Lost December

by Richard Paul Evans

  The woman sighed with relief. “Thank you. Let’s get him to his room and get him his medication.” She brought over a wheelchair and I helped Mr. Brown into it, then she wheeled him back to his room. After Mr. Brown had calmed down, she said to me, “I owe you. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Luke.”

  “Tammy,” she said, extending her hand. “You’re the new guy—the one who lives here.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Well, I’m glad you were here. Mr. Brown might have skewered me.”

  “I’m glad I was here too,” I said. “Do you have any Advil or Tylenol?”

  “We’ve got every painkiller in the book.” She suddenly looked worried. “Did Mr. Brown hurt you?”

  “No. I took a fall last night.”

  “I’ll get you something.” She walked away, returning a moment later with a small plastic cup with a single pill in it and a cup of water. “Eight hundred milligrams of Tylenol. I can get you something stronger when the doctor gets here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said. “I need to check on the residents. You’re working the swing shift, right?”

  “That’s what Carlos said.”

  “Well, I hope it works out,” she said, then went back to work.

  About an hour later I went down to the dining room to get some breakfast. As I sat down at a table, an old man waddled up to me. He had dark eyes, a frown that seemed carved into his wrinkled face and gray hair that stood up on both sides like horns, or a deranged Bozo the Clown, “What are you doin’ here?” he demanded.

  “Getting some breakfast,” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  I instinctively extended my hand. “I’m Luke.”

  He made no effort to take my hand. “I don’t know any Lukes. Get out of here. Quit eating our food.”

  “I work here.”

  “I’ve never seen you before. You’re a freeloadin’ carpetbagger. Get out before I throw you out.”

  I just looked at him. Even though he was about half my size, I had no doubt that he might at least try to do what he threatened. I wasn’t sure what to do. Taking down one of the residents probably wasn’t the best way to start my first day at work.

  “Why don’t you just let me eat,” I said.

  “I’m warning you,” he said, raising a feeble fist. “Pow.”

  As I was considering my options, another resident, a big man with a white beard and pushing a walker, stepped up to my table. He looked like a department store Santa Claus. “Calm down, Harold. He works here.”

  “You don’t know nuthin’, you North Pole reject. He looks like a scoundrel. Look at those beady eyes. He’ll rob us blind in our sleep.”

  Santa winked at me. “No, no, no …” I’m not sure if it was on purpose, but he said this sounding a little like Ho, Ho, Ho. “… He’s a good guy. He works here.”

  “You don’t know nuthin’.”

  “I know that they’re going to run out of cheese Danishes.”

  “What?” Harold turned back toward the kitchen windows, then waddled off toward them.

  “Nice move,” I said.

  “I know a few tricks,” the man said. He reached out his hand. “I’m David. But everyone here just calls me Nick.”

  I cocked my head. “Nick?”

  “I look like St. Nicholas,” he said.

  I grinned. “Thanks for stepping in.”

  “Harold’s a bit tough on the newbies. But he’s not a bad guy once you get to know him. Just a bit ornery.”

  “I didn’t notice,” I said.

  He laughed deeply, a Santa laugh, then patted my shoulder. “I hope you like it here.” Then he slowly walked away.

  One of the servers walked up to me. She was a Vietnamese woman wearing a hairnet. “Hi. What can I get you?”

  “Just give me everything,” I said.

  “Everything,” she said. “How would you like it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Normal, soft or puréed.”

  “Normal, please.”

  “Normal,” she said, and walked away.

  The breakfast seemed like a feast. Biscuits with sawmill gravy, orange juice, toast with butter, scrambled eggs and bacon. I finished my plate and went back to the kitchen for seconds. When I finished eating, I went to the nurses’ station and found Tammy. She was reviewing a patient’s chart.

  “I just met one of your residents,” I said. “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Let me guess—Harold.”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Harold Mantilla. Most of the residents call him the Hun. He’s a bit crochety. I just keep my distance. Easier that way.”

  “I’ll consider myself warned.”

  Carlos arrived at the center around noon. I was lying on my bed watching television when he knocked on my door. I got up and opened the door for him.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I understand that you’ve already made yourself useful.”

  “You must be referring to the Mr. Brown fork incident.”

  “It gets exciting around here sometimes.” He noticed my underwear hanging from the bathroom door handle. “We have a washing facility,” he said. “Just put what needs to be washed in that laundry bag and they’ll return it before dinner.”

  “Better service than the Château de la Messardière,” I said.

  “I’ll take your word for it. Have you had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get you something. I need to get some employment information on you and I’ll introduce you to Sylvia.”

  “Does she know I’m coming?”

  “Yes. And she’s very, very happy.”

  We walked out of my room to the nurses’ station. A twenty-something-year-old woman, with dark hair and a narrow face, smiled as we approached. “Sylvia,” Carlos said, “this is Luke.”

  She smiled warmly. “Glad to meet you, Luke.”

  “I told Luke that he would mostly be working with serving meals.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “We’re going to get some lunch, then I want him to see Dr. Kuo. Afterward he’s all yours.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Carlos and I ate lunch, then went back to his office to fill out my employment paperwork. We had only been there a few minutes when a man knocked on the door, then stepped inside. He was Asian, dressed casually in corduroy jeans and a flannel shirt. He had a stethoscope around his neck.

  “Sorry that took so long,” he said. “Mrs. Mather had a lot on her mind today.”

  “No problem,” Carlos said, “we just finished lunch. Luke, this is Dr. Kuo. He’s our resident physician.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Likewise,” he said, shaking my hand. “Carlos told me that you got mugged last night.”

  “Yeah. I think they broke some ribs.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  I followed the doctor to his office halfway down the east hallway. Once we were inside, he shut the door and said, “Take off your shirt, please.”

  I took it off, folding it over the back of a chair. My body had dark, purple bruises all over.

  “They left a few marks,” he said. “Any place hurt in particular?”

  “Mostly the right side.”

  He gently ran his fingers up my ribs. “Are you having any trouble breathing?”

  “No. But it hurts when I cough.”

  He placed his stethoscope on my back. “What we worry about is a punctured lung. Try to take a deep breath, if you can.”

  I breathed in slowly.

  He moved the stethoscope to my other side, listened, then removed it. “Your lungs sound fine. You probably just bruised your ribs. It will take a few weeks to heal, but you’ll be okay. You can get dressed.”

  I put my shirt back on.

  “Are you on any medications?”

  “No.”

  “Allergic to anything?”

  “Not
that I know of.”

  He wrote out a prescription. “They can fill this here. Just ask one of the nurses. I’ve prescribed Tylenol Three with codeine. You probably can get by with just regular Tylenol during the day, but this will help at night.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. If the pain gets worse or you have trouble breathing, I’m always on call.”

  “Thank you,” I said again. It felt good to say it. It felt good to feel truly grateful. I had learned a great truth: Joy isn’t the natural response to blessings—joy is what comes from acknowledging them.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Nine

  Helping others carries its own rewards—the first of which

  is a return to humanity.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  I went back to Carlos’s office, filled out my job application and tax forms, then reported to Sylvia for work.

  “What did Carlos tell you about the job?” she asked.

  “Not much. He said I’d mostly be helping with the meals.”

  “Exacto,” she said. “Tammy told me you met Harold.”

  I nodded. “The Hun.”

  Sylvia frowned. “I don’t like that they call him that. He’s not a bad guy. He has pancreatitis so he’s always in pain. Pain will make anyone cranky.”

  “I didn’t mean to be offensive,” I said.

  “I think what’s even more painful to him is that his son doesn’t visit him. He only lives a couple miles from here. I just don’t know how these people neglect their parents. You’ll see it at Christmas. You’ll see some of these residents sitting around waiting for family who will never come. Whatever happened to honor thy father and mother?”

  I didn’t say anything but felt a pang of guilt.

  “Anyway, Harold’s in our wing, so you’ll be helping him. He usually just stays in his room.”

  “They can choose to do that?”

  “Yes, they can do what they want. They’re adults. This is a residents’ rights facility. We honor the residents’ wishes. So, here’s the dealio. We have fifty-four beds, with an average seventy percent occupancy rate.”

  “About thirty-eight residents,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “So you’re good with math. We actually have forty-one right now. You and I have the west wing with twenty-two residents. Our meal times are seven-fifteen to eight-fifteen, lunch is twelve-fifteen to one-fifteen and dinner is five-fifteen to six-fifteen. Usually about ten of our residents eat in their rooms, the rest we bring out to the dining room.

  “Most of the residents have special dietary needs. The kitchen has their meal orders. I’ll show you how it works.”

  I followed her to the dining room, then back into the kitchen, where three women in hairnets were busy preparing the evening’s meal. Once inside the kitchen, Sylvia lifted a slip of paper from the metal food preparation counter. “The kitchen manager prints off a ticket for each resident and gives it to the kitchen, and they prepare the meals according to this slip.

  “After you’ve brought the residents to the dining room, you deliver the meals to those who stay in their rooms. It’s important that you compare the meal to this slip to make sure they match.” She handed me the piece of paper. The slip had the resident’s name, room and bed number.

  “You’ll notice this sheet says where the meal is to be served.” She pointed to a place on the slip that read DININGROOMTBL9. “That means that this resident eats in the dining room at table nine. This right here says what kind of beverage they can have.”

  “What’s this Diet Cons?”

  “Diet consistency. Some of the residents can’t chew normal food so we have regular, soft mechanical and pureed. Say they had ham for lunch—regular would be the way you or I would have it, soft mechanical means it would be ground up or cut up in tiny bite-sized pieces. Pureed means …”

  “Mush,” I said.

  “Exactly. Like baby food.”

  “What’s this RCS?”

  “Restricted concentrated sugar,” Sylvia said. “It means she’s diabetic.”

  “What time do we begin?”

  “We start taking residents into the dining room on the hour. The state requires that residents may not be brought in more than a half hour early. I guess in the old days, some facilities would park the residents in front of their tables a couple hours before their meals. Cruel, but it saved money on staff.

  “So, after you’ve helped the residents to the dining room, you’ll deliver meals to those who stay in their rooms.

  “Then you come back to the dining room and assist me in feeding the residents or whatever. After they’ve eaten and we’ve taken everyone back to their rooms, you pick up the plates in the rooms and take them to the kitchen.”

  “You were doing this all yourself?” I asked.

  “And watching medications, bathing and dressing the residents and a thousand other things.”

  “You’re amazing,” I said. “What do I do if someone doesn’t want what’s on the menu?”

  “The residents can choose something different if they want. They can have a chef salad, soup and sandwich, or a fruit plate. We have one resident, Mr. Bills in 16, who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every night. I’ve even picked up a meal for residents at the In-N-Out Burger.”

  We walked back to the nurses’ station. “Is it true you’re living here at the facility?” she asked.

  “Room 11,” I said.

  “That’s different,” she said, then added, “At least I don’t have to worry about you showing up for work.”

  I helped Sylvia with a myriad of errands until a few minutes before five, when I started wheeling residents into the dining room. The process was slower than I thought it would be, and I realized that the profession required an immense amount of patience. It was a different world from the copy industry, where everything was measured in speed and deadlines.

  I delivered the meals to the rooms, including Harold’s, who had either forgotten that he didn’t like me or had changed his mind about me. I asked him why he didn’t eat his meal in the dining room. He replied, “I’m not eating with all those old people. It grosses me out.”

  Several of the residents were very interested in me and thanked me profusely for my help. One said to me, “You’re very kind. Your mother did a good job with you.”

  “My father did,” I said.

  At 10 P.M. I said goodnight to Sylvia and clocked out. I got myself a soda and a piece of apple pie from the kitchen and took it to my room and lay back on my bed. I felt remarkably grateful. More than that, I felt like myself again. How strange, I thought. I wasn’t just happier than I had been on the streets—I think I was happier than I was in Europe.

  CHAPTER

  Thirty

  The truest indication of gratitude

  is to return what you’re grateful for.

  Luke Crisp’s Diary

  A few days later Carlos called me to his office. As I walked in, he asked, “Did they teach you anything about marketing at Wharton?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I used to handle the marketing for twelve of my father’s stores. I’m actually pretty good at it.”

  “Maybe you could help me out. We’ve got too many open beds.”

  “I could help you with that,” I said. “But then I’d be pushing myself out of a room.”

  “You get these beds filled, I’ll find you a place,” he said. “In fact, I’ll pay you a five-hundred-dollar commission on every new contract. Fair enough?”

  Thirteen beds at $500 each. “Sounds great,” I said.

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “I was thinking, maybe you’d like to work here permanently.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate the offer, but someday I’d like to make more than minimum wage.”

  He started laughing. “Yeah, I don’t think you’d be happy even with my salary. Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “I’ll stay here as long as you need me. Besides, I have to. I don’t have any
clothes.”

  “I was thinking about that. I can advance you a little. If you like, Saturday morning I’ll drive you somewhere to buy clothes.”

  “That would be really great.” I looked at him quietly. “Carlos, why are you so good to me?”

  “I told you, amigo. We’re brothers, right?”

  “I know,” I said. “But really, why?”

  He looked at me for a while, then a sad smile crossed his face. “Truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “I understand a little about what you’re going through. I’m an alcoholic. Eighteen years ago I lost my job—I almost lost my wife and children. If I’d kept it up, I probably would have lost my life. Then someone rescued me. He cleaned me up, stayed with me as I sobered up, drove me to my AA meetings and sat through every one of them with me for more than a year. He was there until I was strong enough to carry myself. I’m forever indebted to him.”

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “My father.” Carlos’s eyes started to well up. “Even good people make bad choices now and then. Everyone needs help sometimes.”

  I looked at him with a new understanding. “I have that kind of father too. He was always looking out for others.” I shook my head. “I actually criticized him for caring too much. Whenever my father was making a big decision, he would ask, ‘How will it affect the employees?’”

  “What kind of business does your father have?”

  “Copy centers.”

  “Copy centers, huh? There’s a Crisp’s copy center a couple blocks down.” Suddenly he made the connection. “Your last name is Crisp. Your father doesn’t …”

  I nodded.

  “Holy cow. What were you doing on the street?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And I better get back to work. Harold’s going to be angry if I’m late.”

  “Come see me when you’re done,” he said. “We’ll talk advertising.”

  “It’s a deal, amigo.”