Aging with Gracie Read Free Page A

employees.”
“Vaccination?” Grace felt her knees turn to jelly. “Do you mean I have to get a shot?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Her thin, pinched lips slowly turned upward into something resembling a smirk.
“Uh, but what if I need to be exempt from having one?”
“You’re allergic to the vaccine?” Nurse North stopped mid-step and hit Grace with a piercing stare.
    Grace had seen the look before…it was the evil eye. Most every schoolteacher, nurse or parent had perfected some version of it through years and years of practice; however, Grace knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nurse North hadn’t needed such practice…she’d been born with the skill!
    “I might be,” Grace hedged.
    “What you might be is full of it.” Agatha North turned around and strutted briskly down the hall, her white orthopedic shoes squeaking noisily on the worn parquet tile floor.
    Like a kindergartner headed for the time-out chair, Grace followed her tormentor with her lower lip as close to a pout as her corporate image would allow. It was only the Woodhouse pride that prevented her from giving the woman an actual tear, but it was a struggle. Grace did, however, give in to the urge to stomp her feet as she made her way toward her punishment.
    When they arrived at the recreation room, there was already a line at the door. Nurse North left her at the back of the queue and headed in the opposite direction.
    “I have to stand in line?” Grace asked. She was miffed at being left alone, and a bit of her bad attitude returned. “It’s not as if it’s the grand opening of a Buckhead restaurant. For crying out loud! It’s the unnecessary infliction of pain on innocent bystanders.”
    “And what is your point?” Nurse North must have heard her complaint because she turned back and looked at Grace through her black-rimmed spectacles.
“It’s just that I’m...” Grace muttered, trying not to cringe.
“What?” the woman interrupted. “The boss’s daughter?”
“I just meant...”
“Do you think that being the boss’s daughter is going to get you anywhere around here?”
“Of course not, Nurse North.” Duly chastised, Grace barely kept from hanging her head in defeat as she answered the question.
    “That’s what I thought,” the woman said with a satisfied smile. “Now wait right here. They should get to you in a little while.”
    “Thank you for your help,” Grace managed to say with the barest hint of a smile. “I suppose I’ll look you up when I’m finished here.”
    “See that you do,” the nurse grumbled and pushed past a group of old ladies whose tittering conversation seemed too carefree for Grace to believe they were actually headed to the needle-wielding sadists in the recreation room.
    Resigned to wait in line, Grace eyed a pair of ancient men in front of her and realized with a sigh that there wasn’t a chance in the world that she would be offered ‘ups’. The more she thought about it, there was probably no such thing as ‘ups’ when those men were in school. Talk about ancient!
    Thirty minutes later, Grace reached the Promised Land...Promised Land as in, “I promise this is going to hurt.”
    She made her way toward an empty chair just as a construction worker rolled down a sleeve over an impressive muscle and ambled toward the doorway. Grace wasn’t able to see the man’s face, but from the back, he was definitely headed toward the higher numbers on the one to ten scale of male perfection.
    For a moment, she was stunned. Unfortunately, the man walking across the room had little to do with it. Grace cringed and willed away the tears forming in her eyes.
    “Couldn’t you have given me a warning?” Grace glared at the woman as she pulled the needle from Grace’s arm and slapped an adhesive bandage over the gaping hole.
    “Next!” Without a hint of apology, the nurse stripped off her gloves and gave her hands a quick squirt of hand sanitizer as she waited for Grace to climb out