by Julia Kent
Routine was so important with Alzheimer’s patients…if Ed were this fine and grounded, then coming here with Alex must be his routine. How long had Alex been bringing him? And how could she have missed such a fine man right in front of her face?
Alex felt like a drowning man holding on to her hand as he shook it, as if it were a life preserver or a last-minute attempt to pull him out of troubled waters. In reality it was neither. The expression on her face said that what had started out as a polite gesture—a farce, really—for Ed’s benefit had turned into an acknowledgment of the attraction that he so keenly felt.
A million questions peppered his thoughts and nearly threatened to come out in a rush. Why had she ignored his phone calls? Why had she ignored his texts? What had he done to turn her off? What could he do to turn her back on? Did she remember him from these appointments? From the shocked look on her face he guessed not, which made him feel fairly pathetic. How could she be so memorable to him when she found him so easy to overlook?
Maybe he wasn’t her type on the deeper level that he’d thought, and he was making more of this than there really was. Surface-level attractions could probably be as hot as their connection had been, and surface-level explanations were often enough.
He didn’t really believe that, but some part of his bruised ego needed to think it through and at least contemplate it, because why else wasn’t she jumping into his arms right now? What made her hesitate? Why would someone so interesting and quirky—and so passionate only a week ago!—be so measured in her reaction to him?
Measured—that was a hell of a euphemism he was coming up with, wasn’t it? She wasn’t measured. She was blowing him off. She’s just not that into you, Alex, a voice said.
At that moment he knew he was a goner because even thinking it felt like someone had punched him in the throat hard enough to cause his vision to be filled with gray spots, the pain so real and so great, it trickled down into his toes. Waiting for his grandfather felt like his life peeling away, the minutes like hours. He felt what he had thought he had to hope for, what he thought he and Josie had, slip from the context of what had been and thrown away. Ready to be incinerated and recycled into everything else and nothing else.
There was not enough in the waiting room to distract him from his thoughts, either. Reading the latest article in The New Yorker or checking out new recipes in Good Housekeeping were his only other options. He had his smartphone, but he wasn’t the type to haunch over texting people, or to read BuzzFeed articles or check his nearly non-existent Facebook feed. He had seventeen friends and fourteen of them were family.
He was rather used to being at this sort of loose end. Few typical distractions engaged him—his interests were medicine, Grandpa, and quite a bit of philosophical contemplation over a macchiato as he tried to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
Med school had been the big goal, then internship, and now residency. He was solid in his knowledge that delivering babies and providing women’s health care was exactly where he needed to be. It was a vocation and not just an occupation. So, he knew he was capable of making a massive life choice and settling into it with great happiness, contentment, and intellectual curiosity that would always drive him to go deeper and further.
Outside of work, though, life was a giant hole, occupied occasionally with friends, a game of basketball that he picked up here and there. Could he fill that hole with something as satisfying as medicine? Could life away from work actually balance, complement, his work? Could finding someone be the same? Could you really find one person, like one career, with every element you needed in one package, an anchor for your sense of being, unswayed by drama or volatility? Was it possible to love someone and have them love you back, not 50/50 but 80/80?
Alex didn’t know. He gave up entirely on the magazines in front of him and gave in to an Angry Birds app on his phone. His brain was exhausted. Flinging little red, round electronic renderings of real-life animals was easier than navel-gazing.
“Josie, are you dating anyone?” Ed asked, reaching across the table and placing his hand on hers, the gesture grandfatherly and not at all a pass.
She decided to turn it into a joke anyhow. “Why, Ed? You looking for a girlfriend?”
Mirth filled his eyes and the boom of his laughter carried, she imagined, out into the hall. “Oh, no! Don’t you dare even imply it,” he said, laughing, his hands slapping the table. “I have a girlfriend, honey. I’m taken.”
“Bummer!” she said, snapping her fingers in a gesture of frustration.
Ed just shook his head, those brown eyes filled with a kind of wisdom and focus that she didn’t get to see very often in her patients. “My girlfriend and me, we’ve been together for two years, and Josie, honey, if she thought you were coming on to me she’d come in here and rip your head off.”
“Really?” Josie answered, slapping her palm against her chest. “You got yourself a sweet young thing who could beat me up?”
“I got myself a sweet old thing who’s been around the block a few times and could take a whippersnapper like you down like snapping a twig.”
Josie stood and Ed picked up on the body language, standing as well, understanding that the session was done. It was a small test, but one that she used for almost every appointment, along with a few other nonverbal social cues to see how aware her patients were. Ed was doing well—not as well as she had hoped, but reasonably well for a man his age and with his level of Alzheimer’s advancement.
Her sense of empathy broadened, blossoming, carrying out to cover Alex. She didn’t know which of Ed’s daughters was Alex’s mother, but all three of them had come in here at various times with their dad, loving and supportive though busy. The worst patients were the ones who were dumped off, left alone, the caretaker or the home health aide or occasionally a family member absent. Just a body in the driver’s seat of the car waiting. Patient outcome or disease progression for those patients weren’t nearly as positive as for those who had a strong family support network.
Ed would do fine compared to some of her other patients, but the whole family had a long road ahead of them. She suspected that Alex probably had a lot to do with enrolling Ed in the program. The older man didn’t strike her as the proactive type, and, frankly, neither did his daughters. The driving force behind all of this must have been Alex. She’d seen it before; a fair number of patients in the trial had family members who were in the medical profession. In many ways, it was a perk of having a relative who was a nurse or a doctor or a physical therapist.
The downside, though, was that for the millions and millions and growing who didn’t have that advantage, new medications, new procedures, new ideas went untapped. Thinking about this was depressing her, all of it floating through her mind in seconds, as she took Ed down to the prize closet.
Most patients loved the prize closet, especially those who’d grown up poor or who were currently poor. Even if they hadn’t, or weren’t, the prize closet seemed to be a nice little place where folks could indulge. She opened the slim door and there, before them, were three shelves. On the first shelf was a smattering of gift cards to local restaurants. The most popular had surprised her—a local coffee shop, not a chain, and after the fifth or sixth person in a row chose to take the $25 gift card as a “thank you” for the monthly meeting, she asked why.
“Every morning, before 9 a.m.,” one of her patients explained, “seniors can get a dollar coffee. This will give me coffee for most of the month, and it’s a real nice place. You get to sit there and just chat with people.”
The next time the administrator went to order gifts for the prize closet, Josie had made a point to let them know about patient feedback and she found herself gently steering some of her older, lonelier patients to pick that, imagining a group of them sitting in this local coffee shop, sharing a cup of joe in the morning, finding the companionship they needed.
That could be you, she thought, the voice invasive
and melancholy.
Pushing that thought aside, she returned her attention to the closet. The second row was covered with books. Large-print books leaning more towards Nora Roberts and Tom Clancy than anything else, though some of the women delighted in the romance novels, clutching them to their chests and covering the book cover as if it were a clandestine gift.
The men, though, tended to go for the third shelf, which had mostly sporting goods: golf balls, tennis balls, swim goggles, and kites—things designed to be played with a grandchild or to be enjoyed by the more active seniors.
Ed’s hand went straight for the gift-card shelf and then stopped.
“Have you been to the coffee house?” she asked.
His hand was suspended in midair, shaking just a little. He didn’t have an official diagnosis of Parkinson’s, so she knew it was just the slightest of tremors that come with age. He put his hand back down, pursed his lips, and gave her a disapproving look. “If I’m going to get coffee I’m not going to get it there.”
“Why not?” She had been thinking about gently suggesting that he take that to get out more, and enjoy conversation.
“I can get all of the coffee I want whenever I want. My girlfriend works at a restaurant,” he said, nudging her in the ribs.
“Oh. That’s a nice perk.”
“No, honey, the sex is a nice perk. The coffee is just an extra.”
If she’d been drinking something she would have done a classic spit take. Instead, she just choked, Ed grinning madly at her. “Okay, that’s a little too much information, Ed, but uh… thank you for sharing.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “No pun intended.”
“Okay, Ed, so let’s stick to umm… finding your gift,” she stammered, trying to extract herself from a very uncomfortable conversation. “How about this one?” She pointed to a card for an ice cream shop.
He snatched it up. “Oh, I love Christina’s. Absolutely. I can take my girlfriend there for a cone.”
They walked back out to the waiting room, where Alex jumped up as if burned by their presence. “Josie,” he said.
“Alex,” she said, mocking him.
His mouth flatlined into an embarrassed frown. “How are things going?”
“We were just talking about our sex lives,” Ed answered.
A couple of people sitting in the waiting room tittered.
“Really?” Alex’s eyebrows shot up.
“Yes. Why don’t you share, Alex? There’s that new woman that you kissed recently. You were telling me all about her in the car ride over here.”
Alex froze.
Josie turned slowly and looked at him, imitating what he’d just said a few moments ago, her own eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. “Really?”
“Grandpa, I think you’re remembering that wrong,” Alex said slowly, slipping his hand around the old man’s shoulders. “Why don’t we just get going now? It’s time for—”
Ed interrupted him. “Josie, you done working yet?”
She reflexively looked at her wrist, checking the watch she hadn’t worn for years. “Actually, I can take a break for an hour, or so…an early lunch. You offering, Ed?”
“I don’t know, Josie, I’ve got a girlfriend. I can’t really take you up on…asking me out.” He waved his hand at her, as if saying “pshaw.” “No, I’m just asking”—he glanced pointedly at Alex, and then at her—“if you’d like to go out for coffee and a bite to eat. There’s a sweet thing I really adore over at Jeddy’s.”
Jeddy’s. God, she couldn’t get away from that place, could she? How did a hole-in-the wall diner like Jeddy’s suddenly become the center of her social life? Alex had a look on his face like he was struggling to remain neutral, to seem as if he didn’t care whether she said yes or no. The intensity of his eyes gave away what he was really feeling.
Ed’s expectant look, so friendly and simple, was what broke her. Awkwardness be damned; she wasn’t going to disappoint a very nice old man, who had just failed every part of the test that indicated any sort of progress, or even a holding pattern, in his disintegration through Alzheimer’s. A pang of sadness shot through her—for Ed, for Alex, for his entire family—as she began to suspect that Ed was either on a rapid decline or, more likely, might be in the control group and not in the group that was receiving the experimental medicine.
“Sure, Ed,” she said, reaching out to touch him tenderly on the shoulder, gazing firmly into his eyes, so he had her full attention. “I would love to enjoy a nice, sweet thing at Jeddy’s.”
They took two different cars, despite Ed’s not-so-subtle attempt at getting her into Alex’s old Honda, the kind of car you expected a six-figure-in-debt medical resident to be driving. Her own car was on par, a twelve-year-old Toyota Tercel that she held together with duct tape, gum, and a lot of atheistic praying. Her mechanics these days were Tom and Ray from Car Talk, but her car got her through the handful of thousands of miles she drove it every year, relying more on public transportation and her own two feet than on the combustion engine that putt-putted her to and fro in the metro Boston area.
Jeddy’s was just a few miles away, and she scored an awesome parking spot, which made this ridiculous bit of Kabuki theater almost worth it. Finding a good parking spot was a form of sport in Cambridge and Boston, and she wanted a ribbon for getting one directly in front of the restaurant. A pang of guilt hit her as she watched Alex circling the block repeatedly, finally letting Ed out at the entrance to Jeddy’s and then driving off, leaving her alone with the old man.
His warm, confident brown eyes were a bit clouded now, filled with a tentative fear, a look she had come to know all too well, professionally. He was confused, and in his confusion he reverted to the past. “Meribeth? Meribeth, what are we doing here?” he asked.
She remembered that one of his daughters was Meribeth. She wasn’t sure whether it was Alex’s mom or not, but right now it didn’t matter. A split-second decision made her choose to ground him as much as possible in the truth, reserving the right to shift if needed. “Ed.” She touched him again, making that connection, smiling, exuding as much warmth and familiarity as possible. “Ed, you just came from the medical building where you go every month with Alex. Remember, you came to my office and I asked you some questions? I’m Josie, Josie Mendham.” Maintaining eye contact, and speaking as simply as possible without condescension should do the trick. The fear dissipated, as if her words had marshaled an army that fought it back. Victory, she thought.
“Josie! Of course, I know you! How’s my gal?” he said. This was a technique that some of the sharper patients used. He was covering, and she knew it. He didn’t realize it…or did he?
She took a chance. “Ed, you don’t have to pretend you know me, I want you to really know me. I’m the girl Alex…kissed.”
His eyes shifted instantly, as if someone snapped their fingers, into complete focus. The man whiplashed back into himself, completely in the present. “Hot damn, I knew it! I knew you and Alex were a thing!”
“We’re a what?” a deep voice said from behind her.
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together in agony. This was not how helping Ed to ground himself was supposed to work. “Alex, you’re here!” she said, acknowledging him because it would have been far worse had she shown her humiliation or acknowledged what Ed had just said. Looping her right arm through Ed’s left, she marched him toward the entrance of Jeddy’s, sidestepping, for now, Alex’s expected question about why on earth Ed would have any idea that he and Josie were a thing.
The entrance to Jeddy’s seemed bare without the warlock waitress who wore the pair of balls, but since it had been auctioned off at some autism event, it was probably now sitting in some millionaire’s garage, gathering dust. At least the poor warlock waitress got a chance to retire. Madge, on the other hand, didn’t. She marched right up to the group and then, to Josie’s utter amazement, reached out for Alex, stood on tiptoes, and planted a loud smackeroo on his cheek
. The kiss, intimate and friendly, and the kind a grandmother gives her grandson.
“You two know each other?” Josie asked, incredulous.
Ed walked over to Madge and slipped a sly arm around her waist, goosing her hip and laughing when Madge playfully slapped his hand. “You’re the threesome girl, aren’t you?” Madge said, pointing at Josie, narrowing her eyes.
Josie turned into a beet on the spot. A bright red, flaming beet. “What? No, I…what do you…?”
Alex and Ed looked at her with eyebrows practically up to the ceiling. “Threesome girl?” Alex asked, with a half-smile on his face.
“It’s not what you…No, that’s not what I…oh…” she stammered, completely flummoxed by Madge’s comment.
“Yeah, she comes in here all the time,” Madge said, “with this incredibly big, pregnant blonde, and the blonde is pregnant by one of two guys, but not in that Maury Povich kind of way, more in a…Mormon sister wives kind of way, except sister husbands, no…brother husbands.” Madge waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Bah…now she’s got me stammering trying to explain it. It’s all…this quirky thing involving Thor and his little…model boyfriend.”
“Mike and Dylan,” Alex said.
Madge snapped her neck back in surprise. “You know them?”
“Yeah, I was just at Laura’s birth.”
“You delivered the baby?” Ed asked.
“No, but I assisted in the case.”
“Maybe you’ll get a fighting chance at some of those coconut shrimp now that she shat out the football,” Madge laughed to Josie, a conspirator’s smile on her face.
As the four of them stood there, ignoring the growing line behind them, Josie realized that suddenly she was something different to Madge. “How do you all…?” She cut off her own question. “Madge is the sweet thing that you like at Jeddy’s, isn’t she, Ed?”
His smile stretched so wide across his face, she thought it might meet at the base of his neck in the back. “Yes, ma’am, me and Madge have been together for a good long time, and she’s my sweet thing.”
