Aaaiiieee!

Mrs. Weekes

Mrs. Ferrin rested a hand like a ginseng root atop the smooth young hand of Kelly Bonham, who was new at Eastborough Nursing Home. Kelly leaned over the elderly woman indulgently, though she knew she suffered Alzheimer’s Disease quite severely. “Yes, Mrs. Ferrin?”

“She was here again, last night,” the emaciated creature whispered urgently in a creaky voice, as if autumn leaves rustled in her scarecrow’s throat. “I saw her come into the room…crawling on all fours. She stopped and looked over at me and, and hissed, then she went on again…she looked like a crab, scuttling…and she went over there, to poor Mrs. Carter’s bed.”

Kelly glanced over at Mrs. Ferrin’s room-mate, Mrs. Carter. She had deteriorated badly in just the one week since Kelly had started on the third shift at this hospital. For the first couple of days, Mrs. Carter had actually been quite charming, talkative and lucid, had shown Kelly pictures of her grandchildren. Now, her eyes and mouth gaped emptily at the ceiling, and Kelly might easily have taken her for dead. It was very upsetting, and something she doubted she would ever grow used to no matter how many years she stayed in this work.

Mrs. Ferrin went on, “Then she climbed up beside the bed, and put her mouth over Mrs. Carter’s mouth, as if she was…kissing her. Poor Mrs. Carter. I saw her legs move a little and I heard her moan, but she never woke up. And then that horrible woman crawled on all fours, out of the room again. Thank God she didn’t look at me again. Her eyes. Her terrible eyes…”

“And who was this awful woman you thought you saw, Mrs. Ferrin?” Kelly asked soothingly, as if calming a child who’d had a bad dream.

“It was Mrs. Weekes…that awful Mrs. Weekes…”

Mrs. Weekes? Mrs. Weekes indeed. Mrs. Weekes was a vegetable, catatonic; Kelly had been wiping the drool from her chin since she’d begun here. Yes, her blankly staring eyes were unsettling—the whites were so alarmingly bloodshot that they appeared entirely red—but she was as harmless as a flower vase, and no more capable of movement. Kelly straightened up. “Mrs. Weekes won’t harm you or Mrs. Carter, Mrs Ferrin, don’t you worry.”

“Watch her!” the old woman whispered. “Watch her!”

* * *

It was morning at last and Kelly would soon be leaving. Thank God. Third shift was a hard one to acclimate to. She craved coffee and breakfast in the cafeteria; she didn’t think she could wait long enough to eat at home. Her charges were beginning to awaken, and the first shift to trickle in. She finished up her final round…and out of some odd curiosity, poked her head into Mrs. Weekes’ room. She had peeked in on her twice during the night, but of course both times the elderly woman had lain there unmoving, a dark shape in the gloom. She was currently alone in her room; another nurse had told Kelly that Mrs. Weekes’ room-mate had passed away the week before Kelly started.

Kelly expected to again see a prone, silent husk, if this time at least lit by the gilded sunlight slanting through the curtains. Instead, what she saw plucked her heart half from her chest. Mrs. Weekes sat upright in bed, her back propped against two pillows, and she was staring at the door as if she had been expecting Kelly or at least someone to enter just then. Her red eyes were dark against pallid wrinkled flesh. The old woman’s mouth spread into a toothless grin.

“Hello, my dear,” she cooed softly in a British accent. “Would I be able to get a cup of tea?”

“Tea?” Kelly hesitated, strangely, before stepping into the room. “Mrs. Weekes…I thought…this is…this is the first time I’ve heard you speak.”

“Yes, well…I haven’t been well, I’m afraid, but I feel much better today. Might I also have two pieces of toast with marmalade? I’m dreadfully hungry, my dear!”

“Oh, yes…sure…of course.” And Kelly darted from the room to see to her patient’s needs, her thoughts all aswirl.

* * *

Kelly knew better than to grow attached to her patients, but how could a human being not? She’d grow tougher with time, she was assured, but she was not certain she ever wanted to grow so tough that the death of someone like Mrs. Ferrin would not affect her.

She’d only been at Eastborough Nursing Home three weeks, and already she had seen them take out Mrs. Carter and now poor Mrs. Ferrin. Kelly was so upset when she heard the news that she even cried in front of her boss, but she didn’t really care what the others thought of her. She found too many of them to be callous.

If it was any consolation, however, some patients apparently improved at the same time others declined. Mrs. Weekes, for instance, seemed to be strengthening every day. She was amicable and charming in the way that Kelly remembered Mrs. Carter as having been in the beginning. But despite this charm, Kelly found herself avoiding the woman more and more, looking in on her only when absolutely necessary. And at night, not at all…because a few nights ago she could have sworn Mrs. Weekes lay awake in the dark, her red eyes open and gazing at Kelly under the cover of murk.

But she couldn’t shirk her duties altogether, could she? So this morning she went to look in on the old woman’s needs.

But the bed lay starkly empty, for the first time since Kelly had started here. Had Mrs. Weekes, too, passed away, then? With a guilty twinge, Kelly realized she was relieved at the possibility. She turned out of the room and began walking briskly down the hall to search out her supervisor so as to inquire into just what had transpired. She was in such a hurry, in fact, that she bumped elbows with a woman who was walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. It was a nurse with her winter coat on, no doubt a third shifter like herself on her way home, but Kelly couldn’t tell who it was because of the dark glasses the pretty young woman wore.

“I’m so sorry,” Kelly apologized for their partial collision.

“That’s quite all right, my dear,” the young woman said in a pleasant British accent, and then she walked smartly down the hall and turned a corner. Kelly stood there watching her until the young woman was out of sight. For several minutes she couldn’t move, as if she herself had suddenly become catatonic.