Page 36 of Tangled with the Tight End

“How do I have so many photos on here?” Ginny Holmes says. “I didn’t take all these.”

“You took ’em,” Harold McKinney tells Ginny.

“I didn’t!” she protests.

“Well, I might not know all the modern technology, but I know a phone isn’t up and taking photos on its own,” Harold says. “You took ’em.”

I intervene before a full-blown fight ensues. “Let’s just work on deleting the ones you don’t want. Did you know you can select multiple images and delete them in batches?”

A chorus of oooooh, and ohhhh, and Really? erupts around the table. I demonstrate while everyone opens their photos app and follows along.

The hour progresses with questions like, “How’d my nephew get his own ringtone?” to which I answer, “He probably programmed it into your phone when you weren’t looking.” And then I follow up with an instruction on programming ringtones. They think I’m an IT genius. I’m totally not. I’m just Gen Z.

“How’s the nursing work going?” Wilma Chesterton asks me as we wrap up our hour together.

Each resident passes a twenty around to me and suddenly I’m one hundred and twenty dollars richer. I could kiss Daisy for coming up with Winona for Hire.

“It’s good,” I say. “I’m caring for a football player right now.”

“Oh, we know, dear,” Wilma says with a playful waggle of her brow.

“You do?”

“It’s Declan O’Connell,” Loretta Simmons says. “Everyone knows you’re caring for him.”

“What’s it like?” Frank Logan asks me.

“What part?”

“Being around a celebrity?” Frank says.

“I don’t think of him that way.”

“That’s for the best,” Loretta says. “Is he good to you?”

“He’s not good to me or bad to me. He’s just a patient—a man who broke his ankle and is out of work for a season.”

Frank’s brow draws in. “Isn’t he grateful?”

“For breaking his ankle?” I ask, confused.

Why would anyone be grateful they broke their ankle? I guess you might be grateful if you broke it by stepping off a curb and it kept you from falling in front of a bus and dying.

“No,” Frank says, smiling and huffing out a small laugh. “For your help. Is he grateful for your help?”

Is Declan grateful? I guess he might be.

“He thanks me,” I say. “So I guess he is.”

“I hope he’s paying you a whole lotta money,” Harold says.

“Now that’s just none of your business,” Wilma tells Harold.

“You’re right,” Harold says. Then he turns to me. “Is he, though?”

“He doesn’t pay me. The home health agency does. I get my usual wage to help him, just like I do for any other patient.”

“And that’s why you’re Winona for Hire,” Wilma says.