Final Stroke Read Online Free PDF Page B

story of his past without her. His past without her seeming even more removed because the only person he trusted and loved was doing the telling. Jan was the one who told him that before they met he had been dating Tamara, the same Tamara who visited him several times in the hos pital and here, the same Tamara with whom he exchanged e-mails as part of his therapy. Jan said that he and Tamara had met while he was a detective on the Chicago Police Department, and that Tamara was still with the Chicago Police Department, a lieutenant in homicide.
    Jan told these stories from the past here in the alcove where the windows gave a view of the entrance, parking lot, and the cold rain-soaked woods of March. Here in the television lounge with the large screen television throbbing in the far corner. Here in the television lounge where, just a moment ago, Brenda, one of the evening nurses’ aides, told him that she’d just gotten word from the first floor nursing facility that his friend Marjorie Gianetti had moved upstairs, which meant she was dead.
    He’d wanted to say something to Brenda about Marjorie. He turned the words over and over in his mind. Those damn backward upside-down inside-out words that were impossible to say. He’d wanted to say there was something not quite right about Marjorie’s death because he remembered Marjorie warning him of the danger posed by those polished tile floors in which you could sometimes see your reflection.
    He still wanted to say something. He wanted to ask how Marjorie had died. And when he wheeled himself out of the television lounge and into the group of others parked in their wheelchairs at the nurses’ station, the Hell in the Woods grapevine provided some answers that made him into Steve Babe, the detective, once again.
    Marjorie had fallen in the hallway near the entrance to the first floor nursing home facility activity room. At this time of evening the activity room was empty, and so was the long hallway leading to the room. The only other things down the hallway were the wing’s kitchen facilities and the loading dock, which was locked and alarmed in case a resident should try to walk out. Nobody knew why Marjo rie had wandered down that hallway so late in the evening. If a staff member hadn’t gone down the hall to retrieve something she’d left in the activity room, Marjorie might have lain there all night. She appar ently ventured there alone, walking without assistance and without her wheelchair. For some reason Marjorie had ventured out alone, walk ing, and had slipped on a wet spot in the middle of the hallway where another resident in the nursing facility wing apparently had an “acci dent” earlier in the day.
    The news was delivered by an elderly non-stroke resident from the first floor nicknamed So-long Sue. Sue was in her late eighties and, except for having to get around in a wheelchair, seemed in pretty good shape. Her hair, which should have been completely white, had been curled by the first floor beauty shop to a translucent lavender bushiness, except in back where it was “bed-head” flat as with most first floor women. When So-long Sue spoke, she made moves in her wheelchair much like someone trying to explain a complex matter to a small child. Steve had parked his wheelchair where he could listen to Sue, yet be able to listen in on the reactions of the nurse and aide at the station.
    “They call her So-Long Sue because the only way to get rid of her is to say so long and leave,” said the nurse.
    “She’s got a captive audience now,” said the aide. “That’s why she comes up here when there’s gossip to spread.”
    “What’s the gossip today?” asked the nurse.
    “One of the elderly ladies fell and hit her head and died before she got to the hospital,” said the aide.
    The nurse and aide stopped talking to listen to Sue, who was be coming more animated.
    “It’s scandalous,” said Sue. “Two hours and the damn thing’s still there. They