LITMIR.BIZ

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the paperwork again and had the decency to blush. “Oops. Sorry.”

      “Oops,” Ellie repeated, shook her head and decided that incompetence was quickly overtaking obesity as a major health concern in America.

      Any doubts she might have had about bringing her mother home with her rather than sending her to a care facility of some kind quickly vanished. “I’ll be waiting with my mother in her room. How long do you think it will be before an aide can come?”

      “Ten minutes,” the nurse promised, her cheeks still pink with embarrassment.

      Ellie checked her watch, smiled and marched back to her mother.

      Precisely six minutes later, the aide arrived, stood right in front of the wheelchair and put his hands on his hips. “You see now, Miss Rosie, I told you that you’d be going home today before I did!”

      “If someone had bothered to tell me, we’d all have had a better day,” Ellie grumbled to herself as she left for the elevator carrying her purse, her mother’s suitcase and the plastic bag with all the disposable whatnots her mother had collected during her stay.

      Forty-five minutes later, Ellie had her mother resting on the sofa in the living room with the TV remote in one hand and the cordless telephone in the other. “I won’t be long,” she promised. “I have to go to the pharmacy, make a quick stop at the store to get a few groceries, and get some of your things from your house for you.”

      “Don’t forget to turn out the lights before you leave my house,” her mother cautioned before a yawn interrupted her. “You never did have any consideration for the electric bill.”

      “I won’t forget. If you need me while I’m gone, just hit the seven on the telephone. I have it programmed to call my cell phone.”

      Her mother yawned again, turned on the TV with the remote and adjusted the sound. “I’ll be fine. I’ll watch the news,” she said, but Ellie could barely hear her over the high volume of the TV.

      Thirty-five minutes later, Ellie emerged from the pharmacy with nine prescriptions, four over-the-counter drugs and pill organizers in different colors. She also had acquired the sincere belief that only someone with a master’s degree in science would be able to read the paperwork for each medication and organize the pills her mother would be taking three times every day.

      She fared better at the grocery store. She was not a health-food purist, but she did prefer fresh fruits and vegetables when she cooked, and had no trouble finding a nice selection of produce. She picked up some lean, skinless chicken breasts and fresh tuna to add to the lean beef and pork already in her freezer, and a few low-fat dairy products, all in accordance with the dietary guidelines she had been given at the hospital.

      Last stop: her mother’s house.

      Ellie pulled into the driveway next to the darkened house, and turned off the ignition and headlights. She sat in the car for a moment, recalling childhood memories that were still painful. The tiny bungalow where she had grown up as an only child had always been her father’s house. After his death nearly a dozen years ago, it had become her mother’s house, but Ellie had never, ever thought of it as home, then or now.

      She twisted the slim gold wedding band she still wore on her left hand. Home was where she had lived with her husband, Joe, and experienced the wonder of unconditional love for the first time in her life, until his unexpected death six years ago this past November. Home was where she and Joe had raised their two sons while they both pursued careers they loved. And home was where she lived now, surrounded by joyful memories, her faith and the fulfillment she still found in her career as an educator.

      With loving thoughts of her late husband and her children and her little grandchildren tucked in her heart, she got out of her car and made her way into the house. She flipped the switch next to the front door for light. Little in the modestly furnished living room was familiar, since her mother redecorated as frequently as most women changed their wardrobes.

      At the moment, the room was awash with tones of beige and white—on the walls, carpet and furniture. Instinctively, she slipped off her shoes and wiped her hands on her overcoat, surprised at how easily she could reclaim habits she had acquired as a child.

      Turning on lights as she walked, Ellie heard echoes of her mother’s critical words, and recalled her father’s ever-present silence. In the front bedroom, more pale earth tones greeted her. She made quick work of choosing the clothes her mother would need for the next two weeks, grabbed some toiletries from the only bathroom in the house and placed everything in a large suitcase.

      Lugging the suitcase, she turned off lights on her way back to the living room. With her shoes back on, she flipped the switch to turn off the last of the lights and locked up the house. Heading to her car, she prepared herself to go home and try one more time to win her mother’s love and approval.

      She had the faith she needed to guide and sustain her, and after she made one stop tomorrow, she would have the only other thing she absolutely needed during the next two weeks: her own little replenished supply of her favorite candy.

       Chapter Four

       A fter seven seemingly endless days, Charlene felt as if she had spent an entire week in a playground, stuck on one end of a seesaw. The neighborhood bully sat on the other end and constantly taunted her by pushing her up into the air and holding her there before jumping off again and again, slamming her hard and fast to the ground.

      In reality, she had spent every waking hour for the past week at Tilton General Hospital, a bizarre playground filled with mysterious flashing and beeping equipment, where Aunt Dorothy was recovering from her little spell—a mild heart attack.

      Days, when Charlene was encouraged by the promise of her aunt’s progress, were invariably eclipsed by days when the bully, aka CHF and diabetes, yanked her down from hope to fear and doubt. Other than taking time to retrieve her aunt’s living will from the bank, she had taken only one other break, the morning that two women from the Shawl Ministry had stopped by to visit her aunt and deliver a lap shawl they had made for her. Charlene was also able to grab an hour alone when Annie Parker and Madeline O’Rourke, her aunt’s closest friends, came by each afternoon, which deepened Charlene’s desire for a supportive friend of her own.

      Charlene was pleased, however, that once she had called her children, both Greg and Bonnie had come to the hospital to see Aunt Dorothy, although they each had had to get right back to their homes and had been unable to stay overnight to visit longer with Charlene.

      Yesterday, her aunt had stabilized enough that the doctors discussed discharging her. Now, on Friday morning, Charlene and Daniel were in Aunt Dorothy’s room for a meeting with the hospital social worker, Denise Abrams. Fortunately, her aunt’s roommate had left earlier for a test of some sort, so the group that gathered about Dorothy Gibbs’s bed had plenty of privacy.

      Charlene glanced at the faces and smiled to herself. No one was under fifty. Over the past week, she had seen a multitude of doctors, nurses, technicians and aides. Most of them were young enough to be her children, and she shuddered to think that at fifty-nine, she could be a grandmother to some of them. Although they all appeared to be competent and qualified, Charlene felt more comfortable with hospital workers who had been alive long enough to know that the best way to eat a Mary Jane was to suck on it and to remember a time when a chocolate bar, with or without almonds, cost only a nickel.

      Aunt Dorothy sat in her bed, obviously enjoying being the center of attention. For the first time since she had entered the hospital, her hazel eyes held a bit of sparkle again, but she still looked forlorn and bedraggled.

      Her pale blue hospital gown hung loosely around her narrow shoulders. Mottled bruises surrounded the small white bandages on the back of both her hands and at the crease in her elbows. Her complexion was pasty. Her dark gray curls were flattened in some spots on her head, while unruly clumps stood up in other places, making her look as if she was wearing a broken tiara.

      She was a queen held captive on her throne. An IV line snaked from the back of her hand

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