Traveling Light Read Online Free PDF

Seasons. At the end of the meal Roger had casually requested a separate check. Paula grabbed it, hoping her mother hadn’t seen, but Eleni missed nothing. Her sharp eyes pecked at Paula before she said in Greek, “I’m surprised he doesn’t shove a cork up your ass to make sure you don’t waste a thing.”
    Heavenly pushed the elevator button as they waited. “He probably spoke English at one time,” she explained. “Often in advanced old age people default to their first language.”
    They looked up at the display, waiting for a car. Heavenly jabbed it several more times.
    “You know that doesn’t make it come faster,” Paula said.
    “Eat shit.” Heavenly grinned. “Get a name, next of kin,” she said as the door opened and they stepped inside.
    Heavenly shrugged as the elevator doors closed. “All he says is…” She looked at the chart. “‘Fotis. F-o-t-i-s moo.’ Maybe that’s his name or something.”
    “Fotis? Fos means ‘light,’” Paula said. “Like light.” She pointed at the overhead fluorescent slabs. “ Fotis mou means ‘my light.’”
    Heavenly pressed the ninth-floor button. “Maybe he’s hallucinating.”
    They walked swiftly past elderly patients in wheelchairs, their bruised, blotchy skin looking as delicate as tissue paper. “I love you, honey,” one called out in grandmotherly tones as they passed. Wheelchairs were parked amid gray metal supply carts piled high with bedsheets, others with bins jammed full of syringes and glass tubes. Stands of IV machines wound up in their own wires, hooked to no one, lined up like a regimen in marching formation.
    Paula held her breath as they passed through intermittent scent clouds of urine and rubbing alcohol. Heavenly slowed at a door marked only with a patient number. Celeste took out the chart, looked at her watch, marked something and then softly knocked.
    “Come in,” a nurse’s voice.
    Celeste slowly pushed the door open, gesturing for Paula to follow.
    “Hell-o-o?” Heavenly said in a singsong voice.
    A nurse was rearranging a white waffle thermal blanket around the emaciated frame of an elderly man, tossing him around in a robust way as if he were nothing but a bundle of sticks.
    “There,” the nurse chirped to the patient. “Now isn’t that better,” she affirmed, seemingly pleased with her work.
    “Stamata,” a soft but raspy voice complained, “enough already” in Greek.
    The woman smiled at Heavenly and peeled off purple latex gloves, tossing them into the biohazard disposal bin. Gathering a digital thermometer pack, the nurse looped her stethoscope around her neck and raised her eyebrows as if to say, He’s all yours.
    The room had darkened from the storm, making it seem later than it was. Raindrops pattered against the window. The two of them approached the foot of the bed.
    “Kalimera,” Paula bid him good afternoon.
    Bedsheets rustled at the sound of her voice. The old man turned his head.
    “Ella,” he called her closer.
    Paula took a step.
    He squinted. “Paula?”
    Celeste turned to look at her.
    The voice was familiar, though Paula couldn’t pinpoint it. Like recognizing words in a language spoken in a dream.
    “Ella tho,” he asked her to come closer. His voice was weak. “I knew you’d come, Paula,” he said in Greek.
    She peered at his face in the dim light, blinking several times as she thought.
    “They said you wouldn’t.” He choked up and pointed to the ceiling so convincingly that Paula looked up, too, fully expecting to see people. “But I knew you would; I told them.”
    She looked at him.
    “Paula with the yellow eyes—Athena’s owl.”
    She was stunned. Recognition rushed her all at once and she had to sit down, covering her mouth with her hand for a moment. He was still alive? She looked at her bare knees peeking out past the hem of her skirt. He’d seemed like such an old man some forty-odd years ago. Yet he’d probably been younger than she was now.
    “Theo,” she