Anna hated bingo nights. She hated the stench of the elderly, the blend of cheap candles, mothballs, and death. She herself was old, but she wasn’t elderly. Her hair was fashionably cut in a choppy line at her shoulders, dyed her natural auburn. Soft and smooth was her skin, maintained not by any miracle potions but by years of proper skincare and diet, and her clothes were purchased at boutique stores, not the local Belk’s. She tried to shrink in on herself as the other residents of her assisted living facility ate with mouths wide open, yelling about their new strategies and good luck trolls as the bored looking nurses passed out stained cards. Anna took one, thinking it slightly better to suffer through a game than be accused of the disease causing her to forget her love for bingo by one of the godawful nurses.
Sheryl, a tiny blonde woman who was the head of activities, screeched out the rules that everyone had memorized five times over to the residents of Fraserwood Assisted Living’s building Three. Anna lazily placed paper chips on any numbers that were called, wincing at the shrill sound of the bingo cage by the microphone. She was two numbers away from a vertical bingo when Francis Beers- an insufferable good samaritan type- praised Jesus loudly as she completed a diagonal row and became the week’s reigning champion. Anna lurched up, and got Sheryl to escort her to her room- not marked by a tacky wreath, but by a simple engraved gold plate. The nurse put her in the bed, and reminded her she’d be there in the morning for her Alzheimer's medication, to which Anna protested, insisting she didn’t need it until well after Sheryl was gone and the lights off.
That night, Anna dreamed of Bingo. Anna loved Bingo.
