Ruthless

Chapter 15

“Nurse! Please help. My wife needs help!”

Nurse Garcia hurried down the hallway after the fretful man. He was old and she soon caught up and paced ahead into the room he was vigorously pointing towards. She was new at Sunny Springs but she had seen the man before. She knew his wife of course, Mrs Crawford. She was a lovely old dear but quite consumed by Alzheimer’s.

As she entered the room, nurse Garcia found Mrs Crawford on the floor, between her chair and the bed. She laid face up, her vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. Maria Garcia knew she was gone.

She must have passed some time ago.

A pang of guilt made nurse Garcia grimace before she made the sign of the cross against her forehead and chest. Despite starting her shift two hours earlier, she had not yet been able to complete her rounds of the floor. In fact, in the three weeks she had been at Sunny Springs, she’d not been able to complete a round of the floor once. The facility was extremely under-staffed and there was always some problem or emergency that needed to be seen to.

Mrs Crawford’s husband came into the room, puffing and panting. “I found her like this,” he yelled. “Do something!”

Nurse Garcia knelt beside the old woman and felt her pulse, more for the benefit of Mr Crawford than for any other reason. The woman had no pulse and she was stone cold.

“I’m sorry, Mr Crawford,” she said sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”

The man’s face contorted into an expression of sheer anguish. He plodded over to his wife’s body and fell roughly down onto his knees.

“I told him, I told him,” he said wearily. “I told him she needed more to eat... someone to make sure she was eating all her meals.” Tears rolled down the man’s cheeks as he brushed his wife’s wiry grey hair from her frozen face.

Nurse Garcia stood up and dabbed the corner of her eye with her index finger. “I will give you a minute,” she said. “I’ll call the morgue and have them come collect her.”

* * *

Jack Crawford lay next to his deceased wife, holding her cold hand and looking mournfully onto her pale face. He had visited her every day for the past five years, and though he knew she was slowly failing, he had not expected this. He had expected to find her asleep in her usual spot. She always looked peaceful when she was resting back in her chair with the afternoon sunlight upon her face. He would sit and watch her instead of waking her. He would pretend that she was like she used to be, when they were younger. He would imagine she was merely taking a well-deserved nap after running around after the grandchildren all day. He would imagine that when she woke up, she would know who he was. She would remember he was Jack and not Edward, her first husband who’d died in the war so many decades ago. She would remember all the wonderful years they’d spent together and she would tell him she loved him.

Pain and anger stabbed at Jack’s heart as he placed his wife’s hand tenderly upon her chest.

“This is his fault,” he whispered to her cold body. “I told him that you needed special care, that you weren’t eating.”

Only weeks ago, Jack had found out that his wife Hennie, had been telling staff that she had already eaten when her meals were brought to her. The young staff were too inexperienced and overworked to question it. Jack had interrogated all the nurses after arriving one day to see Hennie’s face shrunken and puckered with malnourishment. The imbecile duty nurse had repeated Hennie’s story like a tape recorder: “Edward brought me a beautiful picnic today for our wedding anniversary. I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Hot tears welled up in Jack’s eyes at the memory. He had uncovered that Hennie had gone three full days without food.

He’d gone straight to see the manager, that filthy swine Harold Briggs. He turned out to be an impertinent, self-serving brute. He clearly treated the staff and guests like he treated the residents – like trash. Jack had explained the situation and demanded that Hennie be given extra meals as well as special care until she was back to health. Briggs had responded with some insensitive comment about ‘allowing Hennie to make her own choice’. To suggest that Hennie was making a choice, and to further suggest that Jack should let her starve herself to death, was completely vulgar.

If only I was a younger man, I’d have put that Briggs flat on the floor. 

Jack’s thoughts were interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. He wiped the fresh tears from his eyes before he looked up to see the stranger standing there. He was expecting to see one of the nurses but this man was not dressed in the Sunny Springs uniform, he wore a fine black suit. Whoever he was, he had a kindness about him. Despite his grief, Jack suddenly felt calm and at ease.

“Mr Crawford,” the man spoke smoothly. “My name is Christian. I wonder if I might come in and talk to you about Hennie.”

The old man picked himself off the floor, dusted his hands on his creased, brown slacks and offered one to Christian.

“Have we met before?” he asked, shaking the man’s hand.

“No,” he replied, “but I have spent some time with your wife, Hennie recently.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have a message from her.”

Jack stiffened, a tinge of jealousy shot through his chest. Had he spoken to Hennie before she’d died that day?

“With respect Christian, I see her every day and she has...” he paused, “she had Alzheimer’s, so I’m not sure any message you have for me is going to be something I don’t already know.”

Christian smiled and placed a warm hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack tensed at the unexpected gesture but the tension left his body as quickly as it had come. He felt comforted and relaxed. The man fixed his kind green eyes on Jack’s. Jack couldn’t look away and he didn’t want to. He felt like he was in a dream – detached and weightless.

“Hennie wants you to know that she loves you. She appreciates all you have done for her and she told me to make sure you know that she will take good care of Speckle.”

Jack’s jaw fell open in surprise.

“How did... how do you know about Speckle?” he asked.

“Hennie told me all about the farm and how you raised Speckle from a foal after her mother died giving birth to her.”

“But Hennie doesn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember. I’ve told her over and over. Tried to make her remember the farm, remember us. And Speckle, she died after Hennie got sick. I took her out to see her one day and she was petrified, like she’d never seen a horse before in her life. It broke my heart.”

“Hennie remembers everything now, Jack, I promise you that. She is at peace.”

Jack didn’t know what to say, he looked deep into Christian’s eyes and saw only truth.

Jack felt a smile possess his lips. He turned to looked down at his wife and for the first time, noticed a smile upon her face too. She did look peaceful.

“Thank you,” he said softly. But when he turned around again, Christian was gone. At that moment, nurse Garcia entered the room, the janitor following close behind with a gurney.

“Mr Crawford, we are going to have to take your wife to the morgue now.”

Jack felt the warmth of the room fade. He faced away as they collected his wife and wheeled her away. As he stood there, alone in her room looking at the bare, colourless setting, it suddenly felt final. His wife was dead. Jack struggled to keep hold of the peace that Christian had given him but a more powerful desire twisted and turned in his stomach. Revenge.