“Hey!” the woman in the room said. “What the hell is that woman doing?”
“She was stuck,” Gabriel explained. “She was roaming the hallway, and her wheelchair got stuck, okay? Just relax. She’s having a terrible day.”
“Sam, don’t you dare tell her all that personal information about me!” Edna said, glaring at him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop flapping your lips like a peacock!”
Gabriel sighed. One could never win, not with her. Everything was always terrible.
She reached for his hand again. “Give me a ride. Please?”
A ride. That was all she wanted. Edna’s body was nearly immobile, forever trapped in a chair she could barely control. Her legs jutted out, and her Parkinson’s only worsened the problem, since she was always shaking. Every time she ate, bits of food got all over her nice clothes.
Gabriel said, “Tell you what. Would you be interested in some tea?”
“Yes. And let’s go to the lobby. We can see the fish. I like them.”
Gabriel hooked his cane between his thumb and forefinger and pushed Edna’s wheelchair down the hall, using it like a walker. As they passed the nurses’ station, Harry Brenton looked up from his paperwork and grinned. He offered Gabriel a friendly wave, which Gabriel returned.
“Hey, Edna,” Harry said. “You want me to get your bed ready for when you get back?” Harry spoke carefully, as Edna was notoriously finicky about when her bed was to be pulled down, where her dirty bedding was to be placed, how it was folded, and exactly which of her three bins her laundry went into. Gabriel had heard many stories of her scratching, spitting, and harsh insults that had caused even the toughest LNAs to leave the room in tears.
“Yes. Please do. But do it right,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “Make sure all the blankets are folded just perfectly, nice and neat.”
“Sure thing, ma’am. Tell you what, I’ll even put new sheets and blankets on the bed,” Harry replied. “What do you want me to do with the old blankets? Should I put them in the laundry bin by the door, as usual? Or do you want me to put them in the red bin in the closet, as you had me do last time?”
Edna’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to eat them. You’re going to put peanut butter on those blankets, and you’re going to eat ’em.”
“What—”
“Yes, put ’em in the laundry bin by the door, you dummy.” Edna scowled. “What do you think I want you to do with ’em? Now get outta my way. Me and Sam here are gonna have a nice cup of tea.”
Harry’s face turned bright red. He looked at Gabriel, and Gabriel looked back at him. Both of them grinned at each other knowingly.
Gabriel winked. “See you later, Harry.”
Gabriel wheeled Edna to the lobby. He heated a cup of lemon-flavored herbal tea for her, and by the time they sat down in front of the fish tank, the sky had fully darkened. The overhead lights were dimmed, and the tank was glowing blue. The jazz music from the overhead speakers lent a nice, calming influence over the entire lobby, but it also made Gabriel sleepy. After all the scrubbing, sanitizing, and air ventilation the staff had done, it was almost hard to remember that the first incident with John Morris had happened there.
Gabriel held the cup for Edna, and she sipped tea through a straw. At first, she tried to hold the cup herself, even calling him a terrible person for trying to hold it for her. But after she’d shakily splattered hot tea all over the place, she allowed him to help her.
Watching Edna weakly sip through the straw, Gabriel actually felt young. His body was weak and his mind demented, but he wasn’t like her. Not yet. He could still hold a cup.
She pushed the straw away with her tongue. As she stared at the luminescent blue water, her features softened, and her shaking subsided a bit. “I remember going to school up in… up in Kennebunk, you know.” She sighed. “Those were the good old days. Oh gosh. I wish I could go back to them.”
A hint of sadness entered her expression, but Gabriel recognized the same crackling spark that he felt whenever he remembered the first time his father took him out on the sailboat, his days on the ocean with Yvonne, the summers when Melanie would come to visit, or his old talks with Father Gareth. That spark stood on the border between sadness and warm nostalgia.
“I met my husband back there,” Edna murmured. “All the way back when we were children. Yeah, he was a really good man. He was a policeman, you know.”
“What was his name?”
“Mark. I miss him so much. He was such a good man, such a… a…” She stopped and looked at Gabriel as if blaming him for her lack of coherence. Then she relaxed again. “Thank you for the tea. It was really nice of you.”
Gabriel smiled. “You’re welcome.” He hoped he’d helped ease her pain, just as she’d helped ease his, if only by her stubborn tenacity in the face of incapacitating illness. Talking to her, he felt renewed motivation. He would find a solution for the virus.
“I love you, Sam,” Edna said. “As a friend, I mean. Not a boyfriend. Too old for that gibberish.”
Gabriel had learned to approach emotional conversations with a common rule: what would Father Gareth have done? With that in mind, his answer became obvious. “I love you too, Edna.”
“Good. It’s nice… to have a friend.”
Gabriel imagined what it was like to be her. He probably would be her soon enough. Her body was a lump of shaking flesh trapped in a wheelchair. She could only eat pureed foods, and she didn’t know what day of the week it was. She was unable to think clearly or to carry on a conversation without getting disoriented. But she still felt pain, anger, and stark, naked loneliness on a level that few could even imagine.
By the morning, she would probably have forgotten all about their chat. At the moment, Gabriel was Sam, but the next time they spoke, he would have a different name. She wouldn’t remember the man who had shown her kindness, and she would be back in the same forlorn state. The cycle would repeat until the day she died. And despite all the newfound hope his efforts against the virus had brought him, Gabriel grimly considered that death was the only escape. Death was the reward. That was perhaps the greatest punishment of all and the evilest mockery.
Edna offered him a shaky hand. “Feel this.” The back of it was covered in tiny bumps, scars, and liver spots. “Feel how rough it is, Sam?”
He ran his fingers over her hand. Her skin felt gritty, reminiscent of sandpaper. If one were to rip a Band-Aid off her too quickly, it might take all of her skin with it. “Yes,” Gabriel replied.
“That roughness, you feel it? Sam, that ain’t going away. It’s never gonna get any better.”
Despite his best attempts at stoicism, a heart-wrenching sadness welled up in his chest. He felt his own skin and realized it was almost as rough as Edna’s. “I know how you feel.”
Edna stared blankly at him for a moment. Then, she pointed down at her wheelchair with a dismissive gesture. “You know what, though? Someday, I’m gonna get out of this damn thing. You know that?” Her eyes lit up with an excitement Gabriel had never seen from her before.
He looked at her distorted, shaking body and at her legs jutting out. “But that’s…” He bit his lip. “You can’t… I mean…”
“Yeah, nobody believes me, but just you watch. Someday, when they least expect it, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it, oh I’m gonna do it, and nobody is gonna stop me. No, sir. I’ll surprise ’em all.”
She let out a feeble laugh. He’d never heard her laugh, but it was a wonderful sound, full of joy, wisdom, and life. Tears welled up in his eyes. He wanted to look away from her, fearful that his pessimism might suck away her optimism like a leech. But he held her gaze, staring right into her eyes, for her, his friend, his ninety-seven-year-old demented friend.
Edna’s face glowed. As another joyful giggle tumbled from her lips, she clasped Gabriel’s hand. “Just you watch, Sam. Someday, I’m gonna walk again. I’m gonna just stand up and walk right out of this place. Just you watch. And when I do it, when I finally do it, I’m gonna laugh in all their faces the whole time.”
