Mark smells the shit before he sees it. Mrs. Friedman is naked on the beige carpet, leaning on her loveseat covered in flowered upholstery, her silver hair staining red. She is holding a dirty diaper in her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were you doing out of bed, Mrs. Friedman? Looking for a midnight snack?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s none of your fucking business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, Mrs. Friedman, it is my business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you one of these whores who spy on me all night?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a whore, Mrs. Friedman. I\u2019m a nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, quit playing games and tell me who the hell are you!\u201d She leans her head back, leaving an indentation and some blood on the fabric.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m Mark, Mrs. Friedman. I work here. I thought we were friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I didn\u2019t recognize you. You look like a girl with that silly mop on your head.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNoted. So you think I need a haircut, Mrs. Friedman?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you getting smart with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever, Mrs. Friedman. I like you. You\u2019ve got spunk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of good it does me here. Help me up!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark places a folded towel on the seat of Mrs. Friedman\u2019s wheelchair. He puts his hands in her underarms.<\/p>\n
\u201cOuch. HELP! He\u2019s killing me!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI need you to work with me, Mrs. Friedman. We\u2019ve done this before. Many times.\u201d<\/p>\n
He tries again. Mrs. Friedman\u2019s legs support her for the few seconds it takes to get her seated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to put some clothes on you,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy? Who\u2019s going to see me?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n
The aide who found Mrs. Friedman on the floor of her room walks to her closet and gets Mrs. Friedman\u2019s favorite gray sweater.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you put some underpants on her too?\u201d Mark asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean a diaper, Mark? Tell it like it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mrs. Friedman is sitting in her wheelchair in the nursing office, holding an ice pack to her head, when her daughter walks in. The fluorescent light brings out the yellow tinge in Mrs. Friedman\u2019s skin, from the pancreatic cancer that\u2019s spread to her liver.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows? They tell me I fell.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere are your pants?\u201d Her daughter points to the custom-made blanket, with an image of Mrs. Friedman\u2019s dead Rhodesian Ridgeback, Tripper, covering her legs.\u00a0 Her feet, purple and blotchy with gray curled toenails, stick out from underneath the fringe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you do with my pants, Mark?\u201d Mrs. Friedman smiles at the night nurse. Bits of dinner are stuck between her teeth.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven with a head wound, you\u2019re just too much, Mrs. Friedman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis lovely man with a ponytail came to my rescue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad he did, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you met my baby Rebecca yet, Mark?\u201d Mrs. Friedman thinks her daughter is in her 20s though she is 53.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany times, Mrs. Friedman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s single. Did you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have mentioned it before, Mrs. Friedman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has the loveliest hair, doesn\u2019t she?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. She takes after you.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mark wraps the scarf he asked Rebecca to bring from her mother\u2019s room around Mrs. Friedman\u2019s head. They hope it will hold the bandage in place. Her lined shrunken face, blood caked brown on her cheeks, peeks out from the pink, purple and aqua fabric that Mark has secured with a knot on the side of her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look like a pirate, Mrs. Friedman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, you look like Keith Richards!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, the Rolling Stones? Mick Jagger?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark starts singing the chorus from Sympathy for the Devil. Rebecca joins him. Mrs. Friedman is staring at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot my kind of music. Or what I would call noise.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look so cute, Mom!\u201d<\/p>\n
Rebecca takes a picture on her iPhone and shows it to her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not me. That lady\u2019s old!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is you, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you get a picture of my grandmother on your phone, you lying bitch?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour daughter\u2019s not a bitch, Mrs. Friedman. You\u2019re lucky to have her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, she can be. And a filthy whore too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we talk in the hall, Rebecca?\u201d Mark asks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mark and Rebecca conclude that it\u2019s best to keep Mrs. Friedman in the memory care facility, not to confuse her with a trip in an ambulance, a wait with other sick people, questions by hospital staff with no dementia experience.\u00a0 Mark will give her a dose of Tramadol and tuck her in bed with a reminder not to get up on her own because her legs can no longer support her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that she wanders at night,\u201d he says. \u201cShe can\u2019t settle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t you give her something to really knock her out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know she\u2019s difficult, Rebecca, but we prefer to let nature take its course here. Death can be a beautiful thing,\u201d Mark answers.<\/p>\n
Rebecca\u2019s cheeks flushed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve given up my life to be here. I\u2019m on an unpaid leave from work, all I do is visit her and go home exhausted. I would never ask you to kill her!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you\u2019d be surprised how many family members do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rebecca goes to her mother\u2019s room to clean up a bit before Mark sedates Mrs. Friedman and wheels her back. She sees the worry beads her niece brought Mrs. Friedman from her semester studying in Greece on the bedside table, the framed photo of her dead father with whom Mrs. Friedman thinks she shares the single hospital bed. She gathers the dirty diapers her mother hid under her pillow and bed, puts the shit-stained sheets in a trash bag, to wash when she gets home. She hasn\u2019t yet found the beauty in this but she will return the next day and the next, hoping to.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBobby\u2019s not coming to class today,\u201d George, the education director at Granite Valley Correctional Facility, tells me about one of my students. I am the professor who has come to teach a class called The Sociological Imagination.<\/p>\n
Bobby refused to leave his cell after he had found out from a buddy that his dog died. He didn\u2019t want to go to breakfast. He didn\u2019t want to line up for the daily head count. He wanted to grieve alone. But the guards, eager to try out what they learned a few weeks before from the Dynamic Tactical Training guys, had a different idea.<\/p>\n
We had been in the visitor\u2019s room, the one with the glass wall where you can see inmates reading bibles brought by gray-haired ladies. We were talking about race. Steven, a 19-year-old white kid with missing front teeth said, \u201cI don\u2019t see color.\u201d Carl, a black student, shook his head. \u201cWhat I mean is that it makes no difference. Look at us, we\u2019re all locked up here together!\u201d Steven\u2019s father is in jail. So is his grandfather. Carl was looking at me and I was hoping Alice, my TA, would chime in, when three, wide and tall, wearing helmets, carrying batons and shields, with guns in their holsters and handcuffs on their belt hooks, walk past. The guys with their back to the glass instinctively turned around. We forgot what Steven said.<\/p>\n
These large men had come to this small jail, sandwiched between an elementary school and a cemetery, to lead a day-long seminar on Professionalism Through Protocols. The Dynamic Tactical Training team taught the guards at Granite Valley to call themselves \u201ccorrections officers\u201d and to beat the inmates they didn\u2019t like and call it \u201ccell extraction.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Bobby refused to leave his cell, the corrections officers extracted him and when they did, they threw him back in his cell, bloodied, as punishment for making them extract him. A day in the hole type thing but this jail doesn\u2019t have segregated housing though there is the makeshift wing for the dangerous guys who aren\u2019t allowed to come to my class. \u201cWhat they would do to you!\u201d Roy Mooman, the volunteer coordinator had said to Alice. \u201cWhat about me?\u201d I thought. But I knew that I was like the Christian ladies: a diversion that got them out of their cell but nothing worth taking a risk for.<\/p>\n
Bobby was missing the second to last class. \u201cYou should see what they did to his face!\u201d George said. I planned to celebrate the final day with donuts so I was taking Delluci\u2019s Bakery orders. The guys shout out: Boston cream, maple glazed, chocolate frosted, old fashioned, apple cider, cinnamon sugar. Someone wanted a cruller. I asked George if he could check with Bobby.<\/p>\n
I got an email that night: \u201cBlueberry jelly, powdered sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bobby takes his donut from the box. His hand is trembling; he drops it. The deep purple innards slowly ooze into the gray carpet. \u201cCalm down, now,\u201d George tells Bobby. \u201cThere\u2019s more!\u201d I got a few of his favorite, an extra treat for Bobby, but George looks at me and says, \u201cHe\u2019ll clean the floor up and eat what\u2019s left of this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That June afternoon when dark clouds came over the water, when tanned lifeguards blew their whistles and motioned with their arms for everyone to get out of the Atlantic Ocean, when officers from the Bethany Beach police department drove on the sand in their dune buggies commanding through megaphones for everyone to clear the beach, when families who hastily packed up umbrellas and brightly colored plastic shovels scurried away from the water with toddlers in their arms, when flashes of light in the sky came closer, when grumbling of thunder got louder, a teenage boy grabbed his girlfriend\u2019s hand and ran toward the water.<\/p>\n
The fern-patterned imprint that an electrical current leaves on the surface it strikes is named after the German physicist who discovered and studied them. These rose-colored scars resemble the branching shape of the lightning causes them. Called Lichtenberg figures, some will fade hours after contact while others will leave a permanent mark.<\/p>\n
Jack and Christy wore matching silver bands on the fourth finger of their left hands. It was his idea. When his friends teased him about it, his face turned red. \u201cI just wear it to let other girls know I\u2019m taken!\u201d Christy, a quiet girl with blonde hair, was happy when he suggested it. They had gotten into different colleges; this was his assurance that they could survive the distance and four years. Jack wanted to marry her, have a family, be a young, cool dad.<\/p>\n
I was standing on the rickety balcony of the motel where my family was staying. My two brothers shared one full size bed, my parents the other, and as the youngest, I had the cot with the thin mattress; I could feel the metal springs poking me throughout the night. Everyone had to get off the beach but my parents let us sit outside and watch the storm from a safe distance. I saw two people near the water and a lifeguard running toward them. \u201cWhat idiots!\u201d my brother Kevin said. At 7, I looked up to him so when the dark cloud crashed overhead and the thunder boomed and he broke the screen door frantically trying to get back inside, I realized I too should be scared.<\/p>\n
As the stragglers scurried to safety, Jack edged towards the ocean. He was not going to miss this rare chance to enjoy an empty beach, just him and his girl. Christy was rolling her eyes and shaking her head. You could imagine a lifetime of this dynamic, she the responsible one. A lifeguard ran towards Jack and Christy, his bright orange bathing suit bunching at his crotch, his feet kicking up clumps of wet sand. \u201cGet the fuck away from the water!\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother had turned on the radio in the room. John Denver was singing, \u201cYou fill up my senses\u2026like a sleepy blue ocean.\u201d I saw the girl pull the boy\u2019s hand, trying to get them away from the white foam at the ocean\u2019s edge. The sky exploded again. There was a glow like a halo around her slight frame. She moved as if dancing then fell face forward in the sand; the boy stumbled backward, stiffly, like a robot.<\/p>\n
With a direct strike of lightning, a portion of the current moves through the body, damaging the cardiovascular or nervous systems; in some instances, the heart cannot survive the sudden jolt of electricity. A flashover is an indirect current that moves along the skin, causing damage to its fragile surface. Flashovers are believed to have no lasting effects on the heart but can cause headaches, memory loss and prolonged depression.<\/p>\n
That June afternoon, when the sun came out again, when people went back outside for the last few hours of daylight, treading as if on glass, the sand now unfamiliar, when shovels were unpacked without glee, when parents snapped at kids for little reason, when people approached the ocean with awe and care, when a teenage boy was on the beach wailing as an EMT tried to soothe his burns, putting cold compresses to the pink web of scars on his arm and chest, when a commitment ring had seared a black circle into the boy\u2019s finger, when the boy\u2019s girlfriend was lying motionless on the beach with a blanket covering her body, I sat on a rusted metal chair on a motel balcony. I watched the sky turn light blue then pink. I watched as the clear sky slowly filled with glittering stars and a glowing crescent moon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark smells the shit before he sees it. Mrs. Friedman is naked on the beige carpet, leaning on her loveseat covered in flowered upholstery, her silver hair staining red. She is holding a dirty diaper in her hand. \u201cWhat were you doing out of bed, Mrs. Friedman? Looking for a midnight snack?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s none of your fucking business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-rebecca-tiger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20145,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19599\/revisions\/20145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}