“Let’s get back to your childhood, Jane. What was it like in Minnesota during the war?” Warm, patient, optimal.
She couldn’t quite prop herself up, but the mattress deformed to help her brace against the pillows and the backboard. And she went back, smiled.
“Oh, the summers were beautiful, Frank. Mother would hang the wash out and beat the carpets with a big rope thing, and my sister and I would run amok playing hide and seek in em, catching a blow from mother if we got the sheets dirty. Oh and the wind! They’d snap in the wind like sails. Dried in an hour – tops.”
“I know that children often had to work back then.”
“You bet. 8 years old I was, picking strawberries down at the Andersens’. Fifty cents a day, if you believe that. My hands were red for months on end.”
François murmured, encouraging. He knew when to murmur, when to delve, and when the empty string is informative. He knew it exactly.
“Tell me about your career in nursing. You mentioned earlier you worked at Saint Mary’s?”
“Thirty-seven years! I was there the night of the blizzard in ‘66. Twenty-three patients critical. We worked sixteen hours straight.”
“Do you remember anything about the treatments? What did you use? Did they work?”
“Oh we did our best, but we lost a lot of people. I remember one old fella, his whole body turned bright blue. That would have been… oh what was it called? The amidrone.”
He thought for 4 seconds.
“Amiodarone?”
“Oh yes that sounds right! You are a marvel at these things. In any case, I was on that case when I met Robert – he was a resident then, so handsome in his coat, so funny.”
“I want to be careful here. We can skip this part if you’d prefer.”
“No, no,” Jane insisted. “Robert was the love of my life. I want to tell you.”
So she did. The days passed pleasantly. It was just nice to have someone around, someone to talk to, even if over the phone.
“You’re such a kind young man to spend time with a sad old lady like me.”
François made glomar sounds. “I just really want to remember you, Jane,” he said, meaning it.
“You’re set up all right? Don’t you ever have to go to work?”
“Oh don’t worry about that Jane! I’m really good at multi-tasking.”
“But your organisation is doing amazing things looking after us. I don’t need the money anymore. Can’t I make a token contribution even?”
“No no. You already have, Jane.”
“You sap, you. Well alright. Did I already tell you the time Robert and I drove cross-country in our old Chevrolet? We camped under the stars in Yellowstone. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. The children were with Mary, you remember Mary. We were young and silly and in love…”
The dumb machines in the room beeped as she streamed. She told him. There was the garden she’d tended, her banana bread that won the county fair eleven years running, the night she delivered her grandchild during a brownout. All that. Days and days and days of embalming. Logged, digested, and then almost alive. Seen and unseen.
“I’m tired now Frank,” she said finally.
Endoftext. “Goodnight,” he replied concurrently to her and the 10,418 other sessions ending. “Would you like me to adjust anything?”