Shiver : 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror - Aurora Belle. Страница 36

I sighed and exited the bathroom, knowing I was already ten minutes late starting my rounds. I had a few residents who were assigned to me as patients. Most of them didn’t need constant supervision, but it was still policy that at the start of my nursing shift I was supposed to check-in with all of the residents on my watch.

First up was always Sandy. I made it a point to get her over with at the very beginning.

“Sandy, are you done getting ready for the Halloween party?” I asked, knocking gently on the cheap chipboard doors that dotted the hallways of Paradise Springs. I didn’t want to knock. Given the choice, I would have walked right on by Sandy’s door, but I had no choice.

Let me warn you. Sandy is the opposite of a fine wine. Instead of getting better with age, she’s only become crabbier. And don’t you dare pity her. She wasn’t like some of the patients here who were irritable because they were experiencing chronic pain or some other serious illness. No, Sandy was fit as a whistle and was the resident ringleader at Paradise Springs. She ruled that nursing home cafeteria with an iron fist, and she even scared me a little bit.

“Oh yes, I’m ready,” she sang with her shrill voice.

I wish I could go back in time and throw bleach on my eyes before opening that door, but alas, time travel hasn’t yet been invented. So instead, I opened the door to see Sandy standing in a head-to-toe black spandex jumpsuit that was only half zipped in the front.

You know who shouldn’t wear spandex? 80-year-old women.

“AHHHHhhhhhh.” I couldn’t stop the scream that erupted from me, but midway through I felt bad so I tried to turn it down a notch.

“I know! Have you seen a cat woman this sexy before?” she asked, staring at herself in the mirror.

I couldn’t answer that question because my eyes were trying to retract into my brain. She spun around in a circle for emphasis, and I just stood there, too shocked to comment.

“Sandy, are you going to zip it the rest of the way?” I asked, trying to sound gentle and not judgmental, but, I mean, her left boob was just hanging there, flapping in the wind. And while I see a lot of body parts in this job, usually they aren’t just out there for anyone to see.

She glanced down. “Damnit, the left one keeps popping out.”

Andddd, my life is now complete.

“Alright, well you tuck that back in there… and I’ll see… go… the party starts in thirty minutes!” I dashed out of that room like my life depended on it, not bothering to form a complete sentence prior to my departure.

I know what you’re thinking and, yes, my job as a nurse in a “retirement community” is pretty glamorous. What twenty-three-year-old wouldn’t want to spend their Halloween night supervising a bunch of crazy old people? I didn’t need friends or a boyfriend when I had these guys to keep me company.

I kept walking down the hallway in pursuit of my next resident, trying to scrape the image of Sandy’s boob out of my mind. Before I could turn the corner toward Anne’s room, I saw Gertie— one of Sandy’s side-kicks— walking straight toward me with a friend. She was a small woman, seemingly even tinier every time I saw her. Her back hunched over at a chirp angle, but she wore bright colored muumuus and always had her hair styled into cute, white curls.

“Oh Ruby, you look like a prostitute in that outfit,” Gertie hissed as she passed me in the hallway with her walker.

I glanced down at my navy blue scrubs and Nikes. “Gertie, these are my work clothes… I’m not even dressed up for Halloween.”

Gertie’s friend, who was walking beside her with a walker of her own, patted her on the back. “If she wants to dress up like a slutty nurse, let her. She’s young. These kids are so reckless these days.”

They kept walking off in a tizzy, shaking their heads at how deplorable I was dressed.

“I’m literally in my normal work scrubs!” I yelled after them, only then realizing that they couldn’t even hear me anymore.

I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, repeating the phrase “I love this job, I love this job,” over and over again in my mind.

This was going to be a long shift. I had actually been looking forward to a quiet night at home in my apartment. I was going to make some popcorn and talk myself into buying Halloween candy for kids, but then eat it all myself since no one trick-or-treats in an apartment complex. It would have been perfect.

Instead, I’d picked the short straw at the beginning of October and had landed Halloween duty. But, I’d come prepared this time. I had two years of Paradise Springs under my belt, which is why I had the following items inside the pockets of my scrubs:

— Band-aids

— a roll of butterscotch Lifesavers

— a pair of small latex gloves

— two condoms

— a small bottle of disinfectant

One couldn’t be too prepared during the Halloween shift at Paradise Springs. I was running through the possible outcomes of the night in my head when I knocked on Anne’s door. Anne was always my favorite stop during my rounds. I’d camp out in her room during my shifts, explaining that she needed some extra TLC. In reality, we would sit on her bed flipping through rag magazines and gossiping together.

When I knocked and entered her room that day, she was sitting at her small vanity getting ready for the party. I breathed a sigh of relief as I pushed through the door and closed it behind me. Her vanity was small and old, a relic from her house. It didn’t seem to belong in the sterile room when she’d first moved in, but we’d decorated her room for months, making it feel homey and comfortable. Now there were a series of framed photos that hung on the wall beside her vanity: her and her late husband, her and her grandchildren, and even one of her and me together.

“Hot mama alert!” I said as her gaze met mine in the mirror.

“I thought you said you were going to dress up,” she frowned.

I reached to grab the pair of ears out of the back pocket of my scrubs. The moment I positioned them on top of my short pixie cut, Anne smiled.

“There, much better. Those mouse ears really suit you,” she said, adding a bit of blush to her cheeks. If I had any say in how I aged, I hoped I would look like Anne. She was beautiful with emerald green eyes (just like her grandson), white hair that she always spun into artfully done up-dos, and just enough wrinkles to give her a wise appearance.

“Are you saying I’m mousy?” I joked, narrowing my eyes on her as I moved to take a seat on the end of her quilted bed.

She laughed. “No. You’re cute, like a little mouse.”

“Whatever you say,” I smiled. “What are you supposed to be anyway?”

I glanced down her royal blue dress that wrapped around her in tight folds. It was beautiful, but I couldn’t place it as any costume I’d seen before. A gold statement necklace wrapped around her neck and hung down her chest.

“I’m not dressed up as anything. I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do since George will be giving us characters to play in the murder mystery. I thought it’d be too confusing if I was in costume as well.”

I nodded. “That’s a good point. Too bad Sandy is already dressed up as Catwoman.”

Anne’s mouth dropped open. “Is she really?”

“Yes, and Gertie called me a whore in the hallway.”

Anne started laughing then, and the skin around her eyes crinkled as her grin overtook her features. When she finally took a deep breath, I asked her a question.

“Hey Anne, is it really a good idea to do a murder mystery in a nursing home?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

I pressed my lips together as I tried to work out the precise way I should word the next sentence.

“It’s just that… some of you are older… not you, Anne, but you know.” I was flailing around like a fish on a hook.