Flowers//Elavan

~7~

The sound of latex being snapped back resonates through the small room as Avan expertly puts his glove on his hands. He gives his favorite geriatric patient a smile before raising a cupful of sparkling water with a small, red bendy straw. Putting it up to the elderly man's lips, Avan encourages him to take a sip.

He lets a couple of seconds pass by before checking the older man's reaction. Taking a mental note of how Ernie no longer was coughing, he puts the water down on the nearby table.

"How'd that feel, Ernie?"

"That went down the right pipe for once," he chortles triumphantly with that hoarse-sounding voice he has developed due to his age.

"Great," Avan smiles. "That's due to the lack of sensation in your pharynx caused by the stroke you had a few whiles ago Do you remember that?"

Ernie's face flushed with a look of confusion. He couldn't seem to remember. Avan got the hint that he was entering yet another episode of his dementia and decided to just keep going along with it.

"Alright, so the fizz in the carbonated water is just helping to tell your nerves that you're swallowing something. I'm going to have to tell the nurses to serve you carbonated water for a while," he takes his gloves off and toss them into the steel trash bin.

"Are we quite finished here, son? My wife is waiting."

Avan finds himself giving the aged man a small smile. His wife passed away somewhere around 5 years ago. It was after his wife's death that his children left him in the nursing home of the medical institute. He felt a great sense sympathy for the sweet old man.

Ernie often talked about how his children would call on an occasional basis or how he was excited for Christmas because they would pick him up. It was sad if you really think about it but the old man didn't seem to mind at all.

"We're just going to check how your vocal volume and quality are doing and you can go," Avan patronizingly replies. "Now if you could just hold an ah sound for me as loud as you can for 10 seconds, that would be great."

His cloudy gray eyes fill with hesitation before he opens his mouth and does as he was told.

"Good job. You're louder now and the shakiness has reduced," the younger man grins.

"If you had a wife, son, you would know it's never good to keep them waiting for too long," Ernie shakes his head, slightly impatient to get his speech therapy session over with.

Avan bitterly chuckles to himself. Liz was never one to be petty but the thing that she hated most, other than dishonesty, was the lack of punctuality. It always pissed her off so much when they were late to anything because she used to say it was disrespectful of other people's time. If they were ever late to anything at all, no matter how casual the event may be, her whole mood would shift like a light switch. Her nose would wrinkle in distaste as her mind would swirl around the fact that her scheduled plans have been ruined.

"In fact, sir, I do have a wife," he shakes his head.

"Oh, well, you should bring her over sometime. I'm sure Rosa would love some company," Ernie smiles contentedly, gazing into space. "What's your wife's name?"

"Her name is Liz."

"That short for Elizabeth?" Avan nods. "My eldest daughter is named Elizabeth. She's the most beautiful thing in the world, looks exactly like her mother. Only six years old and already nagging my ears off, God bless her."

The younger man listens intently as Ernie went on and on about how much he loved his wife and his children. It warmed his heart knowing that love like that still existed in this world.