The Doorstep Diaries, Part II (3)

Sally kissed her father on the cheek through the car window. “Sorry, early morning,” she said. Father shook Grandpa’s hand and finally, the old man bent down and gave Tom a hug before heading into the Serenity Retirement Home.

He didn’t like the place. He never did. But he understood, too. When he was that age he wouldn’t want to take care of his old man either. Sally had a family, and even though her husband – Bill, was it? Never really worth remembering – wasn’t much to brag about it was her family. Back when he started his own family with Sally a little girl, old people like his pap did the respectable thing and died. Not anymore. Not with dialysis and heart transplants and iron lungs.

Growing old sucked. Your friends died, even the ones that survived the war. Sex. There was no more sex. There was just puttering around, nagging Sally even though you know she’s got better things to do but you’re lonely and well, dammit, everyone else was dead. Believe me, he’d think to say, I’d kick my own bucket if I could. I’m tired of this shit.

But of course he couldn’t. That was the point. Death had screwed up too many lives at too young an age to go hand in hand with him into the abyss. He might be done living, but he wasn’t going to give Death the satisfaction of dying. Fuck no.

“Bastard,” he mumbled.

He stepped into the lobby. Quiet. Always quiet. He looked at the reception counter where Nurse Olmstead would be waiting to ask “what are you doing out so late again?” with those dolled up eyes all pretending to be angry. But she wasn’t there. No one was. Instead there was the dimly lit corner with sofas and the TV and nothing else.

He liked Nurse Olmstead. They all did. She had the proper amount of flirting and motherliness for a retirement home. She would get you all excited and then spoon feed you Jell-o, and you didn’t care because it was her and that spoon. She could make a spoon sexy. She could make a fetish of tapioca.

Pots turned over in the adjoining kitchen. He heard footsteps. Running footsteps. Nurse Olmstead stumbled back out through the double doors pointing a shotgun the way she came. She looked great with a shotgun. “Stay the fuck away, Mr. Peterman!”

Mr. Peterman? He’d been bed-ridden for months. Grandpa called him The Stiff because he never moved and, well, only one part of him moved and that was when Nurse Olmstead was feeding him and it was respectably stiff. Other than that he was totally bed-ridden.

“But I love you!” It really was Peterman. His arms were outstretched toward her. He was walking, albeit weakly, but he was walking straight for her, like getting some momentum up for a big ol’ hug. .

“Back!” Nurse stepped back and knocked over the love seats. She fell backward over it and squeezed the trigger. The Stiff’s shoulder swung back. He looked down at it curiously.

“Ouch.” He said.

“What are you?!” she said. “What are all of you?!” She fired again and The Stiff’s head disappeared into a red mist.

“Nurse?” Grandpa tested.

She swung around and shot. There was only a dull click. He thought of the war. The Jap that came right at him with that bayonet. It was like that again. But now he was older. He clenched his chest. It was beating so fast and now his heart … He collapsed. “Nurse?” he said. This time more desperately. She ran to him. He looked at her. She was fading. His whole world was fading. He knew. He was dying of a heart attack. A land war in Asia and eighty plus years of living and it was the Tapioca Queen that got him. “Bitch,” he said to her, and died.