A Little Romance: Stories for Hopeful Hearts

by Marilyn M Schulz

  Over the next few days, the little girl was there again and again, and she also became friendlier. Clearly the little girl wasn’t quite old enough for school yet. Now recalling her own school days, Claire took the unusual step of trying to get up from her wheelchair.

  The most she could do was stand, at first, but every hour, she tried again to do it herself and even take a few steps. It didn’t go very well, but she had nothing better to do. It was exhausting work.

  It wouldn’t do to ask for help, this hospice had nursing staff, but they were more for dispensing drugs to the residents and cleaning up any accidents than anything that might be restorative to the inmates . . . er, patients.

  Claire suspected that if she asked for help in trying to walk around, they would just up her dose of whatever it was they administered . . . at least what they thought they gave her on a regular basis.

  The most she could do on her own was stand up to get leverage in order to open the window a bit. She had to remember to close it too else the nurses might get suspicious about what she was up to.

  Then one day, Claire saw that the child had set up a tea party. On the far side of a little make-do table sat the little girl; on one side of her was set a battered old bear, and on the other side was an equally loved old doll. There was one setting left—the one clearly meant for a guest, and it was the setting closest to the hospice window.

  Claire seems to be have been invited to tea, even from her distance.

  She accepted with a nod of her head and what she hoped looked like a curtsy. She then elaborately went through the motions.

  It was charming, and then a young woman came out and helped the girl pack up her dishes carefully. Claire watched and the woman only looked over and nodded, smiling every so slightly.

  The young woman looked very tired.

  It had been a wonderful and nostalgic afternoon. Claire rolled out of her room, hoping to share her joy with some of her elderly friends too, but she heard the head nurse on the phone as Claire came down the hall.

  She rolled herself out of the way, but near enough to hear.

  The woman said, “I don’t know why she keeps holding on. Lord knows we haven’t given her much reason to enjoy life here, just like you instructed . . . Yes, we can do that, but I have to remind you that our price has gone up . . . well, then we’ll have to let her go . . . that’s what I thought. Pleasure doing business with you.”

  Claire had heard rumors about what went on, but she hadn’t really believed them. After all, old people like her died all the time, and Heaven knows her health took a dip after the car accident that had taken the life of her husband of 56 years.

  Poor Jeffrey had a heart attack on their way back from the theater, and he drove them into the other lane of the highway. Luckily, no other car was coming, but they went over an embankment, rolling the car until it stopped upside down.

  It took those blessed firemen hours to get her out, and there she was, the tiara still on her head. For Jeffrey, there was no rush—he was dead on the scene. Even so, she held his hand all the while they worked on freeing her.

  Claire had been in a wheelchair ever since, but otherwise she was in relatively good health—for her seventy-seven, no, seventy-eight years now. She had always been a bit of a walker before, and now it bothered her that she sat in the chair. She was sure all she needed was physical therapy, because in the hospital, the doctors told her she had a few cracks in some of her bones, but nothing that wouldn’t heal eventually.

  But none of that came, and she was taken home for just a few days before her son-in-law had her brought here.

  Now Claire didn’t like what the nurse had to say. But what to do . . .

  ~~~

  Thinking of the tea party made her think of her own younger days. There had been plenty of kids in her own neighborhood, and she married the boy next door. In the summer and on school holidays, they played all sorts of games—the standard baseball, or street hockey, or even tag and hide and go seek.

  As they got older, they read books or went to the movies, and then for days played those roles. One of Jeffrey’s favorites had to do with spies. They developed their own signals, and also their own code.

  In secret, Claire wrote a letter and had one of her friends (who also refused to swallow his pills) pilfer a stamp while doing his duties cleaning the floors, including those in the office. He had to work here too, because his family couldn’t afford the whole bill, it seems.

  When the little girl came out to play one day, Claire managed to slip the letter through her slightly open window. Then Claire could only pray that the little girl would know what to do. She did come and pick it up, but then only waved to Claire and took it into her house.

  Claire’s heart sank.

  In a moment, the young woman came out, and first looking over to Claire’s window, the woman walked down the block and slipped the letter into the mailbox. The young woman kept on walking, and the little girl didn’t come back out of the house.

  Other days, there were other games too, like hopscotch drawn on the pavement with chalk. The little girl didn’t seem to have a problem playing for both of them. Claire thought she must have a delightful imagination.

  Then one day, the little girl had drawn out a grid and marked her spot with a large ‘X.’

  Tic-tac-toe.

  Claire took the challenge and pointed to the panes on the window to make her selection. When the little girl picked what she thought was the corresponding square out there, Claire shook her head until the little girl figured it out. She smiled and took the chalk, marking a big ‘O’ in that square.

  After that, they played a few more games in the next day or two, until there was no more room on the pavement or sidewalk. Just in time—it rained for almost a week.

  One day, after the sun came back, the little girl came outside with paper that looked like it had come from old grocery bags. She had a few stubs of pencils and crayons and began to draw on those. Claire very much wanted to do something for her, so began to swipe paper and pencils and things from the room that was supposedly for the old folks’ arts and crafts classes.

  No one seemed to notice much; the nurses kept most of the elderly in the hospice drugged, and the few who had figured that out were smart enough not to let their attentiveness show when a nurse was near. Luckily (or not) that was more often than not. Most of those art supplies had a thin layer of dust, so Claire was careful not to disturb too much.

  Taking a few extra napkins at dinner—the usual canned slop that she wouldn’t have fed her dog—Claire tied the art supplies up in the napkin with a shoelace she had swiped from one of those men who wouldn’t notice. Then she slipped it out the open window, and barely got it closed when the nurse came in for the evening dose.

  The nurse ordered, “Here we go.”

  The woman watched as Claire tipped her head and dumped the little cup into her mouth, and then took a sip of the glass of lukewarm water the nurse pushed into her other hand.

  Then the nurse left, taking the little cup and the water glass, and leaving Claire to spit out the pills into her hand. She had never liked swallowing pills, ever since she was a little girl and had almost choked to death on a poorly chewed raw carrot.

  It was easy for her to just pretended to swallow them and then save the pills instead in an old empty face powder box . . . just in case she ever had the nerve to use them on a nurse or someone else.

  Claire supposed that was also in remembrance of those childhood games, but she had to hang onto something.

  ~~~

  One day, a nurse came to the door as Claire was signaling the little girl to come closer—she had some more things for her, and wanted to see her face when she opened the napkin.

  The nurse demanded, “What’s going on?”

  Claire gasped, but quickly recovered. “Swatting at a bee in my window there. Would you help me, dear?”

  Of course not, Claire already knew.

  The nurse only grunted
and said, “If you get stung, don’t come crying to me.” Then she reached up and pulled down the shade, saying, “There. What you can’t see won’t bother you anymore.”

  Claire mumbled, “Oh, thank you.”

  But the nurse then came right up next to her wheelchair and plopped something into her lap, saying, “You have a letter.”

  It was already opened.

  Claire said, “Why don’t you read it to me out loud.”

  The nurse did, but it didn’t make sense. It wouldn’t have. It was that same code she had made up with her neighborhood friends when they were children way back then. Now one of those friends was her lawyer, and in essence, the letter only confirmed that he understood what she had written before—and that he would do what he could.

  In a few days, the lawyer, Roland, came to visit, but the head nurse turned him away without letting him in to see Claire . . . or anything else going on in the hospice.

  The very next day, Claire’s daughter and son-in-law came. Her daughter had been crying, but kissed her mom and asked how she was. Claire didn’t get a chance to answer.

  Her son-in-law pushed a file folder onto her lap. He said, “We have some papers for you to sign.”

  Claire flipped through them—a deed to her house, a end-of-life waver, giving her daughter the final decision to cut off life support . . . and a new power-of-attorney.

  Her son-in-law wanted it all.

  Claire said, “Is that a raven?” She turned to her daughter and said, “My dear, is that a raven?”

  “What are talking about, Mom?”

  Her son-in-law said, “Nothing, she’s just faking it. Sign the papers, you old crow.”

  Claire suspected that being mentally incompetent was no deterrent for him or the nurses who would act as his witnesses. Those women were hovering in the doorway, waiting, and she wondered how much he would pay them. What happened to them in this world to make them so bitter and mean, Claire wondered.

  But she was a weak and old woman and so did what she had to do: She peed her pants, and the stream overflowed and onto the floor.

  He jumped away, yelling, “Gross!”

  The nurses rushed to help, seems they had some basic nurse’s instincts still. Besides, the head nurse was a dragon and didn’t like that smell in her rooms or her halls.

  It disrupted his scheme that day, at least, but he left the papers with the head nurse—that woman knew what she had to do. But for now, Claire had fended them off.

  ~~~

  In a few days more, Claire’s lawyer came again, this time with a court order and a sheriff’s deputy. The deputy was given a tour of the hospice—not by their choice, but by his insistence and his own court order.

  The lawyer had Claire sign a new will and a revised power-of-attorney, using a few of the still cogent patients in the hospice as witnesses. A third watched as lookout as the others took turns signing where directed.

  The lawyer said, “This place ought to be closed down.”

  “First things first,” Claire whispered. “But you’re sure this will stop them, even if they make me sign something else?”

  “It’s an affidavit, witnessed. Even if you sign something else now, you have nothing left of your own to sign over for their control. In effect, this puts your assets in a trust, Claire, and they can’t touch them now. I’ll protect them with all that I have and until my last breath.”

  He kissed her hand then, and she said, “Thank you, Roland, you’re a good man. You always were.”

  She knew too, because he had also been the best man at their wedding—Jeffrey’s and hers. The two men had been as close as brothers, even though Jeffrey was a few years older than him.

  He said, “Too bad you can’t go back to the old neighborhood. Remember the time . . .”

  He stopped and sighed. Clearly she had remembered it all, which is why she managed to get help now.

  She patted his hand; he kissed her forehead, then shook the hands of the witnesses, and met the deputy out in the hallway.

  All the way down, they could hear the head nurse complaining. For days after, the nurses were more attentive—and more abusive too.

  ~~~

  The spring turned to summer, and the little girl came to play nearby whenever she could. They worked out a sort of hand signal as well, and a few times, Claire managed to slip out letters again.

  She’d get the strange letters back, and the nurse would read them and each time become a bit more suspicious until one day, it was the son-in-law who came in with the latest letter. He didn’t even bring his wife and grandkids to dull the blow of what he had in mind.

  He yanked her wheelchair around to face him and demanded, “What is this?”

  Claire fought back her anger, and instead, pretended she was young again.

  “Oh, is that an invitation to Jeffrey’s birthday party? We all want to go. Roland will be so jealous, because he’s being punished and cannot. All the girls are going though, and Mother said I was to have a new dress. I’ve been waiting all week for the invitation to come. Is it pretty?”

  She held out her hands as if waiting to receive.

  He studied her for a moment, but she continued to smile. The man didn’t seem to notice that the smile came nowhere near her eyes. For all her subterfuge, Claire was frightened too.

  Clearly he was considering what to do.

  She began to ask about things that were decades past, and babbled on about diapers and nursery rhymes too.

  Disgusted, he left, and she then heard her son-in-law say to the nurse as he left, “She’s bats, it won’t be long now. Make sure of that.”

  In fact, it wasn’t, because Claire didn’t wake up again.

  There was no funeral, only her ashes in an urn held by her crying daughter at the reading of the will.

  Roland expressed his regrets—they were heartfelt. But he was only looking to the pathetic excuse for a daughter. How had she emerged from two strong people like her mother and father?

  Then he saw the bruises. She saw him looking and rushed to pull down her sleeve.

  Roland calmed himself, and as he read the will, found distinct pleasure in knowing the son-in-law got nothing. Even better was watching the man’s face when he found out.

  Claire had left everything to the little girl, minus funds left up to Roland’s discretion as executor, but nobody knew about that—also by Claire’s request.

  The son-in-law contested the will and took on a shady lawyer who worked on contingency. The shady lawyer demanded 25% of the profits . . . er, inheritance, and while the daughter protested, the son-in-law agreed.

  During the hearing, Claire’s lawyer presented the coded letters and explained what they were all about.

  The shady lawyer said, “Your Honor, please. Does our esteemed colleague expect us to believe this incoherent babbling states the intentions of the dearly departed? After all, we only have his word that these ramblings are any kind of a code, and if they are, if they are, how do we know he’s telling the truth as to their meaning?”

  The judge seemed impressed with the argument.

  He said, “You raise an interesting point.”

  But Claire’s lawyer only said, “I stand by my statement, and what I have presented.”

  The judge whacked his gavel and the daughter jumped, startled. It was clear she was both frightened and miserable.

  The judge said, “I’ll rule in three days, it seems pretty clear.”

  True to his word, the opponents were called into the judge’s chambers on schedule.

  The judge said to the son-in-law, “I won’t bother with the legalese, but this is my opinion: Any brain that was still capable of remembering a childhood code from sixty-five years before, that could figure out how to get messages out and back again while under such guard was still quite sound, thank you very much. I find for the dearly departed, her wishes via her will remain intact.”

  The son-in-law jumped up and leaned over the judge’s desk, yelling who know
s what. It was so garbled with anger and swearwords that the shady lawyer tried to pull him off.

  The bailiffs had to be called.

  The judge ordered, “I find you in contempt of court, and sentence you to three days in the county jail.”

  The shady lawyer stayed behind to more calmly plead his case, but the judge then handed him a form.

  “What’s this, Your Honor?”

  The judge said, “Copy of an exhumation order. The deceased is to be exhumed, along with all the people who died in that hospice in the last nine months. We’ll see if they died from natural causes . . . or not.”

  Claire’s daughter, who seems to have shrunk into herself, gave a startled cry and rushed away.

  The shady lawyer looked shocked, but he pointed to Claire’s lawyer and said, “This is all your fault!”

  Claire’s lawyer said, “The deputy filed his report, that’s all. Maybe you didn’t know what was going on, but if this is a case of homicide by neglect—or worse—then you might be included in a charge of conspiracy, along with your clients.”

  The shady lawyer’s mouth was moving, but nothing came out. He gathered his papers, mumbling, “He’s my client no longer.”

  After the shady lawyer left, the judge said, “So Claire really wrote these letters? After all this time?”

  Roland nodded. “She did, I have letters she wrote a few years ago to compare the handwriting if you wish. Shocked the heck out me too—like a voice from the past. I didn’t even remember at the time when we had first done this, but I recall it now. It was such a fun summer.”

  “Who knew she’d still remember them so clearly. Now that I’ve studied them, I do as well, so I can corroborate, if you ever need it.”

  “I have to admit that it took me a while and a look through an old trunk to bring the code back again.”

  “Ah, the book code, I recall. What was that again?