“He’s uncomfortable at the moment, but he’d managing fine. The doctor should be able to prescribe something for the pain,” Tala replied.
Tracey sniffed, signing off on the care plan. She’d bill Cone for the appointment, but it was the staff resources these appointments took up which was most annoying. She was here for the money, and the money alone, not to improve the health and wellbeing of the residents.
“That’s all, Tala,” she said, dismissing the smaller woman.
Tala gathered her notes and left, leaving Tracey to daydream of a carefree life well away from cabbage and urine and stale sweat. Even the nurse had a peculiar odour. Tracey opened her handbag and spritzed her office with a small bottle of perfume, and the room filled with the refreshing notes of jasmine and summer roses.
Outside the office, Tala shuffled her notes into back into order. If she didn’t need this job so badly, she would have left months ago. Years even. But she needed the regular income to support her own family. Her daughter was at college and that didn’t come cheap. Tracey made her insides curl up in disgust. The way Tracey referred to the residents, the way money was the single deciding factor over the wellbeing of the people in her care. And now, adding to her disquiet, was a suspicion about the level of churn at the Rose Haven; it wasn’t natural. She’d been working in aged care since she first qualified as a nurse in the Philippines. It was her speciality, so when she immigrated here, with her engineer husband, it was natural she went into aged care here. The Rose Haven was the first place willing to employ her, so she had no other American experience to call on, but she heard things. She occasionally attended workshops, only when Tracey begrudgingly allowed her to, only if it was something the State declared as a necessity for registration. Most of the time Tracey made her pay for it herself, which Tala did. She expected to move on one day, and she needed all the western credentials she could get to improve her salary and her work placement. Listening to conversations at those workshops, which invariably concerned pay and conditions and employers and general workplace gripes, lead her to believe that no other aged care provider in the local area had as much churn, as much turnover, as the Rose Haven Retirement Resort, and that scared her.
Jasmine and roses seeped out from under Tracey’s office door, making Tala gag. It was the scent which followed Tracey around the Rose Haven, so strong it almost preceded her as she stalked around the halls, hoping to catch one of the staff slacking off. One of the staff except for Ricky Donovan, who no matter how many times Tala wrote him up for laziness and incompetence, Tracey ignored. Newer staff called him Teflon Don. The longer serving staff knew it didn’t pay to complain, so they kept their gripes to themselves. It was safer that way. It wasn’t only the residents of the Rose Haven Retirement Resort who had a higher than average level of turnover.
Tala scurried away before the overpowering floral smell threatened to bring her breakfast back up. The doctor visits wouldn’t book themselves.
34
Elijah leaned on Sulia, holding his ribs in one hand and her solid arm with the other. He forgot Sulia didn’t know where she was going and so they stumbled down the corridors with Elijah muttering a left or a right, whereupon Sulia would turn like a gargantuan ocean liner steering around an iceberg looming in the dark.
The corridor lights flickered as they passed by as if they too were giving up the will to live. As if life at the Rose Haven had just become unbearable, unliveable.
“It’s here, this is my door,” Elijah managed, his breathing shallow. Every movement, every breath paining him more than he could have imagined. A memory emerged of instructing one of his boys, a promising player called Jimmy Hunter, to harden up and get back out on the field after a hard hit from a solidly built Midwest opponent. It turned out Jimmy had broken three ribs and after another tackle on the field, the broken ribs lacerated his liver. He’d come off the field at full time throwing up blood. He’d sat on the bench for the rest of the season until his liver healed, but it was the end of his career. Until now, Elijah hadn’t known broken ribs would hurt this much.
Sulia leaned him against the corridor wall and opened his door. Easing him off the wall, he let her slide him into his armchair by the window. Better than trying to get him into bed on her own.
“How you feeling, Elijah?” she asked, panting with exertion.
“Sore,” Elijah replied, his eyes closed.
“You going to report him, the one that kicked you?”
“No.”
“What! You should. No one should get away with what he did. It’ll be on their cameras,” Sulia exclaimed.
Elijah opened his eyes to watch Sulia as she gesticulated, punctuating her points with violent hand gestures and the shaking of her head. The woman had untold difficulty navigating the corridors of the Rose Haven and needed help to find the condiments on the table in the dining room, so how did she know about the security cameras?
“Stop looking at me. Just cause I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t see,” Sulia retorted, taking a break from chastising him.
“You’re blind, how can you see?” Elijah asked, his curiosity piqued. Sulia was the first blind person he’d met. They’d asked him once to train a team of visually impaired players for a charity, and he’d laughed down the phone at the absurdity. As if he had time to teach blind kids how to play football, a stupid idea. His reaction to that old request now made him squirm.
“I’ve got ears haven’t I? And I know how to use them, and they work better than the ones you’ve got plastered to the side of your head. Men, you’re just a bunch of testosterone dressed in khakis and aftershave. Not one brain cell in amongst all those angry man genes running around inside your head. You need to report him. You need to or I will.”
Elijah sighed, sending sharp pains through his chest, forcing him to think about Jimmy and his lacerated liver again. He sent the boy a silent apology. Elijah couldn’t remember what had happened to Jimmy, he didn’t keep track of his ex players. Once they left the game, they were of no use to him so he dropped out of contact. Which was why no one bothered visiting him here, not the main reason, but one of them.
“If you quit staring at me, I’ll let you try my medicine,” Sulia said, teeth gleaming as a smile split her face.
“If it’s not illegal, I’ll try it,” Elijah agreed, figuring something was better than nothing. The pain forcing him to accept whatever it was Sulia was offering unless it meant prison time. He’d avoided being locked up for life, but his time behind bars during the court case was more than enough for him.
Sulia laughed, the booming sound rolled up from her belly and exploded volcanic-like from her mouth. “Oh you white men, you make me laugh. You think because I’m foreign I’m out to seduce you with my dark arts? I’m as American as you are, born and bred.”
“What?”
“I was born in Chicago and lived there my whole life, apart from now. I should never have left, would have had myself a nice little apartment in a senior’s village if I’d stayed. Still you learn,” Sulia said, her milky eyes looking backwards.
“But the way you dress…” Elijah said confused.
Draped in an emerald green sari, the voluminous fabric barely restrained Sulia’s girth. Her addition of a cable knit cardigan jarred with the rich fabric covering her.
“The sari? Hahahahaha, you think I dress like this because I’m Indian. Oh boy, hahahahaha,” Sulia laughed and laughed, great guffaws which echoed down the hall through the open door.
Elijah watched her, perplexed, his energy spent trying not to move, to not jar his painful ribs. Sulia’s jocularity exponentially brighter than her clothes and the gold bracelets tinkling on her arms. He’d never understood women, and this one was no exception.
“I’m lost,” he admitted.
“It’s the only thing which fits!” Sulia laughed again, slapping her thigh and Elijah’s bed creaked dangerously underneath her as she jiggled.
A face appeared at the door, another resident,
Elijah couldn’t remember his name, but recognised him by the thick silver hoop he wore through one earlobe, as if he'd once dressed up as a pirate but had forgotten about the earring leaving it to blend seamlessly into his skin, becoming part of him. The walking stick he leaned on could just as easily be a sword with a solid silver handle.
“You okay?” the jewelled pirate asked.
“Sore, but okay, thanks,” Elijah replied, the first words he’d exchanged with the man.
“You wanna come in and join us, John?” Sulia asked.
The man shook his head. “Best not, on my way to my room. Thought I’d check in though,” and he shuffled away, his slippers slapping against the floor in his haste.
“You know him?” Elijah asked. He’d been here four times longer than Sulia but struggled with the names of the staff and residents, preferring to keep to himself. Better not to form any relationships that way no one would get hurt again.
“That’s John Gallows, nice guy. Slippers are too big for him so I can hear him a mile away, but a heart of gold that one. You’d both get on well. He was something to do with sports. Not football, but something else, golf maybe?”
Elijah coughed, his normal way of changing the conversation, except he’d forgotten about his ribs and the coughing turned into a painful experience. It worked, and Sulia heaved herself off the bed, rushing to his side to support him as he coughed his way through the spasm.
“You can’t keep changing the topic…” Sulia said, pouring him water after the coughing had passed.
“I wasn’t.”
“You can’t lie. I’m blind remember, I can hear the lies in your voice, I can feel them swirling around me. This room is full of them and they’re eating you up. The lies you tell yourself will send you to the same grave those kids are in.”
Elijah struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain, Sulia’s words were the last straw.
“Get out,” he said, pointing to the door. It took every ounce of energy not to succumb to the pain pouring through him. Pain not from his ribs but from his heart.
Sulia nodded, and shuffled out the door, arms outstretched. She didn’t apologise.
Sulia had memorised her way around the Rose Haven, so made her way to her room, the twists and turns of the corridors no barrier to her prodigious memory. Elijah would come to her, she knew that. Sometimes people needed the truth because the truth set you free, and Elijah needed the truth to free him from his past.
In her room, she closed the door behind her. The lock was on the outside, the only real change from when the Rose Haven had been a reluctant three star hotel, but that didn't concern her. Before the door closed, she slipped a modified piece of hard plastic from her voluminous pockets and slid it into the keyhole from the inside preventing the door from being locked. Based on her observations, getting a locksmith in to fix the door here would take weeks.
Sulia shuffled to her chest of drawers, her own breathing laboured now. Tugging open the top drawer she rifled through her underwear until she came to a rolled up pair of bed socks, far heavier than they should be. She unfurled the knitted socks and liberated a bottle of milky liquid. A silly grin spread across her face as she twisted the metal top off. After sniffing the contents, she made her way to her bedside table, where she poured a measure of liquid into her drinking glass and swallowed the contents, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand — the slick on her cheek the only evidence of what had been in the glass.
Hiding the bottle back in her socks she hesitated before returning it to the drawer. The curtains in the room were thick blackout curtains, left over from the hotel’s heyday. Once there had been tiebacks and fancy hooks, but those were long gone. What remained was an excess of fabric loitering at each end of the window. The staff cleaned the Rose Haven with as much effort as everything else, which meant little effort at all. At the window, Sulia shoved the socks into the far edge of the window sill, concealed from the cursory glances of anyone who might come into the room. She needed what was in that bottle, more than anyone else here. The bottle was almost empty. Sulia tried not to think about what she’d do when there was nothing left. It didn’t do to dwell too much on the mechanics of dying. It happened to them all, in one way or another.
35
Pauline’s hands hadn’t left her hips for the entire time Tracey was talking to her, and she hadn’t stopped trying to talk over the top of the other woman. For the staff listening outside the kitchen, no one wanted to place bets on the winner of this argument.
“I won’t,” Pauline said, her shoulders square, her chin set. The gleam of northern defiance in her eye.
“Work with me Pauline. You saw the mess the residents caused. It will make your life so much simpler if you don’t have to prepare it every morning,” Tracey explained.
“I don’t need me life made any easier. My life’s been harder than it needed, but it’s me own life and it’s what it is. What you’re asking me to do is to starve those poor folk out there. Most of them ain’t got their own teeth. The porridge stays.”
“Pauline, I need you to prepare a menu plan which doesn’t include porridge. Think of the money you’ll save from your budget.”
Pauline shook her blonde head. She was all for saving money, had been doing it her whole life, first with her parents when she got a job to help with the household expenses, then again after she’d left her worthless husband. She’d done it the hard way but at least the decisions she’d made were her own and made for the good of her and her kids. What she wasn’t, was as cold-hearted as the woman standing in front of her.
“The porridge is the cheapest part of me budget,” Pauline explained again, rifling through the folders she kept for her desk. Opening the folder marked Breakfast, she ran her finger down rows and rows of itemised articles, reeling off their individual costs until Tracey held up her hand. The evidence was irrefutable, the porridge was the cheapest part of any meal, let alone the breakfast menu.
“Is a cheaper brand of bread we can serve?” Tracey said.
Pauline threw her hands up, the conversation at an end. Replacing the porridge with any other staple would double their costs, and Pauline knew Tracey wouldn’t accept that. So as she returned the folder to its rightful place, she heard Tracey clip clop out of the kitchen and released the breath she’d been holding. It was a bloody hard job churning out nutritious meals day after day with the budget she had, but by god she managed it, and on the scent of an oily rag. If she’d been back home, she knew she’d have been able to supplement everything with eggs from her Mam, and veggies from her own garden, but here, that was a different kettle of fish. If something didn’t have preservatives in it, she’d eat her own hat. It surprised her that the poor souls in the Rose Haven Retirement Resort weren’t malnourished like those poor kiddies in the news. She had her suspicions some residents were, so she occasionally supplemented the menu with things from home. Strictly illegal, but what they made her serve to the old folk wouldn’t be given to the worst criminals on death row. Pauline suspected that most of the folk at the Rose Haven would be a damn sight better off if they ganged up, robbed a bank and were placed behind bars. It wasn’t as if any of them ever went out so it’d be no change from their day-to-day life, except they’d have better food and access to proper healthcare.
Someone entered the kitchen and Pauline spun round to tell them to bugger off, but stopped shy of that when she saw it was Benson and Tala.
“Here’s trouble. What do you lot want then?” she asked.
Tala fiddled with the folder in her hands and looked to Benson, who held his own folder tight against his chest.
Benson cleared his throat, looking to Tala, who alternated between looking at the door and the floor.
“If it’s trouble, I want no part,” Pauline declared. To prove her point, she turned the tap on, running steaming water into a huge pot she slammed into the industrial sink. She could feel the gazes of her visitors behind her. She left them stewing in their own awkwardness. They’
d tell her when they were ready, everyone did. Pauline acted as a quasi psychologist, someone others came to with their problems. Tala and Benson would spill the beans, they wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
“We need to talk,” Benson said.
“Do we?” Pauline asked.
Tala nodded, with somewhat less enthusiasm than the orderly.
“It concerns Tracey,” Benson added.
Pauline twisted the tap further and water fountained over the top of the saucepan, filling the sink.
“You can talk, but keep it quiet,” Pauline said, gesturing to chairs around the table in the middle of the room.
Benson and Tala both took a seat, moving aside the various packets Pauline had been putting away before Tracey had accosted her about the porridge.
“You mind you keep it quiet,” Pauline reiterated, her hands straying to the packet of cigarettes she kept in her pocket. She was trying to give up, she was, but sometimes she needed a quick puff or two, to take the edge of working in this place.
Benson opened his folder, he didn’t need to, but it made him feel better about what he was going to say. He cleared his throat, the words so uncomfortable they almost choked him.
“We think Tracey is selling…,” he looked to Tala for help, but she was examining the grain of the wooden table.
“Selling what?” Pauline asked.
“Um, parts,” Benson replied.
“Her soul more like it,” Pauline quipped, humour her usual response to awkward situations.
“Body parts,” Tala said, without looking up.
“Eh, what?” Pauline replied, her voice rising.
Benson shushed her, checking over his shoulder.
“You’re pulling me leg. I wouldn’t put it past her, mind. Anything to make a quid or two and she’s there with bells on. But body parts? This isn’t a Stephen King movie.”
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