“Damn it!” Maggie muttered as she tossed and turned on her bed.
She sluggishly threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She could barely see the outline of Roy’s body lying next to her, but she could certainly hear the dragging of a log along a galvanised roof with his every breath. It didn’t bother her any more, though. But for some reason, lately, she’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning, drained but unable to go back to sleep.
“Women does have to go tru too much, yes.”
She knew her way around the room in the dark, and quietly opened a drawer, pulled out some dry clothes and tossed the damp ones into the hamper. A quick glance at her phone: 3.30. No use trying to go back to sleep now; she had to be up in an hour anyway. She might as well start prepping for breakfast.
“Oh gosh, I’m tired. How I functioning at work today, Lord?”
Gone in a flash
She opened the blinds by the kitchen window and jumped.
“Fatty, you frighten me,” she chuckled as the black cat pandiculated on the ledge outside the window before resettling for a nap.
“You lucky girl. Look how you just fall back to sleep.”
She started peeling some potatoes, head down, humming to the soft gospel music playing on her phone.
“Hsssss!” She looked up and saw a flash of light in the pommerac tree in the backyard. It disappeared quickly. Fatty stood on the ledge, her spine curved high, fur standing on end, with fangs bared, looking into the darkness.
Maggie opened the back door and let the cat in.
“Probably someone playing with a flashlight, Fatty. Don’t be frighten.”
The cat silently disappeared behind the couch, and her focus returned to her potatoes.
A mark of distinction
At first light, she went outside, gave her plants a quick drink and hurried inside to get dressed for work.
“Dat is a new mark behind your leg?” Roy asked as she walked past him in her towel.
“Huh?” She twisted her leg so she could see behind it. A purplish mark stood out against her light brown skin.
“When women reach a certain age, is all kinda things does happen to us.”
“Or we could have a soucouyant in de area,” Roy suggested.
“Please. In the bright lights? Soucouyants don’t live in de bush?”
She got dressed hurriedly and made a dash for the car.
“Jada, Jon, come on! We late.”
She dropped the children off at school and felt like a sweaty, fatigued mess by the time she got to the senior citizens’ home, where the night nurse was waiting to do the handover.
“Good morning. Mrs Ramsey didn’t eat dinner last night, and probably didn’t sleep either, because Pat was so restless when I last checked on them. And today is Joe’s birthday, so his grandson is coming to spend the day and night with him. Everyone else is normal, for now,” Nurse Amanda said with a wry smile.
Maggie scanned the charts on the desk, willing herself to find the energy to make it to the end of the workday. She peeped into the dining room, where eight of her ten patients were having breakfast – some feeding themselves, others being fed by aides. She headed for the room that Mrs Ramsey and Pat shared and knocked softly. No answer. She opened the door and went inside.
Pat was fast asleep, her chest slowly rising and falling. Oh, how she envied her. After her husband died, Pat had the option of going to live with one of her children abroad or relocating to a home. She chose the latter. Mrs Ramsey was lying on her back, staring into oblivion, a strange look in her eyes. Maggie knew she was having a hard time adjusting to her new way of life, but her dementia diagnosis had left her daughter no choice. With her disorientation, personality changes and sleep deprivation, she needed professional care.
“Mrs Ramsey, you coming for breakfast?”
No answer. Maggie slowly closed the door and went to attend to her other patients.
With a pinch of salt
“Nurse Maggie, I could get a fruit?” Joe’s grandson, Luke, barged into the lunchroom.
Maggie looked up from her lunch.
“Sure. Which one?”
“The half-ripe mango, please.”
She washed the mango, cut it into pieces and gave it to the boy.
“I like salt on my mangoes. Allyuh have salt here?”
She reached up into the cupboard for the salt, sprinkled a little on the mango and placed the jar on the countertop.
They sat and ate in silence – she exhausted, and the boy licking the juice that ran through his fingers, throwing furtive glances at the basket of mangoes.
Without a trace
Maggie crawled out of the shower, changed and headed straight to bed. She had meant to go over Mrs Ramsey’s chart that night, but she was too exhausted. As she dozed off, she recalled how the elderly woman had seemed overly withdrawn that evening. She had barely eaten, and Maggie made a mental note to run some tests the following day.
The next day, as she drove up to the home, she felt a sense of dread. A police car was parked in the driveway. Nurse Amanda and one of the aides were in deep discussion with the two officers, while a few of the seniors sat on the front porch looking glum.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she got out of the car.
“Pat’s missing,” Amanda said.
“What? How?”
“I went to make my early-morning rounds, and she was not in the room.”
“Mrs Ramsey okay? She say anything?”
“Not a word. She just lying there, staring.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Maggie offered, and went inside.
As soon as she entered the door, Luke grabbed her hand.
“Nurse Maggie, I have to show you dis.”
“Not now, Luke. A little later.”
“No! Nurse Maggie, yuh have to come now,” and he dragged her towards the lunchroom.
“Last night, when grampa was sleeping, I wanted another mango and come out to get it. I bounce the salt bottle by mistake and all fall out in the corner here.”
He pointed at a wooden vessel that was hardly noticeable because it fit so snugly in the corner and was almost the same colour as the cupboards.
Maggie looked at it. “It’s a mortar,” she said. “So you accidentally knock down the salt into it. No big deal.”
“Look inside, Nurse Maggie.”
She recognised the look in his eyes; a mirror of Mrs Ramsey’s. She peeped into the mortar and almost puked.
“O my God,” she mouthed, and quickly grabbed a mask, a pair of gloves and a garbage bag from the cupboard drawers. She emptied the shrivelled, warped roll of skin into the bag, tied the head and stuffed it at the back of one of the cupboards.
“Let’s not tell anyone about the accident with the salt, or this, ok?”
Luke nodded.
As she made her way to see Mrs Ramsey, she thought about Pat’s family and the closure they would never get, searching for a loved one who would never, ever be found.
