dorthy: waiting

she waited to hear the tires screech as they tore around the corner. the siren had been caterwauling for blocks and they always seemed to stop right here. a complex they called it, but really a place of ultimate simplicity where the very sick and very old eat, defecate, live and die - often in the same stain resistant beige recliner.

still, every time it was a curiosity. dorthy turned her head, ready to look out the window and see the stretcher unfolding onto the sticky asphalt, ready to wonder idly about the young men who rushed off to roughly handle her slumped and moaning friends. except this time she couldn't move and instead of a window, she saw only the wall, its baseboard shimmery and impossible to distinguish from the blur of light.

she dimly remembered pressing the button - the panic button - that hung on a nylon cord around her neck, a constant reminder that even so simple a life-saving measure as getting to the phone was now beyond her reach. it was merely a spit second of regret that made her press the button. regret or fear.

she remembered now. kneeling on her bad knees, in front of the oven, trying to breathe in the gas, but unsure, behind her milky cataracts if she was even able to do this right. eventually, she'd given in to the pressure in her hips and struggled to her feet, carefully closing the oven door, lest she poison the entire building.
then there were the pills. pretty little blue tabs, she remembered, although it had been years since she could see them. now they were faint thumps against her palm when she flipped the M-T-W lids of her pill organizer, really the only thing that seemed to require organizing at all since she'd arrived at the complex.

today is sunday. she had seven days of compartmentalized medication ahead of her and she swallowed them all with a flat diet coke her granddaughter had left warming on the counter. on her way to her stain resistant recliner, she'd tripped a little, felt the scratchy rug under one shaky hand and decided to rest there instead. so long since she'd been stretched out this way...

it was pain management medication for creaking arthritis, a badly healed hip, a myriad of aches and pains doctors and family were able to worry about.

but she knew what no one ever tells you, what everyone hopes is "just them" and not the ugly reality of the entire human condition. pain is the only thing that keeps you aware rotting away in these homes, these guest bedrooms, these empty houses. it grounds you, allows you to have banal conversations about dinner specials and grandchildren who might be strangers save a string of stories and a timeline of school portraits. were it not for the pain, we would simply be numb, floating in memory, aging toward exhaustion with all things real in the world.

she pressed the button, calling the young uniformed men. waited for their rough hands.

Comments

[jen]

Yeah! Leigh! Great story. I always wonder what I'll be like in a Complex like this. I don't think my medicine is accepted there and that worries me. There's nothing better to cure what ails ya than a good ole fashioned . . .
Wouldn't our seniors be a little happier? Especially if they are confined -- they deserve it!