Forget-Me-Not

WriterActress: I don't do short stories often because to me they're hard and difficult, but this is one of those things that my dad wanted for Christmas. Just an interesting twist on alzheimer's disease. 

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Forget-Me-Note 

“You know Lila, grandma fell in love with grandpa when she was your age.” Dad lectured as we walked down the sterilized white walls that broke up when we walked passed glass cases that held pictures of the patients in their twenties when they wore old pretty dresses and thick stiff army suits with heavy purple hearts hanging off of them, but the men never smiled in these pictures.  They’d smile in the later pictures with their kids, but I guess it’s hard to smile after killing a whole bunch of people. 

Dad continued his lecture on how his parents belonged in an over dramatic love story that reached the heights of Romeo and Juliet with dad and my aunts and uncles being these screw ball side characters like the nurse, but I don’t think dad comprehended the fact that the protagonists of this love story slowly began to decay. Maybe a beautiful decay might be a better way to put it for him, but I don’t think it’d help dad understand the inevitable. 

My nose twitched as I shifted my glasses at the smell of urine and too sweet candles and sprays that the nurses used constantly. Some of the patients sat out of their rooms in wheel chairs and other odd chairs that didn’t look comfortable, but then again, the patients never ever looked comfortable. The nurses hung up happy calendars that would probably look better in a third grade classroom with the happy smiling suns and the big frowns on the grey clouds.  

A woman with thin white hair and tubes in her nose and wrist, who laid on her back, stared at us, gasping for air as she reached out for me, but I took a sharp step back before hiding behind my dad. “Help me,” she begged, her voice sounded wet and wispy as Dad made a movement to touch her, but his hand stopped midway and hovered there.

Her voice my my stomach squeeze. Actually, just looking at her made me hurt. Being so frail looked like agony.  

“I’ll get someone to help you, I promise,” Dad promised as he smiled at her. The lady’s thin muscles finally relaxed in her arms and shoulders before she closed her eyes as her breathing became even. Dad walked before I stumbled behind him as he said, "Lila, don't move someone when they ask. There's probably a very good reason for why they're in that position." 

Dad walked up to the desk where the nurses smiled at me. A big black woman, who looked like she came out of one of those emotional movies that teachers made us watch at school when they wanted to talk about the dangers of sex, drugs, and alcohol, smiled at me as she leaned over the desk before she said, "My, my, Mister Davis, who is this pretty little thing?"

I twitched. I'm not pretty, it's just one of those things that adults like to say to kids to give them a false sense of confidence. I'm short, barely five foot, with thin brown hair that I pulled up into messy buns because it got adults thinking that I'm older than I actually am. I'm not super skinny with thick legs that dad told me were a good thing, but when you see girls who can wear skinny jeans and not feel like stuffed sausages, I can't help and think otherwise. My eyes hid behind big thick glasses  that I inherited from my dad.  

Dad went behind me and place his big warm hands on my shoulders before he announced, "This is my daughter, Lila, she's going to be graduating middle school this year."  I'm tempted to tell him that this was no big accomplishment, but decided against it. "We came to see dad. Can we have the code?" 

She gave him the code which consisted of stars and numbers before Dad let me go and walked over to the locked doors and punched in the code. He yanked me in, so one of the guests wouldn't walk out and get into trouble. It's like taking care of a two year old. Make sure to lock the play pen when you're done, dear.