Aging with Gracie Read Free Page B

of the chair.
    “What a wimp,” a freckled scout giggled as Grace passed the table where several girls were handing out orange juice and cookies.
    With shaky legs, Grace turned on her three-inch heels to give her adolescent tormentor a piece of her mind. As she did, she felt an unmistakable slide of Italian leather on something she could only describe as gross .
    She didn’t have time to consider what the offensive substance could have been, for in the span of two seconds flat, she found herself heels-over-head and painfully sprawled on the floor. Her left elbow ached, and her left leg was twisted into an unnatural angle.
    Grace groaned. The demise of her ferocious backhand was the farthest thing from her mind as pain shot from her elbow to the tips of her fingers. She tried to redistribute the weight from her throbbing ankle, but with her arm in such a painful bind, the movement was impossible.
    Now, definitely at the point of tears, she looked down to find her modesty, not to mention her smoke-gray thigh-high stockings, in shreds. She finally gave up the struggle to maintain any semblance of decency. The pain in her left arm was so excruciating that she could have cared less that she was giving the entire room an unobstructed view of her most recent lingerie purchase.
    At least she tried to convince herself that she didn’t care. In actuality, she was using the time between shooting pains to take a mental inventory of how many cellulite divots were congregating above the lines of her stockings.
    Oh, well , she thought. If nothing else, she’d certainly made a memorable entry into this aged society. The self-effacing part of her personality even longed to call out “Hello, Eden! Eve has arrived!” But as tempting as she knew the sight of her in all of her helpless feminine glory must be to them, she quelled the urge. The truth was that her extremities, not to mention her pride, were hurting too much to make the effort. She groaned in embarrassment as more people began to crowd around her.
    “Someone grab an incident report!” The offensive whine of Nurse North echoed down the hall. “That stupid girl has fallen in those silly shoes of hers.”
    Grace squirmed around like a fish on land. Finally, she managed to scoot up against a wall into a sitting position. By that time, there was a group of at least ten people circling her like a flock of vultures. Through a maze of walkers and orthopedic canes, she saw a pair of worn work boots approach. The crowd parted like the Red Sea...or rather, a very slow mudslide...as a man gently made his way past tittering grandmothers and gaping men whose attention appeared to Grace to stem more from curiosity than true concern.
    Grace closed her eyes and tried to visualize a calming scene instead of the disturbing image of how many old geezers were currently craning their necks for a closer look at the lace edging on her thong underwear. That the underwear happened to match her stockings to a tee was no consolation in her present predicament.
    Her tearful gaze followed a pair of muscular, blue-jean clad legs upward to a torso made in heaven. Honest to goodness, God had done a fine job designing the fellow standing in front of her.
    Embarrassment quickly replaced her interest in the man, however. A disheveled, battered excuse for a woman lying spread-eagle and literally airing out her laundry in the midst of twenty geriatric onlookers was not the best first impression she could have made.
    Grace knew that she would eventually have to face the music of her situation, though, and never one to shy away from a problem, grasped for whatever shred of courage remained in her arsenal. Her own inescapable embarrassment aside, she still hesitated to look upward because she was even more convinced that her rescuer was the man she had seen in the recreation room. It just had to be him!
    She took a deep breath and chanced a peek.
    “ Oh, my .”
    She felt a tingle all the way to her toes. Even