The Things We Keep(30)

“I’ll check on them before I go,” I say.

I come to Luke’s door first, which is ajar, and suddenly Eric’s words jump into my mind. “Luke’s and Anna’s doors need to be locked.” I make a mental note to remind Emerson and knock loudly. “Luke? It’s Eve. Just checking you’re okay.”

I wait, peering through the crack, but there’s no response and no movement.

“Luke?” I nudge the door. “Are you in here?”

When he still doesn’t answer, I open the door completely. Dear God, may he not be naked. Or worse, naked and disoriented. I slowly advance inside. His bed is made. Empty. “Shit!”

“Everything okay?”

I spin around. Emerson is in the doorway. “Luke’s not here,” I say.

My anxiety is mirrored in Emerson’s eyes. This isn’t good.

Emerson gets it together first. “The front doors are locked, so he must be inside. I’ll check the building. You check with the other residents.”

“Yes.” I nod maniacally. “The other residents.”

Amidst my alarm, I find myself wishing I were checking the building while Emerson woke up the confused, sleepy old people, admitting that we’d lost a resident.

I step out into the hallway and look at the closed doors. Light shines out the bottom of Anna’s and Bert’s doors; the other rooms are in darkness. I move toward Anna’s door. Pretty unlikely, I reason, that Luke would be visiting a grumpy old man at this time of night.

I tap lightly. “Anna, it’s Eve. Are you there?”

I wait a moment, my panic rising. Still there’s no response. Is Anna missing, too? Not waiting another second, I swing open the door. In my mind’s eye, I can already see it: Another made bed. Another missing resident. This whole thing spiraling out of control.

At the sight of Anna’s feet, I go limp with relief. Thank God! I continue into the room until the whole bed comes into view; then I gasp and quickly retreat.

“I’ve checked the building,” Emerson says, appearing beside me. “No sign of Luke.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, even though I’m fairly certain that it’s not. “I’ve found him.”





12

Anna

Thirteen months ago …

You know what I don’t miss? The doctors’ appointments. A year ago, when I was diagnosed, there were a lot of them. The geriatricians (I know, right?), the neurologists, the neuropsychologists. The memory clinics, the PET scans. An interesting fact about Alzheimer’s is that a definitive diagnosis can be made only through autopsy. For this reason, Dr. Brain diagnosed me as having “probable Alzheimer’s.” The “probable” part always made me laugh. It might be a bit macabre, but the idea that after you’re dead they might slice open your head and say, Well, looky here. She didn’t have it after all, struck me as funny.

It’s been six weeks since Young Guy accosted me in the hallway … and I’m still not dead. It’s unexpected, but life has been pretty good at throwing me curveballs lately. I haven’t forgotten about what I was planning to do that night, nor have I decided that I’ll never go ahead and do it. I guess, like a lot of callers on Beat the Bomb, I’ve simply decided that I am willing to take my chances hanging on a little longer.

Today, it’s pet therapy day. Not my favorite day of the week, given my dog phobia, but I’m inside and all the dogs are all outside, so I can’t complain. Young Guy, the dog lover, loves this day. Usually he spends the entire time outside with the dogs. He opted to stay inside today, but I can tell he’d rather be outside because his eyes are glued to the window, where a hairy fluff ball sits on Southern Lady’s lap, licking her face. I shudder.

“Myrna don’t like dogs neither.”

I look up, uncertain who has spoken. I notice the old guy, whom I’ve nicknamed Baldy, is looking at me. “What?” I ask.

“Dogs. Myrna don’t like ’em.”

Old folks can be so random. Baldy’s voice is gruff and irritated, like I am an inconvenience, even though he’s the one who started talking to me.

“Oh.” I sit back as a lady—Liesel, according to her name badge—arranges the world’s fattest rabbit in my lap. I call it Sumo Bunny. “Myrna and I have something in common, then.”

Young Guy grins. He’s been my right-hand man these last few weeks—where I go, he goes. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s worried I’m going to try to kill myself or if he just enjoys my company, but the result is the same—we’re always together. It’s actually pretty convenient. A couple of times when I’ve been disoriented, he’s been able to help me find my way. And one time, when we were both a little disoriented, we decided there was safety in numbers and just stayed where we were until someone came to find us.

I watch him now. He’s looking at the animal in his lap, his eyelashes dark against his pale face. The top two buttons of his shirt are casually undone and the sleeves are rolled up. I stare at his chest but when he notices me looking, I quickly look back at Sumo Bunny.

Young Guy generally doesn’t say a lot, and I don’t know if that’s because of his type of dementia or if he’s always been a man of few words. Either way, there’s something nice about the lack of chatter. When he does talk, he asks me questions. It’s funny the things he wants to know—my favorite films, the music I listen to. My answers are boring and predictable, but he listens with absolute attention, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. I ask about his favorite things, too, and he tells me a few, but I can tell speaking makes him tired. After a while, he starts to look frustrated, so I let conversation drift back to me.