The 1st Short Story I sold 4 years ago...and I'm still proud of it today!
Four
years ago, I sold this short story to Every Day Fiction
- a wonderful ezine that published flash fiction every day. My story was one of
the top 100 that year and published in their yearly anthology book. I thought
about that story the other day and realizing enough time has passed and right
have again reverted to me...I wanted to share it with you...
Why Not Me?
I want to see them too. I am so desperate to see the
dead that surround us and welcome us home. My patients can see them, so why not
me? As a hospice nurse, I have the privilege and desire to ask the dying a
hospice-sanctioned question. A question that most other nurses ignore or skirt.
“Who else is with us in the room right now?”
Only once did I get a firm, “No one!” from a stern
and resolute Polish lady with a frail body and deeply wrinkled face. She was
not looking forward to her looming reunion with her demented, despicable, dead
husband. She never admitted there were other people in the room with us, and
her face in death mimicked her face in life; she died wearing a scowl.
You must be thinking, people who die in hospice are
loved and cared for and must have an abundance of loving family around them.
Yeah, I suppose, but I see a different side of the end of life. My patients are
generally at the end of some very full lives because my agency thrives on the
Medicare population. It’s accurate to say I have no idea what happens to the
gang-banger gunned down in the alley alone. Is he comforted by those that have
gone before him? It’s difficult to say.
So I continue to go about my business of death and
dying. On Tuesdays and Thursdays for the last year, I have visited Milly at ten
o’clock a.m. I love Milly. She is tough, funny, and perfectly accepting of her
impending demise. Her long, thin grey strands of hair that were smoothed back
when I first met her are now unattended and forgotten. Her smile is still her
greatest gift to me when she remembers to put in her dentures. She knows I
don’t come to visit her with hope to save her life, just to make her end
comfortable. On good days, we converse about her past and she asks questions
about me. On bad days, she stares vacantly to my side or in any other direction
than my eyes.
Boilerplate question to Milly, “Are we alone today?”
“No,” she smiles. “My Nana is here. She is sitting
at the end of the bed.” Milly opens and closes her hand. “Nana is giving me dimes
to put in the church offering. She does that every Sunday, reminding me to give
even when you don’t have. Her hands are so wrinkled and warm. I love you,
Nana.”
I want desperately to believe that her vision is
real — that her Nana is sitting with her, comforting her — but my scientific
mind tells me otherwise.
Milly’s pulse is steady, her blood
pressure normal. I adjust her pillows and fill her pill boxes. She assures me
that her granddaughter is coming over after school to check on her and I leave as
she is settling into an open-mouth, eyes semi-opened afternoon nap.
I sigh. Do I have to wait until I’m on
my deathbed to see you, Roger? I’m not sure I can wait that long, my love. My
husband had a massive heart attack walking to his car after work three months
before he retired. I never got to say good-bye. Neither did my four children.
Hospice is my psychotherapy. If Roger
comes to visit me at the end, I’ll go willingly. I just want to hear his voice
again and feel his arms wrapped around my shoulders. I love my children, but
their hugs and kisses aren’t his.
Today is Thanksgiving and all my kids
are home with me. I have the day off so I won’t see my beloved Milly today. I
say a quick prayer for her. I put on a happy face and one of my sons carves the
turkey. Dinner is set and my oldest son sits in Roger’s place. I smile, but
he’s not my Roger. My daughter Angie has always had “the gift.” She knows
things, can see things, and I am sometimes very jealous of her. Tonight, right
after she served herself a hearty helping of my cranberry salad, her face
drained of color and she began to hyperventilate.
“What’s the matter, Angie?” My nurse’s
training made my mind do the quick differential diagnoses. Choking? Fainting?
Low blood sugar?
“Answer the phone,” she whispered.
The phone rang and a chill ran down my
spine as I rushed to get it.
There was heavy breathing on the other
line. “Can you come over?” The rough voice on the line was in pain. It was
Milly. I just knew.
“Milly?” The line went dead.
I dialed 9-1-1 as I pulled the car out
of the driveway but clicked the phone shut when the voice asked, “What is your
emergency?” Milly would not wish any part of her death to be an emergency. I
left the phone in the car and rushed into Milly’s apartment. She didn’t want
extraordinary measures.
Her breathing was labored. She was
“actively dying” as we say in hospice. She just didn’t want to be alone. She
called me. Instead of her family.
“I’m here, Milly. I’m here.” I patted
the hand that was opening and closing.
“Tell me what he looked like,” she
managed.
“Who?”
“Your husband,” she answered.
“Why? But, Milly…” Was I arguing with a
dying woman’s request? “He was very handsome. Tall.”
“Did he have green eyes and wear a black
hat?” she asked. She looked more alive than she had the whole year.
“Yes. Why?”
“Oh, he has a beautiful smile.” She was
staring over my left shoulder.
I was panicking. “Milly, what are you
talking about?”
“I thought that was him. I wanted to
tell you, he always comes here with you.”
Milly exhaled. She was gone.