by Hazel Parker
“Hi,” Anna greeted, “welcome to the Sunny Villa Hospice Center. Can I help you?” The woman nodded and gestured to a man who looked much too old to be her father.
“Our grandpa,” she explained, “was referred here. His doctor said that he should be in your system already.” Anna smiled at the man and gave a friendly wave.
“I can check. What’s your name, sir?” she asked, turning to him. Not every patient was able to speak or hear or even understand what was going on, but she always liked to give it a try before addressing questions about them over their heads. She imagined that it would be distressing to have someone talk about her like she wasn’t even there, so she tried to avoid doing that to her patients when she could, not to mention that this man, though frail and definitely ill, looked relatively alert.
“Eustice Riggs,” he replied, and something about the surname felt a little familiar to Anna as she typed it in, but she wrote it off as a coincidence. It sounded like a common enough name, and she didn’t know either of the two people who were with him, so it was probably nothing. As soon as she hit enter, his name popped up, and she smiled.
“There you are,” she announced; “you’re in the right place. We’ve got a bed ready in room seven for you.” She turned to show them the way, but the younger two of the family hesitated.
“We’re waiting for our brother,” the young man said. “He said he’d be here, but he’s always late.”
“That’s no problem,” she said. “We can show your grandpa around a little, first, until he gets here. I’m Anna, by the way.” She shook all three of their hands.
“I’m David,” the young man said, “and this is my sister, Martha.”
Martha fished around in her purse for a moment before tugging out a rather hefty stack of papers and handing it over. “This is his medical file,” she explained. “Am I supposed to give this to you?”
While it wasn’t altogether necessary since Eustice’s doctor had sent over all the pertinent information, Anna politely took the file, anyway. “That’s fine; thank you.” Out of curiosity, she thumbed through it for a moment, something that she liked to do for all patients that would be under her care to get a little better idea of the experience that they’d had and their personal care needs. Eustice had lived a long and healthy life, she noticed happily, with no health problems until about two years ago, when he’d turned ninety-four. Not all her end-of-life care patients were so lucky. Some of the people in the hallways right at that moment were no older than forty-five, and many of them had struggled with illness all their lives.
The facility was beautiful and full of easy, relaxing things for their patients to do. There was an enormous television in the lobby and an extensive movie library, a room with a record player and all kinds of donated records (the older folks usually found comfort in that familiarity), and a room full of chess and checkers tables. Not every patient was well enough to partake in these kinds of distractions, but those who were found friends in one another, and even the nurses took a few minutes out of their busy days to play a game of checkers or to appreciate a patient’s favorite song as they played the record. Anna showed Eustice and his family around the facility for a bit, noticing that he took particular interest in the games room and making a mental note to ensure that he visited it after he got settled in if he was feeling well enough. David and Martha seemed pleased with everything she showed them: after all, the owner strived to make Sunny Villa a nice place to live out one’s final days, and Anna, for one, thought that they succeeded as much as they possibly could.
“If there’s anything else that you’d like to do that we don’t have set up,” she said to Eustice as she returned to the front desk after the tour, “then please let us know. We can usually find some way to make it happen.”
He smiled and shook his head. “This is more than enough to keep me busy,” he spoke, his voice weak and raspy, sounding tired. Anna looked around the room and didn’t see anyone else waiting, so she frowned.
“It doesn’t look like your brother is here yet,” she fretted. “Maybe we should get Eustice settled into a room and—”
She was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening wide and a young man strolling in casually, which would not have been such a thought-derailing distraction if not for the fact that she recognized him. Instantly, it became clear why the name “Riggs” had sounded so familiar, and she tried to keep her dread to herself as she forced a smile.
“Sorry I’m late,” Brett Riggs, the man who’d rented the apartment next to her and her roommate for the first year she’d spent getting her degree in nursing before she’d moved out on her own, announced, just a little louder than appropriate for a center in which so many people were sleeping. “Traffic was insane.”
Martha rolled her eyes as if she’d heard this excuse a time or two before, while David ignored the tardiness entirely in favor of roping him in for a hug.
“It’s okay; glad you made it.”
Brett leaned down to hug his grandfather, but it didn’t escape Anna’s attention that Eustice seemed stiffer in this interaction, more reserved than he’d been with the other grandchildren. He didn’t hug back or even offer so much as a warm smile. Oh well, Anna thought. It wasn’t uncommon for patients this ill to tire quickly, and she wasn’t especially keen on the idea of continuing to chat in the lobby and giving Brett the chance to recognize her, so she turned quickly toward the direction of his bed.
“I’ll show you to your room,” she offered, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Brett. She couldn’t tell if he’d noticed her or not, though she couldn’t imagine that he hadn’t. It was both a relief that he hadn’t said anything to her and immensely irritating. They’d gotten quite close during her first year of college—in fact, close was a bit of an understatement. She’d developed a huge crush on him, one that at the time she was sure was her first love but now she forced herself to believe was just falling victim to his charms. He was the best part of coming home from classes. He invited her to the best parties (which he usually was the person throwing) and kept her company while she studied. It had been hard for her to resist asking him out, but when she’d done so, it had gone horribly: he’d not only rejected her but had told all their mutual friends about it, which had been one of the most embarrassing things she’d ever experienced. After that, she’d vowed to never speak to him again. Even seeing him now, four years later, brought back a lot of the same rage and heartache from back then, but she knew that she’d have to steel herself against it. Her job was not only to care for her patients, but to ensure that their families were coping, and she couldn’t do that if she refused to even glance in Brett’s direction. With that in mind, she led all four members of the family into room seven and helped Eustice get settled into bed.
“Again, my name is Anna,” she repeated, mostly for Eustice’s benefit. “If you need anything—any of you,” she said, glancing pointedly at David, then Martha, then Brett, who looked away as soon as she stared directly into his dark brown eyes, “please let me know. I’ll let you get settled.”
Anna walked out of the room and shut the door gently behind her, then sat back down at the computer at the front desk to ensure that all the paperwork for Eustice’s check-in was handled. His medical file answered most of the questions that she might have for him, and it was a rule that they never spoke directly to patients about payment so long as they had family members who were dealing with the financial side of things, as it could stress them out and detract from the peace of mind that they were meant to find at Sunny Villa. After about fifteen minutes of paperwork and a few other things she had to get done from the computer, she watched David and Martha walk out, but Brett wasn’t with them. Martha stood at the front desk to give Eustice’s insurance information before she left, and by the time she finished and she and David left, Brett was still apparently in the room with Eustice. Just as she started to wonder if she should check on him, he came down the hallway, his posture much sullener a
nd more somber than the cocky, flippant attitude he’d sported on the way inside. She couldn’t help but feel a little worried.
“Is everything okay?” she called out to him before he could turn to leave. She didn’t want to talk to him, but her caring nature overshadowed how much she wanted to avoid the only guy who’d ever broken her heart. He startled a bit and ran a hand through his short, black hair.
“I’m fine,” he lied obviously. “Thanks, Anna.”
She sighed, knowing full well that he wasn’t telling the truth, both because she’d been doing this job for too long to be fooled and because she knew him. “It’s hard when a loved one checks into a place that we know they’re not checking out of,” she empathized. “If you try to keep it all inside, it’ll swallow you. You can talk to your brother and sister about this, right?”
He laughed humorlessly. “My sister doesn’t like me,” he admitted, “and my brother isn’t exactly the ‘talking’ type.” When he looked at her, so genuinely upset and unguarded, she couldn’t help but think that maybe he’d changed. After all, he’d only been twenty-four, the same age that she was now, and that was still pretty young. Perhaps, in the time that she’d spent away from him, he’d matured a little.
“If you need to talk, I’ll listen,” she offered, smiling when his eyes seemed to light up in relief.
“Could I buy you a drink when you’re off work?”
“I’m off at three,” she replied. As she watched him turn and leave, she braced herself for an uncomfortable late-lunch with the man who had always been her “what-if” guy.
Chapter Two: Brett
It had been months since Brett had seen his grandfather. Eustice had been relatively stable in his cancer treatments for the past two years, but the whole family had known that it was optimistic to believe that improvement would last forever, and in the past week, his health had taken a fairly rapid turn for the worst. It made Brett feel a little guilty about not making the time to see him, especially when they both knew that he wasn’t too busy with work or other obligations, but he tried to push that thought to the back of his mind so he could focus on spending time with him now.
After he and his siblings had successfully settled Eustice into his room, he finally got to take a good look at him for the first time in a while. He’d lost weight, he could see, and his normally olive skin tone had taken on a pasty, pallid appearance. He didn’t look healthy in the slightest, which sort of helped him get past the denial phase of checking him into a hospice center. His grandfather would die here, and there was no way around it. Perhaps he should feel sadder than he did, but the man was almost a hundred, and he’d lived a long, full life. Not to mention, ever since his wife had passed away, he’d seemed at peace with the idea of death, almost welcoming the idea of seeing her again. Brett wasn’t sure if he believed in that sort of thing, but if it helped his grandfather feel better, he wasn’t going to argue with him.
“Alright, Gramps,” David said, snapping himself out of his thoughts, “we’ve set up your pictures on your dresser. Do they look alright?” Apparently, while Brett had been daydreaming and looking at his phone, Martha and David had unpacked Eustice’s bags. Martha had put his clothes into his dresser drawers. While she’d done that, David had arranged his picture frames. Even when he’d been in and out of the hospital so frequently that he barely ever stayed longer than a few hours to get IV fluids, Eustice liked to have his pictures. They were little snapshots of his life, some as recent as last Easter and others decades old. Most were of his wife, Beth, and their kids, Brett’s dad. Brett and his siblings were in a few, and so was every family dog that Eustice and Beth had owned. Each one had an understated yet stylish frame, beautiful in their own ways, and they made Brett think of when he was younger, how close his family had been before Beth’s death and his parents’ divorce.
“Thank you, kids,” Eustice said gratefully. He looked tired, but then, someone as sick as he was would probably always look tired. “You don’t have to stay if you’ve got places to be.”
Martha shook her head and put on a brave smile despite the tears that formed in her eyes at the thought of leaving him here for the first time. “We’ll stay as long as you want us to,” she reassured, fixing his blankets under his chin. He reached out and touched her cheek, something that he’d used to do to them when they cried as children. It made her relax a little.
“I’m tired, sweetheart,” he told her. “I’ll probably go to sleep soon, anyway.” Reluctantly, Martha agreed, then leaned down to kiss him on the cheek.
“Call if you need anything,” she reiterated. Brett stood to leave with her and David, but before he could even turn toward the door, Eustice shook his head.
“Brett, would you mind staying with me for a moment longer?”
Taken aback by the request, Brett couldn’t very well deny a dying man anything he asked for, so he nodded, shrugging at Martha when she shot him a questioning look and waiting for his siblings to leave. Eustice pointed to the plastic chair at his bedside, and Brett sat next to the head of his bed.
“Did you need something, Gramps?” he asked. There wasn’t anything that he could provide that Martha or David or one of the nurses couldn’t. Maybe it had just been too long since he’d seen him and he wanted to catch up.
“I’m sure that you know that Beth and I built up a considerable fortune while she was alive,” he began, a renewed energy filling him that seemed to come from nowhere. “Our plan was to leave it all to you three kids and your daddy.” Brett nodded.
“I…uh, thanks,” he stammered, unsure why he was being singled out to receive this information. Of course, he’d known that his grandparents were filthy rich. They’d struck oil when they first moved to America from Korea, and though they hadn’t been street-smart enough at the time to get every cent of the money they should have gotten from it, they’d found an investor who’d helped them become multi-millionaires. Of that money, they’d set aside most of it for their children and, eventually, their grandchildren.
“I’m afraid that I’ve written you out of the will.”
Brett blinked, too shocked to speak for a solid minute.
“What?” he asked when he finally found words again. “Why? What did I do?”
Eustice sighed, long and low, which ended in a fit of painful-sounding, wheezy coughs. “My boy, that money is supposed to be used to better your lives, to make sure that you kids have an easier life than we did. However, it’s not meant to give you a free ride. Your daddy already raised three kids; he’s lived a productive, fulfilling life, and he worked all through it. He deserves a rest. And Martha, she’s engaged and planning to have kids of her own. Even if she chooses to quit her job to raise them, it’ll be a noble thing to do. David and his husband are looking to adopt, too, and that’s no easy task. Plus, he’s thinking about going back to school to get a graduate degree in computer science. They’ll all put the money to good use.”
Brett frowned. “So you’re saying that I need to have kids to warrant being in the will?” He hated to admit it, but much of what his grandfather had just told him was news to him. Martha was getting ready to have babies? And since when was David going back to school?
He had to admit that he’d taken an easier path than either of them had chosen. David had gone to college, while Martha had served in the military for four years before coming home and marrying a soldier that she’d met while deployed. Brett, on the other hand, hadn’t moved out until he was twenty-three even though his parents had offered to pay for his apartment while he was in business school, and even after he’d agreed to get his own place, he’d relied upon a lot of financial help from both of his parents despite their divorce. He’d worked as a taxi driver a few nights a week, but when that got in the way of partying, he skipped it, which meant that he didn’t always make enough to make ends meet.
“Of course not,” Eustice chastised, sounding a bit irritated at the insinuation. “You’re free to make your own future, my boy. I just
don’t want you to throw your life away, and with the path you are on presently, I’m concerned about you. I’m not giving you money to spend on alcohol and flights to Vegas.”
Brett rolled his eyes. This wasn’t the first time someone had felt the need to have this conversation with him, but it never changed a thing about the reality: he was enjoying himself doing what he was doing. It was working for him, too—he wasn’t in danger of losing his apartment, and he never went hungry, so why change anything? Why fix something that wasn’t broken?
However, if Eustice had told all this to his father, then that might be a problem. Above all things, Brett’s dad wanted to honor Eustice’s wishes, and if he made a rule that the money wasn’t to go toward supporting Brett any longer, then he could expect to be cut off soon enough. Despite the divorce, his parents still communicated very well, and if his dad stopped giving him money, his mother would do the same shortly thereafter. As much as he hated to trick his grandfather, telling him what he wanted to hear was mutually beneficial, he thought. It’d give Eustice some peace of mind that his family was taken care of while also making sure he got his cut of the will.
“Just show me that your life is on track, son,” he reasoned. “That you’re working toward something sustainable and productive. That’s all I want for you.”
