Bloodsuckers
From inside her purse, Tess produces a colorful pamphlet. “I want you to look at this.”
I glance at the rectangular card she holds out before me: an elderly couple sitting on a bench in front of a sprawling one-story building. A nursing home. Fully aware that my swimming head and IV’s have trapped me into this conversation, I turn away and close my eyes. It’s the best I can do to avoid a fight.
“It’s where Jacqui’s going to place her father,” she says, her voice growing weary. “I think your mom would like it.”
One. Two. Three. I count silently to myself, praying for a distraction – an earthquake or even a nurse bearing long, thick needles. Anything to get out of having this argument again.
“They even allow pets,” she says. “She could bring Meatball.”
Eight. Nine.
“Damn it, Bill, you’re acting like a three year-old. If you’re not going to look at the pamphlet then at least look at me.”
She’s right, of course. I am acting like a child. But she’s also wrong. She’s wrong to bring this up when my defenses are down. And she’s wrong about my mother. If I were well, I would remind her, as I have so many times this month, that nursing homes are vile institutions that suck life and money out of their inhabitants. I’d remind her that they’re for the unloved, for parents of lazy, selfish children. I would tell her these things. But I simply don’t want to argue right now.
“Please,” she says.
I take a deep breath and open my eyes. And there she is, watching me, the expression on her too-skinny face bearing – what is that? Pity? No, it can’t be.
“She’s my mother,” I say.
Tess rubs at the frown lines between her eyebrows. “I really think it’s the best solution. That’s all I’m saying.”
“For her or for you?”
She inhales quickly and I prepare myself for a snarky retort. Instead: “Where’s the leech?”
I look down. Betsy is AWOL. Tess scans the bed, checks the floor, then rips back my covers to find Betsy’s long, overstuffed body easing its way toward my toes on the starchy white hospital sheets.
“Gotcha,” Tess says, picking her up with a bare hand. She reaches for the urine collection cup where Doug floats lifelessly and unscrews. “Rub a dub dub, thanks for healing his stub –” She looks at me. “Oh, to hell with it,” she says, and plunks my leech into her liquid casket.
She hoists her purse onto her shoulder. “I’ll be back later with Ryan,” she says, and before I’ve had a chance to register the fact that she’s leaving, she’s already gone.
