By the skin of my teeth...

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The last place Jack ever thought he’d end up was in a nursing home. Hell, he was as fit as a fiddle. Well, as fit as any seventy-year-old fiddle could be. Sure, he had his aches and pains, but what old geezer his age didn’t? If it hadn’t been for that stupid blood hound of Martha’s jumping up on him, he never would have fallen and busted his kneecap, and he certainly wouldn’t have ended up in any stinking old nursing home.

Martha loved that dog—God knows why—always jumping on everybody. He had gotten up to leave, after coffee and a sweet roll, just like he did every morning since her husband had died, and the dog was suddenly right there jumping at him. The next thing he knew, he was toppling forward and coming down hard on his knee. He felt it go, exploding beneath him like a ripe melon, his head cracking into the corner of the coffee table. There was a moment of sickening numbness that quickly washed over him and made him nauseous, and then a wave of intense pain. He rolled onto his back, cradling his kneecap, and sucking air between clenched teeth. “Damn dog!” was all he could say. “Damn dog…”

Martha immediately called for an ambulance. She propped a small pillow under Jack’s head to make him as comfortable as possible until help arrived.

When Martha’s husband had died, Jack took it upon himself to fill the empty hole he knew she was trying to climb out of. He knew because he had felt the same after his Janet passed. There’s a kind of routine, a ritual that old folks tend to develop after living with each other for many years. For Martha and her husband, it was sharing that first cup of coffee in the morning.

Jack figured it might just help if he could be there for her. God knows Martha had been there for him after his wife had died. This was his way of paying her back. Martha was good people. It was the least he could do.

Then the damn dog tripped him.

Marlboro was his name, which had been her late husband’s idea. Martha went along with it, of course, to humor him there towards the end. But he knew he was dying, and he thought the dog would help ease Martha’s pain after he was gone. By that time the doctor wouldn’t let him smoke anymore, so he named the dog Marlboro; actually it was Marlboro’s that eventually killed the old fart.

Nevertheless, here was Jack, after a major knee replacement, stuck in a goddamn nursing home. Doc Thornton said he’d definitely need daily therapy before he could walk again, and that he’d more than likely have a limp for the rest of his life. That was fine with Jack, he could deal with that, but it was the goddamn nursing home he hated; probably because it was the same damn place where his Janet had died. It was ironic to him in a way, to end up in the same place, but that didn’t make things any easier.

The home literally stunk. It smelled of urine and shit, and fear mostly—fear of dying. Hell, this was where they all came to die. There was nothing for it. What else could they do? Most of them drifted off to Dream Land, doped up on some kind of pill or another; while others became more and more senile. It was sad really, to hear them moaning and groaning, calling for a son or daughter that would never come. It was no way to die after a life that was once full of love, and family, and hope, just to end up shitting on themselves and thinking other people were their kids come to take them home.

But the kids never came, and pretty soon they just kind of lost their place in life; like a bookmark that has fallen out of a book. And after awhile, what they were yelling about became more and more unintelligibly. It was all part of the journey as one foot stepped closer to the grave and the other lay chaffed and bleeding against freshly peed sheets. It was no way to die…no way at all.

They wheeled Jack into a room that had two beds in it, each one sectioned off by wrap-around curtains that hung from metal rings and slid noisily along an oval steel bar positioned above the bed. As the nurses transferred him from the wheelchair to his bed, Jack noticed that the old lady next to him kept her sheets pulled up to her eyes as if she were overly modest or afraid of something—like a child peeping out over his covers when awakened from a bad dream. It was odd though; there was something strange about her eyes—something there wasn’t a word for—a hunger.

Jack gave her a friendly nod and smiled.

“There you go Mr. Heider,” the Mexican nurse said. “We’ll bring you dinner in a couple of minutes. Just lay back and rest. Once the swelling has gone down we’ll start your therapy.”

Nursing Homes were overcrowded with women; men just never seemed to last that long once they were put away. Most of them would die of sheer stubbornness: too stubborn to eat, and too damned pissed off to go out without a fight.

People die hard, Jack thought. The myth he once believed about folks just closing their eyes and falling to sleep was really nothing more than that—a myth. It wasn’t like God reaching down softly and gathering them into His arms. It was more like a dramatic wrenching or tearing away of the soul—a battle. People die hard because they don’t want to die; they fight for every breath, every minute…every second.

Just like his Janet did as she laid in bed with the cancer eating away at her vitals. Suddenly, violently, she arched her back as if every muscle in her body strained to push death away, then she collapsed like a doll that has been thrown to the floor never to be played with again, and was gone.

Jack looked down at her, holding her hand tightly and seeing within her the rotting corpse that she would eventually become. No doubt the worms were already awake and laboring in a respectful hush. He didn’t cry either. He was grateful that the whole ordeal was finally over with. He’d rather be a bone worn to splinters by the teeth of sorrow, than a sponge wrung ceaselessly in its hands.

Jack lay back on his pillow, disregarding the old crone on the other side of him, and hating the nursing home. He looked out the window at the far end of the room as a motorcycle roared down the street. The evening sky was drenched in that peculiar California light that is perfectly clear but that seems at the same time to have considerable substance.

The nurse arrived with dinner and Jack could smell the hot food even before she opened the lid to the tray. “Here you go Mr. Heider, a nice hamburger for you.” She set the small tray on his lap with an overcooked, paper-thin patty and burnt fries. There was even a plastic cup filled with red jello. Then she pulled the cloth screen around his bed for privacy as he ate.

He was famished and dove right in, nearly choking on the dry burger.

“Jack?”

He stopped in mid-chew, tried to swallow the burger like a mouthful of ashes.

“Jack…are you there?” The voice sounded as unsteady as a windblown flame.

He set his food down. Someone was moving around his bed. He could see their shadow through the thin fabric of the curtain, like water pearled and moving under ice.

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Jack. It’s…Janet…”

His fear was visible: brittle in his bones and waxy on his skin. Tears stood in his eyes. “Janet?”

The curtain slowly pulled back. A hand, mottled brown and green and black, slimy, riddled with weeping pustules gripped at the curtain and moved it aside. “It’s been so long, Jack…so long…”

“My God, Janet, no…it’s impossible.”

He smelled her like a ripe and smelly cheese, her head moving like an enormous rose bloom, bobbing and nodding with the breeze. “Jesus, Janet, it can’t be you. You’re dead!”

His words sharpened her once-pretty face, turned her glare into a collection of knives. It was her; the woman in the bed next to him. She had been waiting…waiting just for this moment. And her eyes…eyes like a deep sable gloom at the end of a hallway that wouldn’t yield its secrets—those eyes.

They swallowed him, even as she moved to the side of his bed, her stench so ripe that the air seemed to be flavored with it.

“I’ve come for you, Jack. I’ve come to take you home.”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to yell for help, but couldn’t find his voice. Janet slowly bent down and kissed him full upon the mouth. “Welcome home, Jack…”


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