Ellie's Crows

by MaryAnn Myers

  Ellie laughed. “You’d better not turn him loose. We only have two hours and he’ll never let us catch him.” Diablo shook his head. “Come on,” she said, backing up farther and farther away and leaving them totally on their own. “You can feed him his apple and he’ll love you forever.”

  * * *

  Ellie arrived at the nursing home at ten-thirty, right on time, fresh out of Diablo’s arms and in the mellowest of moods. Grandma Betty’s roommate April was sound asleep, Grandma Betty, too. The sight of her sleeping so soundly brought a smile to Ellie’s face, until second glance.

  There was an IV attached to her grandmother’s arm. Dextrose.

  Ellie turned on her heels and walked back down the hall to the nurses’ station. “Why is she being given fluids?”

  “She’s dehydrated.”

  “I don’t understand.” Ellie stared in frustration. The dehydration was nothing new. “But….”

  “I’ll be down in a minute. Let me finish this report and I’ll be right there.”

  Ellie walked back to Grandma Betty’s room in a fog. This didn’t make sense. Surely her grandmother didn’t want this? Once again, Ellie struggled with whether or not to wake her.

  “Good luck,” the nurse said, when she entered the room and Ellie voiced her concerns to the woman. “About an hour after her Kemoran shot, she went out like a light.”

  “You gave her Kemoran?”

  “It was on her chart.”

  Ellie sat down in the chair and let her arms drop. This was unbelievable, a nightmare. She drew a deep breath, tried calming herself. “You’re all supposed to call me before any non-routine medication is administered. She’s allergic to Kemoran, remember?”

  The nurse glanced at her chart. “Actually she’s not exactly allergic to it. According to her records, it just rebounds on her after a while. There’s a difference. The doctor prescribed only half her usual dose. She’ll be fine.”

  Ellie stared out the window into the night, close to tears. She wouldn’t be fine. She was dying. She was dying tonight, and she was dying drugged. The nurse left the room unnoticed. Ellie dug into her purse for some change and went and phoned her father. Jewel answered.

  “They drugged Grandma,” Ellie said, her voice cracking. “I can’t believe they fucking drugged her. Where’s Dad? I need to talk to Dad. Tell him to make them stop. Tell them not to do this to her….” She leaned back against the wall, and slid to the floor, trembling and in tears. “Tell him to make them stop. Please…tell him to make them stop.”

  Her father came into the room and found Jewel crying. “Who is it?” he asked, and took the phone. “Who is this?”

  Ellie sobbed into the phone. “It’s me. They….”

  “Ellie? What’s wrong?”

  Ellie wept uncontrollably. “They….” She wiped her eyes and tried to catch her breath. “They gave Grandma Kemoran. They gave her Kemoran.”

  “She was in pain, Ellie. What did you want them to do? She requested it.”

  “No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She knew I’d be back. I told her I’d be back.”

  “Ellie. Ellie, listen to me.”

  “No. You probably told them it was okay.”

  “Ellie….”

  “No.” She dropped the phone and buried her head in her hands. “She wouldn’t do this to me. I know my Grandma. She wouldn’t do this to me.”

  ~ 20 ~

  It was almost three in the morning before Grandma Betty stirred, and then only to cry out, frightened and confused. “I’m right here, Grandma,” Ellie said, holding her hand. “I’m right here. You’re okay.”

  “But I had my check! I know I had my check! What could have happened to it? I have no money now! What will I do?”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “But I have to find it! Don’t you understand? I have to find it!”

  Ellie glanced frantically around the room, saw a pile of napkins on the table and grabbed one and put it in Grandma Betty’s hand. “Here, I found it. Here it is, Grandma.”

  “Oh thank heaven. How would I have paid my bills? I’m on social security!”

  “Yes, I know. Everything’s okay now. Here, let me put it away for you.”

  Grandma Betty relinquished the napkin and closed her eyes. “Put it in a safe place, Ellie. Please.”

  “I will.” Ellie went through the motions of pretending to hide her grandmother’s check in the top dresser drawer. Awakened by the fuss, April asked if she could have a drink of water.

  “Of course.” Ellie walked over and held the cup to her mouth, one of those “sippy cups” that toddlers use.

  “Thank you,” April said, her quivering hands wrapped around Ellie’s. “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ellie smiled, touched and yet saddened at the same time by this formality of politeness, and gently fixed her blanket. When she sat back down in her grandmother’s chair, the room fell silent again. “As still as a mouse. As still as a house.” Ellie couldn’t remember the nursery rhyme. Was it a rhyme or a song? “When all through the house….” Words and phrases tumbled through her mind. “Tea for two, and you and you. Remember, re-mem-a-member, re-member….” She listened to her grandmother’s breathing, listened to April’s breathing, listened to her own breathing. They were all three breathing as one, in perfect harmony, perfect rhythm.

  “Re-mem-ber. Re-mem-a-member. Re-member.” Ellie tried to get the words of that song to stop invading her mind, to leave her alone, to go elsewhere. But it just kept coming back, crowding the silence, crowding the breathing.

  When an aide checked in on them, Ellie welcomed the intrusion. “Would you mind staying with my Grandma a few minutes?” she whispered. “I need to go to the ladies room.”

  “Sure, no problem. Go ahead, I could use a break.”

  As Ellie walked down the hall, the shuffle from her shoes on the linoleum was the only sound she heard. The woman’s comment had both saddened and touched her as well. To think of sitting with a dying resident, as “taking a break.” Sitting down on the job, so to speak. And yet, how many patients and residents had this woman cared for and watched die, dressed for the undertaker, closed their eyes, combed their hair.

  Ellie washed her face and hands in the stillness of the ladies room, feeling alien, detached, observing her every move as if a stranger from a distance. A cloudy distance. She looked in the mirror, and something about the way she looked in the mirror reminded her of her Grandma. Same expression, same furrow in her brow.

  “I am never wearing red,” she told herself. And laughed at the thought of telling her grandmother that. If only she would wake, one last time, and understand. Understand that although the two of them were alike in many ways, Grandma Betty was one of a kind.

  “Betty Boop.” Ellie chuckled. “Tell me about the time you dressed up like Betty Boop, Grandma. Tell me.”

  “Well, dear. It was a fundraiser. The roof on the Legion was leaking and could no longer be patched, and….”

  A nurse entered the ladies room, scattering Ellie’s thoughts. The woman had blood all over her uniform. “A resident fell and broke his nose,” she said. “What a night!”

  * * *

  Grandma Betty woke again a little after five, groggy, but rather coherent. “Oh, Ellie. Thank heaven you’re here. Could you go see if I’m due for another pain shot?”

  Ellie stared, reality sinking in. So she did ask for the Kemoran, after all. “Grandma, if you have one, it will only put you back to sleep. Is that what you want?”

  “I’ll be all right. It won’t make me sleepy.”

  “It will, Grandma. It always does,” Ellie said, not bothering to mention all the other side effects that had already begun to manifest.

  “But the doctor said. He said he’d tell the nurses I could have it if I’m in pain.”

  “Are you in pain, Grandma?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Now?”

  “Not so much, but it may get worse. It
probably will get worse.”

  “Could I have a drink, please?” April asked.

  Ellie walked around to the other side of April’s bed.

  “Ellie?”

  “I’m right here, Grandma.”

  “Did you go ask?”

  “No, I’m giving April a drink of water.” Oh God, she thought, it’s sounds like I’m watering a horse. “I’m over here with April. I’ll be right there.”

  In the short time it took for Ellie to come back around to her grandmother’s side, Grandma Betty became agitated. “I don’t understand why you don’t want me to have it.”

  Ellie hesitated. This was ludicrous. This was ridiculous. This was Kemoran. “Grandma, can I see if there’s something else they can give you? Something maybe even better.”

  When Grandma Betty agreed, Ellie headed down the hall to the nurses’ station, mumbling to herself. “You’re a junkie, Grandma. An eighty-five-year-old junkie.” She looked up to see her father walking toward her.

  “Dad, why are you here?” It wasn’t even daybreak.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I’m fine.” She turned to the nurse and started to ask about the medication. Her dad interrupted. “Dad, please,” she said. “I need to handle this, not you. Okay? I just want to ask if there’s something else she can be given. Extra-strength Tylenol, for Christ sake, if nothing else.”

  The nurse paused. “I won’t be able to get a hold of the doctor for another hour or so.”

  “What about that stuff she got when she had the toothache?”

  The nurse flipped back through the chart, glanced at the calendar, and shrugged, but in a positive way. “It’d be a stretch, but the time on the prescription’s still good.”

  “It’s non-narcotic, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?” her father asked.

  “Avimex,” the nurse said. “It’s not quite as strong as Kemoran, but it will numb the pain.”

  Her dad shifted his weight. “Are there any side effects?”

  Ellie looked at him, just looked at him a second, and wanted to scream. Instead, she calmly rattled off the side effects, amazing herself, even as the words were coming out of her mouth. She couldn’t remember the name of the medication, but could damned well tell you the side effects.

  “Liver damage?” her father repeated, top of the list.

  “Yes, liver damage, with long-term use. Only she’s not going to be here tomorrow, Dad, soooo….”

  Her father took a step back, conceding, and walked with Ellie down the hall. “Here,” he said, handing her a bag. She took it from him and opening it, swallowed hard. Hot chocolate and a cinnamon fried cake, her favorite breakfast ever since high school. Her bottom lip started trembling.

  “It’s all right,” he said, putting his arms around her. “It’s all right. If she wants to die, I’ll let her die. Okay? I won’t interfere.”

  Ellie nodded, snug in his embrace. “I love you, Dad.”

  “I love you too, Kitten.”

  Kitten. It was the nickname he’d given her as a child when she fell out of the tree that day and didn’t get hurt. It had been years since he called her that. She was a woman now, he’d said, and you don’t call your daughter a cat.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She wiped her eyes and the two of them entered Grandma Betty’s room together.

  ~ 21 ~

  Abby answered the door and was surprised to find Ellie standing there. She was early, two hours early. “That’s why I stopped by. I don’t want to go.” They were supposed to walk a labyrinth this afternoon. “I’m really not in the right frame of mind. I just didn’t want you freaking out when I didn’t show.”

  “But why? We promised Grandma Betty.”

  “No, you promised her.”

  Abby stared. “Is she…?”

  “No, she’s still with us.” Ellie explained the situation and turned to leave.

  “Ellie, come on. I need to go.”

  “Then go. You don’t need me.”

  “Yes I do.”

  Ellie sighed. “It’s no big deal, I’m sure, really. It’s a canvas with a maze painted on it, and you walk around and….”

  “It’s not a maze. It’s a labyrinth.”

  “Whatever. Like I said, it’s no big deal.”

  “But it is. Something’s going to happen today. I can feel it. We’re supposed to go, you and me. We were meant to go. We have to go.”

  Ellie hesitated and shook her head. “You said this about the cornucopia, you know.”

  “Yeah, but that was different. I didn’t know then what I know now.”

  Ellie smiled faintly. “Oh?”

  “I can’t put it into words. But I was thinking maybe after we walk the labyrinth….” She picked up the brochure. “Here. Look, you’re supposed to concentrate on something pressing, some issue you’re dealing with, and while you walk the labyrinth, think about it. This one woman suggests you even say the problem over and over in your mind while you’re walking.”

  “See, that’s what bothers me with all these things. What if you don’t have a problem? Problems you can do anything about that is?”

  “Then you walk in peace.”

  “I can walk in the woods.”

  “You can also walk the labyrinth. Come on, come in the kitchen,” Abby said. “Michael’s cooking sushi.”

  “Cooking sushi?”

  “Yes, we don’t like it raw. He calls it san-sushi! It’s really tasty!”

  “What happened to vegetarianism?” Ellie asked, trailing behind reluctantly.

  “We’re compromising. We only eat meat or fish on weekends.”

  * * *

  Abby dressed in pink: pink sweater, pink slacks, pink scarf. She gazed at herself in the mirror. “I look like a guy in drag.”

  Ellie laughed. “No, you don’t. You look pretty.”

  “Yeah, right.” Abby tucked her stomach in, turned one way and then the other. “You sure?”

  Ellie nodded. “Lose the scarf.”

  The labyrinth walk was being held at a local conservatory. The parking lot was packed; in its center, lay the labyrinth. Ellie got out of the car, shaking her head. Her comment that it was a piece of canvas with a maze painted on it wasn’t far off.

  An explanation of the labyrinth’s origin was in progress. “Ancient times…healing properties…insightful.”

  Ellie stared. All she saw was canvas and paint.

  “And now I would like to introduce….”

  Abby nudged her. It was the “flower-child woman.”

  “Each one of you will experience something different as you walk the labyrinth. No two experiences are alike, just as no two people are alike. Some will feel elation, some a sense of calm. To some, this could be a life-altering occurrence. To others, just a walk in the park or the woods.”

  Ellie glanced away; was it her imagination the woman’s eyes seemed to rest on her with that last statement?

  “As in life, as you walk through the labyrinth, you will follow strangers…friends…and family. You will walk in their footsteps, and in the footsteps of those before them. On your way out, some you will pass, some will pass by you. Some you will acknowledge; a smile, a nod, an embrace. Some you will choose to ignore. You are all on the same path, and yet alone on your own journey. Allow those before you, time. Be mindful of those that follow. And in the center, know you are not lost…as to come into the center, is to begin your way back out. There are no false paths; there are no dead ends. This is not a puzzle; this is not a maze. It is a circle of wonder and reflection. Walk in spirit, go in peace.”

  One by one, the assembled took off their shoes and stepped onto the labyrinth. Some were eager to go first, some held back. Abby suggested she and Ellie walk well apart, so as not to be distracted by one another.

  “Whatever,” Ellie said.

  Abby looked at her. “If you say that one more time, I’m gonna scream.”

  Ellie chuckled. Th
is was silly. A crowd of people walking around a parking lot on a canvas in their bare feet or socks. What glorious thing was supposed to come from that? They’d be better off going over and sitting down under a tree.

  Flower-child woman, who had been milling about, appeared at her side. “Do you have any idea how far along you’d be,” she said, “if you’d only just once start out with an open mind?”

  Ellie smiled politely.

  Abby stepped onto the labyrinth next, all eager, and pink socks. An elderly woman followed, her feet twisted and gnarled, and after her; a man with snow white hair, then a teenage girl.

  Ellie glanced over her shoulder at a flock of crows circling the conservatory, and high above them, a buzzard. She squinted in the sunlight. Waiting to pick my bones, no doubt, she thought.

  Flower-child woman took Ellie by the hand, waited for her to step out of her shoes, and led her to the labyrinth. “Walk in spirit.”

  Ellie relinquished the security of her hand, and was on her own. One foot on the canvas, and a myriad of emotions washed over her. Sadness, a tremendous sadness, then embarrassment, don’t be seen crying, fear, of what? Happiness, remorse. She reasoned herself through each one, step by step. This was not the time and place to become emotional. She forced her thoughts elsewhere, recalling bits and pieces of what Abby had said. Bring a problem, bring a concern, meditate, rejoice. That had a nice ring to it, a nice sound. Bring a problem, bring a concern, meditate, rejoice. She imagined saying it out loud, a mantra. She imagined her voice low, she imagined it high. She imagined putting it to music - she imagined it being read. Bring a problem, bring a concern, meditate, rejoice.

  The flock of crows landed amidst the hostas, the buzzard still soaring overhead.

  Victor. His name invaded Ellie’s thoughts, her being. His name, his sound, his scent, his presence. Victor. She glanced ahead for Abby. There were people sitting in the center of the labyrinth; a woman, arms folded and in tears, another with hands pressed gently to the canvas, a man with palms raised to the sky. Abby entered and immediately knelt to the ground.

  The threat was not going to go away. The threat was real. Ellie concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. She’d done nothing to entice Victor, nothing to provoke him. How infuriating to have to think of that man, to have him constantly invade her thoughts. How infuriating to have to deal with him at all. Victor. Ignore him, a voice in her mind said. But how could she? Look where ignoring him had gotten her. He was frightening the horses. He was building a cage. He was stalking her. He knew she’d be back the other night to check on Damian. He’d been waiting for her….