Bingoed Read Free

for me and way too uncomfortable! I don’t know why my children insist on buying me so many clothes.”
    “Miss Essie! What are we going to do with you?” chided DeeDee as she held up two selections of tops from Essie’s closet. Essie pointed to the least colorful of the pair causing DeeDee to sigh. Setting down the other top on Essie’s dresser, she grabbed Essie’s preferred top and bunched it up. Essie, on cue, raised her arms and DeeDee slid the top over her head and down her body. “Now shoes!” commanded the shapely aide, hands on her hips. DeeDee grabbed Essie’s sneakers from a chair beside her bed and when Essie sat back down on the bedside, DeeDee slipped them on the older woman’s thin, tiny feet and tied the laces with an amazing speed.
    “There we go! Now we’re all set! Why don’t we go sit down in our rocker while I get your meds ready?”
    “Yes,” said Essie, smiling. “Why don’t we sit in our rocker? If we can both fit in it.”
    “Miss Essie,” responded a laughing DeeDee. “You make me laugh!”
    “Too bad I can’t make us both laugh since we tend to do everything together, don’t we?” queried Essie. She grabbed onto her red rolling walker which was stationed near the head of her bed and started to scoot into the small living room of her apartment. DeeDee followed her, turning immediately left into a kitchen nook where she unlocked a cabinet door above the sink. She removed a rectangular plastic container and placed it on the counter.
    “Surely someone here must know Bob’s condition,” mused Essie as she cautiously lowered herself into her favorite armchair, centrally located in her living room, with a writing desk on one side and a telephone table on the other. Across the room, a television set stood in a place of honor.
    “Violet must know,” answered DeeDee, removing several pills from one of the square subdivisions of the pillbox. She filled a glass with water at the sink and brought both pills and water over to the chair where Essie was now sitting. “Here, our seven morning pills. Bottoms up!” She placed the pills in Essie’s right palm and handed her the glass of water. Essie took a cursory look at the pills, then plopped them all in her mouth at once and gulped them down with several swallows of water. “I’m sure she’ll tell the nurses on duty today what she knows. I mean, Bob’s caregiver needs to know that he’s not here.”
    “Did they take him to Fairview?” Essie asked.
    “I guess so. That’s where they take most residents because it’s so close. Unless, of course, there’s some reason the resident has requested a different hospital and I can’t see any reason why Bob would do that.”
    “Poor Bob.”
    “Yes, such a nice gentleman.”
    “He doesn’t have any family, does he?”
    “I don’t know.” DeeDee had busied herself with putting away the pill container box and straightening up Essie’s sink. “Now, Miss Essie, is there anything you need before I go?”
    “No, I’ll just sit here and work on my puzzles until breakfast.”
    “That sounds like a wonderful idea! I don’t know how you ever manage to do those crosswords! I’m lucky if I can fill in two words,” sang out DeeDee. “Have a great day!” She headed out Essie’s front door into the hallway. Essie could see residents gliding back and forth outside of her doorway with their walkers, canes, and wheelchairs. It was like watching planes flying in a holding pattern around an airport, she often thought. All of the Happy Haven residents had their transportation machines of one sort or another and they all piloted them relatively well—some better than others.
    DeeDee closed Essie’s door and the sounds of the outside receded. Essie reached across her end table for her TV remote. She pushed the ON button and soon the sounds of a local news program filled her small apartment. She listened only briefly. She really wasn’t much interested in news unless it was news about