Page 72 - Vol. VI #1

The Dying Kind (continued from preceding page)
Sheila unscrewed the morphine bottle and insert- ed the syringe with no needle into the clear liquid, drawing up a big enough dose to squirt in the old lady’s mouth and knock her out for a few hours.
a stick of a woman swimming in a pink extra- small size T-shirt and fleece pants.
“Don’t do it now,” Randall said, putting his hand over the morphine bottle. “There’s plenty of time. Let’s take her outside.”
“Turn, turn,” Sheila said. Mrs. Harper began to pant, her eyes wide open.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“We forgot her glasses,” Randall said. He turned her gently and Mrs. Harper flopped into the wheelchair with a loud sigh. She looked uncom- fortable, with one hip higher than the other and the enormous round toes of her shoes dangling to the carpet.
Randall shook his head. “Come on, she just wants to go look at the scotch pine in the front yard. The gardener told her it has pine wilt.”
Sheila found the glasses on the side table and gently hooked the frames behind her ears. The large, roundish frames made her look owlish, and the heavy prescription lenses magnified her eyes to alien proportions. Sheila noticed Mrs. Harper was still huffing from the trauma of getting into the wheelchair.
“Pine wilt.” Mrs. Harper pointed a crooked finger more insistently now at the sliding glass door leading to the backyard.
“What’s pine wilt?”
“It’s why the pine needles are turning grey. Some disease carried by worms.”
“Tree,” she said.
Sheila squirted the morphine back in the bottle, and walked it back into the kitchen. She came back into the living room, leaning over to pick up Mrs. Harper’s enormous Velcro-strapped shoes. They were heavy shoes, made out of shiny leather the color of a mushroom, and styled for comfort and sturdiness rather than style. Randall had his mother sitting up and swung her legs to the floor in one swift movement. Sheila bent down to work the shoes onto the woman’s curled, gnarly feet, while Mrs. Harper watched, wiping the ever-pres- ent drool from corner of her mouth with a tissue.
“She’s got to make sure everyone’s telling her the truth. Don’t you, Ma?”
Randall scooted the wheelchair to the bed and set the brakes.
She released the brake from the wheelchair and rolled Mrs. Harper to the front door Randall had opened. Slowly, she pushed the chair over the threshold bump then down the wooden ramp to the sidewalk. Pink and yellow streaks filled the sky as the sun set over the treetops on the oppo- site side of the street.
“Are you ready, Ma?”
“Let’s just put her to bed and have fun,” Sheila whispered over her shoulder to Randall.
Fear flickered over Mrs. Harper’s face, as it usu- ally did. No matter how many times she was transferred from bed to wheelchair, she still looked frightened every time. Sheila placed the woman’s good hand on the wheelchair armrest and watched as Randall gently put his hands un- der her shoulders and lifted her to standing. She swayed slightly on her feet, back and forth, barely
Randall passed her and walked through an open- ing in the hedge to the front yard.
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Mrs. Harper waved her bony crooked hand as though dismissing Randall’s comment.
“You get paid to take care of her,” he said in a loud voice. “So do it.”
A surge of anger passed through her, causing her breath to quicken and a few beats later emerg- ing in the form of a rough push of the wheelchair,