Page 45 of The Fae’s Treasure
“Thank you for calling the Mint Woods Group, sir. Which facility are you calling from?”
“The one I’m in! I’m calling from the second floor. I want to talk to the nurse’s desk!”
“I’m sorry, sir, this is the call center. Are you in a Mint Woods Senior Care facility or a Mint Woods Nursing Home?”
“Senior Care! In Two Saddles, West Virginia. And it’s not me, it’s my friend!”
“Let me find that location, sir...” The voice pings and tings some more as Earl’s head droops.
“Fuck. Hurry.”
“All right, now you would like to make an appointment to see the nurse?”
“No, I need a nurse here, to room 217, now!”
“Ah, that is only possible at Mint Woods Nursing Homes, sir. You can schedule a visit for... Thursday at 10:30 with the visiting clinical staff on rotation at your location.”
“There’s no nurse on site?” My voice is warbling and shaking all over the place, red eyes glowing and blinking so fast I must look like a neon disco ball.
“There is, sir, but not after hours. To retain a place in Mint Woods Senior Care home, you cannot need ‘round-the-clock care or skilled nursing.”
“My friend doesn’t need skilled nursing all the time, just right now! He’s sick!”
“If his condition is serious, I would call 911.”
I slam the phone down, convinced that it’s too late for 911. I pick up Earl and Tilly barks once, a sharp, desperate sound.
“Look, girl, I’m taking Earl to the hospital, and then I’m coming back for you.”
And if he makes it... I’m not letting him back in this hellhole ever again...
“I am not going to live in New York. Godless city hellhole.”
“Earl. If you don’t come with me, so help me God, I will dig you up and bury you in Manhattan.”
Earl looks genuinely terrified for a second, and then his scarred features return to their normal “Grumpy Old Cuss” position. “You’re acting like I’m dead.”
“If I let you go back to Mint Woods, you will be.”
“I don’t need nursing care. I don’t crap my pants and forget what month it is or who the president is. Hell, I can name ‘em all. November—and Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams Jr., Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison—”
“Save the history lesson! You need to be some place where they can take care of your sugar and your meals, where they actually check on you like... Not like a patient,” I say quickly, because that’ll cause another shouting match, “but like a family member.”
“Places like that don’t exist. The VA out here was good, but they’ll tell me to move on in a couple of weeks. I don’t qualify long-term, not as independent as I am—and I’ll damn well stay that way—if I remember to take my damn pills and I eat regular.”
“Not the boxes of Girl Scout cookies all day long because it’s what you have handy, what you can reach.” I settle Earl’s battered blue hat with sewn-on patches back on his head.
Earl doesn’t answer. I know it hurts his pride to realize that he’d been so out of it, living on boxes of cookies and not checking his sugar regularly once he started needing help. We’re not even going to talk about the lack of clean clothes.
We’re not going to talk about what a shitty friend I’ve been to the only human who has ever befriended me. Sure, Earl doesn’t know what I am, but he doesn’t care, either.
“Stop that groaning. I ain’t dead.”
I stop groaning, but only audibly. Inside, I’m wracked with guilt and worry and fear. I knew things were bad, but I didn’t realize how bad. This was the first time I’d gone several nights in a row without checking on him. I told him I was too busy to stop by—as in too busy using my glamour pendant to see if I could get lucky with the hot new waitress at Jolene’s, the diner out on the highway. I’m kicking myself because I’m not even “real,” and I don’t have a job, or wife, or kids—what the hell kinda busy was I? Chasing a big ass and a nice pair of legs because I’ve been restless and needy, and not going to those damn conventions anymore... And because whenever I get the itch, I hear Cindy’s voice in my head, telling me to try something different, try for something real. All I know is that a few more days of listening to my hormones instead of my heart might have meant Tilly and me standing beside some coffin while a preacher who don’t know nothing about Earl tries to half-ass his way through a eulogy, and there’s no one to take his folded flag in one of those little glass triangle boxes.
“You need to be where people like me can come and go in safety and not worry about sneaking in and out, and where there’s not just me and Tilly.” Needs a posse of people who have his back, even if they’re not blood kin. Like Lennox has in Pine Ridge.
Earl needs more than me.
