Leaving Home

A pain stabbed Victor’s right shoulder, waking him up: whichever side he slept on always caused him pain in that shoulder. He turned on over to the other side and opened his eyes. Enough light enterd the room for him to know it must be morning, or close, and he stared at a picture of a youngish couple, maybe in their forties. The man had his arm around the lady and they both smiled out at the camera, as if this were the happiest of times. A lighthouse dominated the right side of the background, while ocean waves crashed on rocks on the left. One wave exploded into a circle of high white foam.

His left shoulder ached now and he thought for a second of sleeping on his back or stomach, but he felt he couldn’t breathe in either position. A slight terror grew somewhere deep inside of him, always had, ever since the breathing problems had begun: just thinking of the possibility could send him straight into a panic attack, with him having to wake up Suzie to talk him down. He pushed himself into a sitting position, with his legs dangling off the bed. This meant the bed was positioned too high and the bars were down. The aide would be mad at someone.

This wasn’t his bedroom.

Suzie would be able to tell him where he was. She was the lady in the picture by his bed, from the time they’d gone up on that lighthouse tour in Maine. She loved stuff like that: tours, cruises, that type of thing. It’s not something he’d have ever done on his own, but had always enjoyed it, mainly because it was with her. She’d talk to anybody, while he was the type who could sit silently, not out of shyness so much as he just didn’t like people all that much. More often than not, he’d end up talking to some asshole. He loved teasing her about how friendly she was, but she was gone now, wasn’t she?

He was in some kind of hospital or home or something, and he started to hear a low moan coming from the guy in the next bed over, the guy who lived on the other side of the curtain. It was a room for two, and the curtain was always pulled between them, so he rarely saw him. Frank? Fred? He jumped a bit to get down to the floor and his feet made a slapping sound on the linoleum.

The moaning grew louder.

“Stop it already. No one wants to hear your nonsense.”

But this only made Fred moan louder. Between the moans, Victor could hear a whistling and something like a low rumble.

Fred moaned again.

“Press the call button, for fuck’s sake!”

“I did!”

“Press it again.”

“I am.”

Victor slid his feet into his slippers and shuffled over to pull the curtain aside. He slept in the bed by the door, so hadn’t seen the storm outside. The hall lights were still low, though, the way the staff liked them at night. But it was day now, although not a very bright one.

It looked as though the wind had knocked over one tree already, not the large one about 10 feet from the window, but one of the smaller ones in the background. Rain was flying sideways into the window making it hard to see much clearly out there.

“Bad one out there,” he said.

The head of Fred’s bed was flat and his body sunk so deep into the mattress, he seemed unable to turn and look outside. “What?” he asked.

“It’s raining,” Victor said. “Bad.”

“Oh, god,” Fred said and began to mumble prayers.

A folded wheelchair sat in the corner of the room, between a chair at the foot of Fred’s bed and the radiator. Fred couldn’t walk. “Non-ambulatory,” the staff all said.

“It’s just a storm.”

“No. No one’s answering. Don’t you see? It’s THE storm.”

Victor scoffed. “I’ll raise your head.” He shuffled over. “I hope Suzie doesn’t try to drive in this.”

The man – Fred was his name – thanked him over and over.

“Can you climb out of bed now?”

“An aide, an aide. Get an aide. I need my meds. I should have my meds by now.”

Come to think of it, Victor should have had his by now too. It was hard to tell time with the sky so dark, but it was late enough to have his meds, certainly. As he turned to go, a large gust of wind blew against the window and for a second, it seemed as though it might break it.

“Oh, god,” the man moaned. “Hurry. Hurry, please.”

Victor walked out to the hallway. There should be people there: maybe a resident or two; the aides; a nurse; maybe a doctor. Where was the janitor? He was always there with his mop in the mornings. There should be a yellow triangle saying slippery floor. The janitor should be running up to Victor and reminding him to be careful, walking next to him.

The aides’ desk stood guard to the right, near the door out. So he turned in that direction, and grabbed the bar that ran along both sides of the hallway to help himself along. A lady in a robe like his was leaning over the counter and looking down at the desk. The robe meant she lived here too, but he didn’t remember her name. She turned her head to look at him, wide-eyed. Her bluish gray hair stood and pointed in all directions, as if it were trying to tear itself from her head.

He didn’t know what to say. “Suzie’s coming to get me today.”

“They’re gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

“Everyone. Just us left. They left us all. They want us to die.”

Victor felt a panic growing inside him. He remembered after Suzie died, how he said he didn’t want to live any longer. They hadn’t had any kids, so he was alone. Eventually, that feeling went away. Not from any support from friends or family: he had neither of those. It just faded on its own. But it wasn’t the same. He was alive now, but not really alive. Life needs hope: someday, I’ll get that better job; I’ll marry a girl I love; I’ll get to spend a few weeks just driving up the Maine coast looking at lighthouses and maybe splitting a lobster roll even though it’s a bit of a luxury.

After Suzie died, there wasn’t hope anymore. He’d past the point where you gained things, and reached that point of existence where you just lose them one by one: friends, health, memory, wife. That’s the challenge he never knew how to meet, dealing with the downward side of things. So he had thought he wanted to die at first, then thought he was okay with it. But right now, he felt he wanted to live, even if this place was what living meant.

He walked to the elevators and pushed both the up and down button. Neither lit up.

“There’s a code,” the lady said. He turned to look at her and she pointed at a number pad next to the buttons.

“A code?”

“For staff, family. Not us.”

Victor turned and entered anyway: 7182525670. Then he pushed the buttons again, but they remained dark.

“Too many numbers,” the lady said.

The number was his phone number growing up. Why’d they want him to put it in here? It was a long time since he’d grown up.

He shuffled back to the nurse’s desk, where the lady pointed to the phone. “911,” she said. “They left us here to die. Call 911.”

“OK,” Victor said, and stared at her without moving.

“Call 911.”

“Me?” he asked, and she nodded. Victor stared over the counter at the phone. They weren’t allowed back there. Someone had gone back there once and the orderly had beaten them. Everyone knew about it. They treated them as animals here. He had to get better. Suzie had to come and get him out.

“Call 911.”

“I can’t go back there!”

“They left us. Call 911. My daughter told me. Call 911 if it’s an emergency.” She reached up and started feeling around at the top of her robe, her fingers pinching and unpinching as if she were trying to grab something. “Where’s my button? I have an emergency button. It calls 911.”

Somewhere down the hall, way past his own room, someone else began to scream so that it echoed. There weren’t words, though, just panicked sounds, like some sort of animal. Then another, still from way down there. The window at the end of the hall was growing darker and it might even have shattered: the hallway was much colder suddenly and there was a strong wind. A chill went through Victor.

“Call 911,” the lady yelled again, and kept pointing to the phone.

Victor was always the one to take action. He hated when people were afraid of doing things. It’s why he was the boss, except he wasn’t anymore, was he? It was getting hard to remember, with the wind and the yelling.

He walked around the counter and hesitated before stepping behind it.

“Go, go,” the lady said. “Call.”

“Okay,” he mumbled. He’d pick up the phone and call. He shuffled forward and grabbed the phone, put it to his ear. There was no sound.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a sound?” he asked the lady.

“Call,” she said. Then she screamed and looked down. There was a puddle building up on the floor.

Victor put the phone to his ear again. Still nothing. He pushed buttons, and heard nothing, not even the sound of the buttons being pushed. He pressed 911, but there was nothing at all. The water began to come around the counter and into the nurse’s station. It lapped up around Victor’s toes. His slippers were already soaked.

“I think the window’s broken,” he explained to the woman, and pointed down the hall. “Rain must be getting in.”

He looked down at the phone one more time and realized it had more buttons than he knew what to do with. He hung up and looked at the lady. Voices grew louder from down the hall. Above it all, he suddenly heard Fred: “they left us. They left us.”

Victor remembered then: how they were all gathering around the nurses’ station: how they whispered, but he stood near, overheard them. “They don’t care about us,” they said. “The whole valley’s practically flooded down there, and the storm ain’t letting up.” “Brook Haven’s gone, totally gone.” “What about the residents?” Silence for a moment. Then: “Listen, I got my own mother I gotta worry about. Plus my babies. I can’t be worrying about other peoples’ families.” Then they all mumbled their agreements.

Victor looked up at the lady in horror. Her face had gone blank again. “There’s no one,” he said, but she was already walking off. He wondered if Suzie was finally coming today. Something big was up, he could tell.