Inevitable Sentences Read Online Free PDF Page A

else would he be allowed to eat? It didn’t make any difference in Max’s situation who he had become. Nurse Hooper wasn’t impressed with titles anyway. She’d give anyone an enema without blinking, even the president of the United States.
    “You have to admit,” Max said, “I’ve done well despite my stent collection and this valve thing since my first visit to your charming inn. Although it may have taken four years, I’ve lost twenty pounds and stopped smoking. I exercise nearly every day, and I finally retired. I use the prescribed medication—those ACE inhibitors and a diuretic—not that I didn’t pee enough already.” Max stopped to catch his breath. “In fact, this valve was replaced once before. What else do you vampires want from me?”
    “You knew that the valve would only last around ten years. No matter. You’ll still have to take your meds like a good boy. Even more important, though, you may have physically retired”—Hooper slapped a blood pressure cuff around Max’s free arm—“but the whole town knows you haven’t let go.” As Hooper pumped, the pressure belt inflated, making a schwoosh, schwoosh sound. She concentrated on the numbers flashing before her. “Besides, you didn’t stop smoking soon enough.” The belt deflated with a quiet whoosh. “Not bad,” she announced, and unwrapped Max’s arm. “One-thirty over eighty.”
    “Can I go home now?” Max sounded like a petulant little boy.
    “What you should do is get a haircut,” Hooper grumbled. “You’re beginning to look like a hippie.”
    Hooper’s blond hair was always pulled back and knotted above her neck. Max figured it had to be long, maybe halfway down her back when it hung loose.
    “Damn. I was hoping to come across more like the Chippewa I am.” Max gathered his hair in his untethered hand. “It’s almost long enough for a ponytail or a braid.” He smiled and waggled his eyebrows up and down a few times at Hooper. “Don’t you think?” He jutted his jaw out for emphasis and turned to show off his profile, which he had been told was close to an artist’s classic rendition of a Native American.
    “Dear me, Mister Whitefeather.” Hooper straightened the bed cover. “You’re too old for a midlife crisis.”
    Since Hooper wasn’t even forty, how would she know what age was appropriate for his crises? “That depends on what you call midlife.” Max’s smile broadened and his weathered face brightened. He thought about Celeste, so much a part of his change-of-life journey. She once told him he reminded her of the image of Crazy Horse carved in stone in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She called him a gentle warrior.
    “I may have had to retire, but I’m not quite sixty,” he added in his defense.
    “You’re sixty-one, Your Slickness.” Hooper wagged her forefinger at him. “You forget I have your history.” She held up his chart.
    “Oh, well, I tried. I was hoping you’d say I didn’t look a day over fifty-nine.” Max winked.
    “Gotta go,” Hooper announced, putting away her equipment. “I’ve already worked a twelve-hour shift. See you in the morning. Hopefully, you won’t be cranky and delusional.”
    “Ha!” he shouted. Hooper’s shoulders rose to her ears as though that would block out his voice. “Who’s calling the kettle black or something like that?”
    “Good-bye,” Hooper said and waved her hand over her shoulder as she sashayed out the door.
    The room fell sadly quiet, and Max conjured up a mental picture of Celeste to help him pass the long night ahead. He visualized her standing in the sunlight streaming through the living room windows of the lighthouse. The rays streaked across her auburn hair like gold ribbons. He loved her more relaxed appearance—shorter, bouncy hair, little makeup, which she never needed anyway, and far more casual yet still fashionable clothes. She had the grace of a swan and the slenderness of a gazelle.
“Damn. What am I? Employed by the