Chapter 5 — Eight Years Later

(Laura)

Eight years later

“Doreen, those are your church shoes.”

Doreen Pratt looks down at her feet as though someone else put them there. They’re navy patent leather with a little bow on each toe and a heel a good two centimetres higher than anything a ninety-one-year-old with a healing hip fracture has any business wearing.

“They match my cardigan,” she says.

“They’ll match your other hip when you break that one too.” I crouch in front of her chair and hold up her walking shoes, the beige ones with Velcro straps her daughter bought her and she hated on sight. “Ten laps of the corridor in these and I’ll tell Pam you’ve earned the custard with the skin on top.”

“Pam’s custard is lumpy.”

“You told me last week it was the only thing in this place worth living for.”

“I was being dramatic.” She lifts one foot anyway, and I swap the shoes over before she can change her mind.

It’s half past four on a Thursday at Bayview Lodge. The afternoon sea breeze has come up, rattling the blinds at the end of the east wing, and somebody’s radio down the hall has the cricket on. I buckle the gait belt around Doreen’s middle, park her walker in front of her and talk her through standing: bottom to the edge of the chair, feet tucked under, nose over toes. She does it on the second go, swearing gently under her breath, and I could kiss her for it. In the first week after surgery she was too frightened to swear.

We do ten laps. She complains about every one of them. On lap six she stops outside room nine to tell Barry, who’s ninety-four and deaf as a post, that his fly is down. On lap eight she asks whether I’ve got a boyfriend yet, and when I say no she tells me I won’t find one in a nursing home unless I like them well seasoned. By lap ten her step length has improved, her right foot has stopped catching and she’s leaning on the walker less and her mouth more, which in Doreen’s case is an excellent sign.

“Same time tomorrow,” I tell her, settling her in her chair by the window.

“Can I wear the church shoes tomorrow?”

“You can wear them to church.”

“I haven’t been to church since 1987.”

“Then they’ll keep.”

She cackles, and I write up her notes at the nurses’ station with a grin I can’t get rid of. Eight years ago I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish my degree. Now I’m the principal physio at the only aged care home in Port Merrin, with sixty residents on my books and a reputation as the one person who can get Doreen Pratt out of her chair. Some days it seems like a small life. Most days it’s plenty.

I’ve got one more stop before I can leave.

Antonio Russo is in room fourteen, sitting at the card table he insisted on bringing when he moved in, dealing scopa to nobody in particular. He’s seventy-eight, with a full head of white hair he combs every morning with water and the same tortoiseshell comb he’s owned since the seventies, and a right knee I’ve been trying to get him to exercise for two years.

“Did you do your quad sets?” I ask from the doorway.

“Every one,” he says without looking up.

“Antonio.”

“Most of them.” He shrugs. In Antonio-speak, that means none of them. “Where is my little one? Dov’è il mio piccolo? You bring him tomorrow?”

“Saturday. He’s got a birthday party tomorrow arvo.”

He nods as if this is acceptable, reaches under the card table and hands me a paper bag folded over twice at the top. Amaretti. I can smell the almonds through the paper. “For him. Not for you.”

“You know you’re not supposed to keep these in your room.”

“I am seventy-eight. I will keep what I want in my room.”

I tuck the bag into my work bag before Shaz at the nurses’ station can spot it, and kiss the top of his head on my way out. Last year he taught Chris to count to twenty in Italian, and to say grazie and per favore and a few other words I’m fairly sure no seven-year-old needs. I’ve never been comfortable with it. Every time Chris comes home with a new word, something in me pulls tight. But Antonio adores him, and Chris adores him right back, and I’ve never found a reason to stop it I’d be willing to say out loud.