“Unit 2?”
“No, dementia. No one talks about it.” Antonio said.
Blanche was amazed people could be so cavalier with this idea. Shirley now Antonio. Creepy.
“So is there anyway to find out if Señora Rodriguez is in the Dementia Unit?”
Tonio shook his head, still distracted. “They don’t like to ‘upset’ us with that information.”
“So people just disappear?” Blanche looked at Edna who gave a skeptical face.
“Sí.”
“But a list has to exist somewhere,” Blanche let the phrase hang and tried to imagine how to get a copy.
“Posible,” came Antonio’s distracted reply and Blanche was proud she understood his Spanish even if the information wasn’t helpful.
“Could the man you knew you saw have killed her?” Blanche pushed Tonio to tune in to what she said.
“I’m sure he has the same evil genetics. Es posible.”
“Really?” But Antonio was in his own world of wishing for phone calls.
Edna shook her head, “I didn’t see anyone. But she was loudly protesting. I didn’t even have my hearing aids in.”
Blanche wondered if Tonio and Edna were given ecstasy after that incident in the night and then so soon the next night for the theorized helicopter, well maybe it made them extra dopey. Or a bad strain of pills? Good grief. Blanche stood and stretched.
“We need to find Frank for our Scrabble game.” She announced even though Edna and Antonio were doing their own things.
The woman shouted from her wheel chair, “Where’s Arty?”
Blanche got the hibbie-gibbies with all this old person weird crap going on around her. She knew she needed to feel compassion, but she wanted out of here. She marched down to the other wing hunting for Frank. She hoped he’d play along whether he liked Scrabble or not. Too bad Al wasn’t handy. He’d enjoy fawning over Veda. Blanche wanted to hear Veda’s story, and it seemed she needed the male of the species in order to keep the conversation going.
Blanche found Frank outside the secret entrance having an illicit cigarette. That sounded wonderful, so she joined him for a quick smoke explaining the Scrabble game scenario. The smoke sure helped her frayed nerves between a banshee scream from a movie star in the morning, slinking along halls hoping not to be noticed, and old folks oddities all choking out the oxygen in her normal world.
“So I don’t have to really play?” Frank wanted to know.
“Not necessarily, we just need to make up a mixed group.”
“She’s an odd bird. Bet she’s got quite a story,” he said of their quarry.
“I imagine so.” Blanche hadn’t explained why she wanted to hear the story to Frank or mentioned Shirley’s other name. Veda might harm her. They crushed out their cigarettes in the potted plant that held the secret screwdriver for getting in if the door unlatched.
They got back to the Atrezzo lounge where Antonio and Edna worked at the game table getting out the letter tiles and the letter trays. Blanche hoped that Shirley-Veda showed up. She knew she and Edna would enjoy a quick game of Scrabble, but everyone else seemed an unwilling participant. The complaining would hit major league status if it was for nought.
“Where’s Arty?” the lady across the room hollered at the TV.
“What’s her deal?” Blanche whispered. This was the sort of thing that freaked Blanche out.
Edna shrugged and arranged letters on her tray.
Tonio said, “Arty was her business partner for years. He’s dead, killed in an accident not long before she moved in here. She never married so they were close.”
“Doesn’t that qualify her for the, uh, special wing?” Blanche glanced over at her.
“She’s actually still there mentally except for these Tourettes moments yelling this guy’s name. They lived and worked together and he was 10 years younger, so it’s like part of her brain can’t accept he’s gone.”
Blanche looked at the woman more closely. Being married a long time left a mark on you when the other half departed the living world, she knew, however you felt about them when they split. It must be that way for this lady if she lived and worked with the guy. Blanche shivered as her husband Harry walked over her grave. She should be glad she only got weird about the dark and not a Tourettes case of yelling Harry’s name when he checked out.
They were ready to play, but Blanche wouldn’t let them start until Shirley aka Veda Vespucci showed up. To pass the time, she read some of the mysterious info from the bills out loud to Edna and Antonio to see if they remembered treatment they’d received. The bills remained a mystery for about half of the codes. The other half she’d identified and seemed to be legitimate. Her hopes of breaking Edna out on a billing issue faded.
“Nope, didn’t give them any pee,” Edna said looking at letters.
“Mi tampoco,” Antonio added.
So no urinalysis fees necessary. Strike one for Royale Cove Care facility honesty and clarity in billing.
“Code 7757. Services rendered patient 9 a.m.”
“That means nothing to me,” Edna said.
The woman in the wheel chair staring at the muted television spouted. “Claw toe.”
Antonio shrugged.
“How about this one?” Blanche recited, “Code 8886. Blood 10 a.m.?“
Edna continued making up words with letters she drew from the bag amusing herself.
Antonio stared at the new cellphone in his hand, no doubt willing it to ring and his brother to be on the line. Definitely not concentrating on the Medicare code quiz she offered.
“Blood vessel thermograph.” The woman shouted.
Wait a second. Could it really be? Blanche tried another code with her ear tuned into the Tourettes woman. This time she did not add the staff note.”
“PET Scan,” wheelchair lady called it out like bingo.
Blanche spun around on her game table chair. She’d always been a whiz at wheelie office chairs during her executive secretary days. “Do you know all the codes?”
The woman didn’t take her eyes off the soap opera on the TV. “Try me.”
Blanche read another one that puzzled her.
“Catheter tubes.” The woman turned her head and her gray eyes bore into Blanche’s through her large lenses.
“My name is Blanche, nice to meet you.”
“Janice Morgan,” she said clearly.
“You know them all?”
“They’re robbing us blind. Well technically, they are robbing the government, but the government gets their money from us first.”
It didn’t seem possible to Blanche someone would know the codes by heart. “How do you know the codes though?”
“My mind does funny things with numbers. Arty and I are accountants. I was in insurance accounting before I got into the rich and famous estates.”
Frank looked up and said, “Well, order me a beer and call a taxi.”
“How do you know they aren’t legitimate billing issues though?” Blanche watched Janice’s eyes closely for signs of delusion or absence.
She erupted in some codes, then translated herself. “If either of them, she pointed to Antonio and Edna with a twisted fist, “had a pet scan. They’d be looking for cancer. They were just disoriented cause they got some bad hookie, but it’s a chance for Royale to royally put it to you. It’s so convoluted it’d take a forensic accountant to sort it out, but they are able to quadruple bill all sorts of things because they got fancy medical equipment stashed in the wing upstairs and a reputation for specialness. I got charged for a new wheelchair, a set of crutches and a theracane. I haven’t walked in five years and this chair is not new. What are they going to bill next? A prosthetic leg?”
“Don’t you complain?”
“They just tell me I’m mixed up. They just throw ‘old and confused’ at you ‘cuz they think our brains are gone because we’re retired and gray headed.”
“Yes, but surely you could call someone. The State Inspector
’s in Tallahassee?”
“I don’t think those inspectors know what they’re looking at on Medicare codes. I think they just try to make sure it’s not one of those places that leaves people lying in their filth.” She glanced around and Blanche involuntarily did as well.
Janice continued, “ I talked to one of those inspector guys last year. He kept asking if I’d had a shower and food. I tried the offices again up there but phone service here sucks. Tallahassee always says they’ll call back. If they did, I never heard it. It really gets my goat them ripping me off day in and day out.” Her voice grew louder.
“Don’t you have family or a social worker to intervene?”
She made a disgusted sound. “No family. Worked for all the rich people so many years I never got out to meet anyone. My business partner, Arty and I made a good life together. My brain never really appealed to men our age anyway. ”
Blanche thought watch it with the “our age” thing but didn’t say it.
Janice said, “I did file a complaint with the social worker who comes to visit but never heard back. Nor was my bill corrected. Bills after that have been more accurate. Probably they caught on I knew what I was looking at which most of the lockup crowd here don’t.”
Shirley-Veda breezed in wearing a maxi skirt of leopard print that hugged her well proportioned curves and a low cut black tank revealing more cleavage than Blanche thought necessary at this age. Blanche couldn’t be sure but thought she heard Frank make a growling sound in his throat.
Antonio said, “Ay, ay, ay.”
Edna said, “Did it just get hot in here or something?”
Blanche tried not to laugh.
Janice Morgan waved around Antonio and Edna’s bills that Blanche had given her like a lasso around her head. “$20,000 for two days in the health wing! Give me a break! Royale Cove is a den of thieves!”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Thieves! Thieves!” Janice Morgan chanted from her wheelchair.
Blanche snatched the bills out of Janice’s hand as she became more agitated.
“A big rip off. This place is a drain on society. High society.” She laughed at her own joke, but it was shrill. She started to pound the sides of her wheelchair.
Shirley aka Veda pointed to the Scrabble board, “So are we going to do this thing?” Antonio had gotten up and given her his chair and organized another. Frank introduced himself with panache.
“Highway robbery done under our noses in the form of medical codes! Robbing us in our beds!” Janice continued over by the television. She directed her vigorous comments toward the nurses station down the hall.
Blanche was torn between wanting to talk to Janice about how to sort out the bill, so she could get Edna out or even better set things right so the Medicare system didn’t get bilked daily. But she needed to sort out Shirley’s story too.
Janice’s yelling began to crescendo. The residents didn’t pay much attention. Blanche found that disturbing too. How do you become accustomed to someone yelling randomly on the other side of the room?
“People’s fortunes stripped out from under them and their estates held as collateral!”
“You draw seven tiles each.” Edna explained the game to their Scrabble novice new friends.
Shirley fidgeted with the loose fabric of her skirt.
One of the aids came down the hall, the hispanic man with a curly ponytail. His shirt read Carlos. Blanche watched him with interest remembering Antonio interacting with him the first day.
“Now, now Miss Morgan,” Carlos said.
The sound of his voice made Shirley just about jump out of her chair. Blanche wondered if she was hard of hearing but Shirley stiffened further. Her expression was hidden behind her dark glasses, but that wasn’t a smile on her lips.
Carlos unlocked Janice’s wheelchair brakes.
“Not you. Not you.You’re one of them. You’re not fooling me.” Janice yelled.
“You’re over excited,” Carlos said.
“I’m in my right mind and I’m going to give you a piece of it,” she screamed.
“Let’s go see the nurse and see if she can give you something to relax,” he said amicably. He grabbed the chair handles and started steering her out of the room.
She tried feebly to punch at him over her shoulder. “Not you. I want someone else. We’re being robbed in our beds. We’re being charged for breathing! You’re one of them. They murder you if you run out of money! Murderers!”
Her voice faded down the hall as they moved off. They’d watched soberly as the last of the drama played out.
Frank said, “That’s the guy.”
Antonio said, “Yeah. Mine too.”
Intriguing, Blanche thought. “So tell me about the guy.”
Frank shrugged.
Antonio said, “He gets stuff for people.”
“That sounds like prison.” Blanche felt it couldn’t be so melodramatic.
“It’s an island. There ain’t no corner store,” Frank said.
Antonio added, “They have a little onsite shop here in the care center,” he made a face of disgust, “but it’s full of healthy caca that they deem acceptable for the people of high blood pressure land.”
Frank said, “Low salt granola bars, jeez, give me a break. Just cuz we’re old don’t mean we don’t want to enjoy life. So, you ask the guy.” He gestured with a thumb to the now empty hallway.
Shirley sat very still during this whole interchange, Blanche noticed. “So, the administration doesn’t know?”
Frank shrugged.
Antonio started to say something, but Shirley interrupted him.
“They know,” she said it with such venom that Edna even looked up from fiddling with her Scrabble tiles.
“He’s evil incarnate. He’s the devil.” Shirley-Veda jumped up actress style. “I’m leaving.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Antonio, the charmer, took Shirley’s hand and seated her again. “No, Cariña, don’t leave? ¿Como sabes? Are you sure the administration know about all of our contraband from the Carlos?”
“I know it for a fact.”
Frank chuckled, “They’d put a stop to it if they knew. The nurses would have a fit. They’re paid to keep us from using up too many funds being unwell, right? And to help us die off quietly without disturbing the other residents.”
Blanche thought of Janice’s ranting. Murderers? Quite a dangerous place if everyone told the truth.
Shirley’s vehemence matched her scream of the morning, but quiet and intense instead of loud. “Residents don’t want their supply line cut off, so no one says anything to the nurses.” She paused, “But Carlos does the administration’s bidding off the official records and gets a pass on his other...activities.” She adjusted her dark glasses slightly and Blanche thought Shirley-Veda wiped away a tear. “He knows too much.”
“Wait. What bidding?” Blanche needed to know. “Knows what?”
“He knows their secrets. Things they don’t want in the paperwork.” Shirley pointed at the papers in Blanche’s lap. “So they don’t pay attention to his, uh, extracurricular work.”
“What kind of stuff does he get? Granola bars with salt? Big deal.” Edna blinked through her thick eyeglasses.
Frank cracked his big knuckles. “Naw. Whiskey and cigs. That kind of...”
“Rum and cerveza.”
“Whiskey?” Edna’s eyes lit up. “I’d love a little drink. Been dying of thirst since I got here.”
Frank shuffled over to a water dispenser and pulled out several plastic cups. He filled the top one with water. He came back to the table distributed cups and put a little water in each cup acting as bar tender.
“Chocolates and rape,” Shirley muttered.
They all held their breath and looked at her.
No one said anything.
Frank pulled a flask out of his pocket and broke the tension with, “Shirley, my beauty, I think you need a double.”
“What do
you mean? Are you serious?” Blanche leaned over the Scrabble board.
“As a heart attack.” Shirley-Veda’s eyebrows shot above her dark glasses.
They all looked at each other for a moment. Edna knocked back her whiskey and water.
Tonio spat out a string of Spanish that no one followed, but the tone was clear.
“What are you mad about anyways, honey?” Veda-Shirley wanted to know. “Nobody is climbing into your bed while you’re doped up.”
“¡Madre de Dios! What did you say?”
“Hold the phone.” Blanche wanted to make sure she tracked on this crazy conversation. “You know about the drugging episodes too?”
“It’s Carlos. Isn’t that who we’re all talking about?” Shirley said.
One of the aids came in the room and adjusted the TV volume even louder and got an old fellow settled in his wheelchair in the corner. Their table was too silent.
“My turn,” Edna winked at Blanche, and she put a word on the center line of the board.
Tonio’s hands quivered around his new phone. Frank got up to refill a water glass, so Blanche played a simple word from her Scrabble tiles to fill the silence.
Shirley aka Veda said, “Oh, I get it sort of like crossword with no hints.” She added C-A to a T on the board and Edna rolled her eyes. Blanche and Edna played a no-three-letter word policy until the tiles were all drawn from the bag. Neophytes.
The aid padded back down the hall in those weird quiet plastic shoes on fancy industrial carpet.
Shirley continued, “Some big shot arrived in the oh so secret Unit 2 a couple nights ago.” Shirley seemed to enjoy being the center of attention with special knowledge. The star again. She crossed her legs and hitched up her long skirt to show some leg. “I bet you guys woke up all psycho and dopey.”
“Ostras, I knew it.” He jumped from his seat and looked at his cellphone. He focused on Shirley, “Do you know who it was?”
“Somebody rich and famous like always.”
Blanche said, “Do you know the name?”
“Nope. That’s always super hush-hush. Carlos sometimes tells me a guest is coming, but he never slips and tells me the name. He’s shrewd. Believe you me, I’d be on the phone to a tabloid in a heart beat to sell this place out.”
Complicated Care (Blanche Binkley Book 2) Page 13
