on her. Ignoring the clock and the lateness of the hour she slinked out of the bed and, taking her permanently concussed teddy with her for moral support she opened her bedroom door and tiptoed ever so quietly across the hall to the open door of her mother's room and the source of the creaking accompanied by the sounds of soft weeping. Annie knew straight away what to look for but when she entered the room the uniform was not carefully hung up where it normally was. Annie looked around the room and found the uniform on her mother's lap where she sat at the end of her bed in her underwear sobbing and rocking gently backwards and forwards. The white cloth of the uniform ripped to shreds, the buttons missing, it's shape reduced to a torn and frayed piece of cheap linen, like some discarded potato sack. "They ruined it," she sobbed. Annie stared at the mess of cotton and frayed ends that hung so limply across her mother's legs then climbed up on the bed and sat on her mother's lap and clutched her tightly.

And then they both cried.

There was no new nurses' uniform after that. There was no replacement for the object of Annie's affections and with that loss so too came a loss of interest in Tiffany and all the other trappings of Annie's ambition. After all what was the point in torturing one's self with the unattainable?

As time went on the nurse doll and its powers were forgotten and many other different uniforms came to hang on the knobs of various wardrobes, a maid, a policewoman and a teachers' cape before settling on the nondescript suit of a secretary but nothing had the same appeal, the same effect on either of them as that nurse's uniform. Something about it had captured Annie's imagination and that of her mother at the same time, a kind of commonality between the two of them that went beyond the conventions of feeling and language. It was a common obsession they shared, they loved the role between them, they shared it, they understood it.

As the years went on Annie and her mother moved about, found new places to live and new means to support themselves but the longer they lived together the more distant they became with each other despite their uncanny similarities in terms of appearance and mannerisms. They still shared each other's company and discussed everything they faced in as supportive and diplomatic manner as history would allow but nothing could hide the shroud of sterility that clothed their daily interactions. The longer they stayed around each other the more a strange tolerance developed between them, exposing an absence they both felt and knew could not be removed.

With every new town people would take time to note the arrival of a pretty woman and her well behaved daughter then shudder as they would agree that there was something lacking between them, a warmth maybe that a sense of family brings replaced by a sense of latent conflict between generations. The only thing anyone could find instead was a kind of stillness between parent and child, a coldness to their attachment that sent shivers down the spine and made eyes stare in discreet fascination.

People assumed that mother and daughter must have been subject to some great accident or incident in their lives what with there being no father around to look after them. They took the time to rationalise between themselves that it must have been some manner of grief that visited them some time ago, something so horrid that it could not be overcome by either time or the immutability of maternal affection. For how else could it be that a mother and daughter be so close and at the same time so very distant from each other.

^