Bitter Mrs. Bill

“Would you like to go in there.”  Jackie, the College Degree wannabe, looked at her tauntingly.  “You’re going to meet her sooner or later.  Might as well be now.”

“What should I know before I go in there?”

“About this one?  Stand back and duck.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’ll see.”  The College Degree wannabe smiled her sly little smile.

Entering the drab, claustrophobic room, Gina Marie got a whiff of something that turned her stomach.  It wasn’t the smell of urine or feces.  She had steeled herself to expect that and was relieved to find the room absent of those smells.  And yet...rotting flesh?  The kind of stench that accompanies someone who has a deep, gaping bedsore.  The College Degrees refer to them as decubitus ulcers.  Yes but...something more.  Death, maybe.  But the smell of Death was different with this lady.  It didn’t surround her.  It seemed to emanate from her.  Could the angel of Death be hiding in the form of this frail and helpless old lady?

“How are you doing today, Babe?”  Jackie, the College Degree wannabe, said in a volume slightly less than shouting.

The weak and decrepit old lady turned on her side, keeping her back to the girls.  Gina Marie crept to the foot of the bed, intending to open a conversation with the woman, but Jackie glared at her and wagged her head ‘no’.

Gina Marie stopped.  There didn’t seem to be any danger from the little, elderly, bedridden bag of bones.  Perhaps there was some company policy Gina Marie was not aware of.  One that restricted staff from chatting with the residents.  She would question Jackie as soon as she got a chance when they were outside of this room.

“This is Gina Marie.  She’s going to be your new nursing assistant.”  Jackie said, still in her almost-shouting tone.

The elderly lady used her middle finger to scratch at a spot on her temple.  It might have been a coincidence that the old woman used her middle finger, and then again maybe not.  Gina Marie felt a sinking feeling in her chest.  The woman that she desperately needed to talk to had just maliciously and malignantly, if only discreetly, flipped her off.  This was not going to be easy.