1.
Nelda Black and Nora Smith

“The cows had long ago been sent out to pasture, so if their families don’t care, why should I?” Nelda Black growled. On the wall panel above the desk, a light flashed indicating someone in room 21 bed two pressed the call button again. “I mean, they ain't no kin to me!”

In a room down the hall, Nora Smith asked the darkness, “Why won’t somebody come?” As if needing to make excuses for the staff she said to her self, “I know they must be busy, but…”

“You ringin’ that damn button again?” Nelda Black spat as her large, towering shape suddenly appeared in the doorway. Standing there glaring like an angry bear, she growled, “I ain’t got time to be foolin’ wit the likes uh you! What the hell you want now?”

Nora Smith began, “I need to go…”

“Shut up you old cow!” Nelda Black interrupted. “Why don’t you go on and croak so I don’t have to look at you no more!”

“I’m sorry”, Nora whimpered, ”but I gotta' pee, and I don’t want to go in my bed.”

“If you wet that bed and I gotta' change it, you’re really gonna' get it!”

2.
Thomas Roser

Across the hall, sitting on the foot of his bed, Thomas Roser who had recently moved in listened intently. I’ll be damned if I let anyone treat me like that! He thought as he lay back on his bed.
Laying there trying to solidify that thought, he recalled the conversation he had with his son the previous week:

“…But I don’t want to give up my freedom.” Thomas Roser had pleaded.

“Come on. Be reasonable. They let you do what you want, and the guests here are treated very well."

“If my health weren’t failing, there’s no way I would agree to this.” Shaking his head, sounding defeated, he continued, “I worked all my life so I’d end up being put out to pasture in a place like this?”

His words laced with frustration now, he complained, “I mean, no more back-yard-cook-outs, no more fishing!” He stopped speaking for a moment as if reigning in his emotions. “I ain't dead yet for Christ’s sake, but I feel like you’re already putting me in the ground.

“Dad, that’s just nonsense. You have to believe I’ll visit you all the time, I promise. And we’ll come get you on the holidays. Just try it for a while and you’ll see it ain't so bad.”

That was last week.

Now, looking up at a framed picture of himself and his own father, Thomas Roser suddenly felt a wave of guilt radiating through him like fever chills as he remembered a similar conversation he'd had thirty five years ago. He recalled the promise he made to visit his father often, and then recalled how few those visits had actually been.

For some reason the room across the hall fell silent. Straining to listen, Thomas sat up cupping his ear. Faintly, he heard the rustling of sheets and assumed Mrs. Black ended up changing the sheets despite her threat.
Thomas relaxed and laid back.

The lights in these rooms are too dim, he thought, as he strained to see details in that picture. It was taken in up-state New York on a fishing trip to Hinkley Lake on a sunny Saturday in 1972. That day was seared in his memory. It was the day he realized that despite what he was told, his dad was sick.

But none of this matters now, he thought.

3.
Nelda Black

Nelda Black’s shift ended at 8:00 am, so at 7:45 she returned to the break room to gather her shoulder bag, jacket, and kill 15 minutes. As she slung the straps over her shoulder, she heard and saw a flurry of hurried people dressed in flapping white lab-coats as they passed by the break room door reminding Nelda Black of drying sheets billowing in the wind.

Quickly, Nelda Black poked her head out the doorway looking in the direction of the flapping.

Life hadn’t always been easy for Nelda Black. At 5 years old, she was left fatherless thanks to an “unfortunate accident” at the local iron works. “Unfortunate accident” is what they called it, but Nelda Black always suspected differently.
About a year after her father’s death, Nelda Black’s mother had a breakdown and attempted suicide. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was placed in a convalescent home where she remained to this day. Subsequently, Nelda was raised by a blind aunt, and an uncle who was only too happy to “have” her.

Nelda Black resigned herself to remaining single her whole life, vowing to never succumb to the sorrows that enslaved her mother. And, as far as she was concerned, she was successful.

Nelda Black was looking forward to getting home to the coffee pot that sat on the counter beneath a wooden plaque that stated solemnly, “Nelda’s Kitchen”, but she didn’t leave just yet.
Mildly interested, she followed those flapping sheets across the bridge: a long window lined hallway, connecting the new nursing home section of the facility to the old psychiatric section.

Near the room where the sheets finally entered, Nelda Black stopped and listened intently as one of the white sheets spoke. “She coded over six minutes ago, and her records contain a DNR order.”

Another Sheet stated grimly, “Call it then.”

“Time of death, 7:52”

“Any next of kin?”

“A daughter. Her chart doesn’t give a name or an address. According to this chart, our patient here is a ward of the state anyway, and has never had a visitor.”

Nelda Black stood there wondering why those sheets seemed to care about the dead lady. They obviously weren’t kin to her. Then, they spoke again. “Dr. Roser, I’m going to notify decedent affairs.”

“Alright, I’ll notify the chaplain.”

It took a few moments to register that Roser was also the name carried by one of her patients, and she took a mental note. As both of the men departed the room, Nelda Black felt a little easier about entering to see who the dead lady was. No family, she thought. What a pathetic excuse for a life, she concluded.

Two nurses were in the room beginning the grim pre-transport ritual designed to keep bodily fluids from leaking on the way to the morgue, so they barely noticed as Nelda Black stepped in.
Nelda Black looked blankly upon the dead lady, and asked dryly, “Who was she?”

4.
Nora Smith

Nora Smith woke at 8:00 am with one hell of a neck ache, but glorious rays of sunlight illuminated millions of sparkly particulates that pierced the room’s glumness, beating back the blackness of the night, making it easier to put last night’s drama behind her.

The sunbeams coming through her window painting brilliant rectangles on the floor reminded her of similar mornings in the apartment she vacated about five years ago. This reminder also carried with it the troubling memory of a conversation she had with her daughter around that same time.

She recalled the benefits of living in a place where medical help was only a button away, and how it was for the best. Nora Smith’s daughter swore up and down that she would visit often, and for the first year and a half she did, though the visits grew farther and farther apart with time until the visits came only at Christmas and Easter.

Nora Smith snuggled back against her pillow thinking of calling her daughter, but with that thought came the possibility that she would be intruding on her daughter’s life again, and the last thing she wanted was to be a burden.

5.
Thomas Roser

Standing by the window in his room, Thomas Roser watched as Nelda Black shuffled to her car. He noticed how she moved with her head down and her shoulders hunched as if warding off a blast of frosty air. Thomas Roser stood there wondering what had affected her so, when a coroner’s station wagon pulled into it’s reserved space.

Thomas Roser’s mind shifted to his son, and he wondered how long it would be before he paid a visit. Knowing that only 4 days had gone by since seeing him, he figured his son would get around to visiting as soon as he had a chance. In the home, he couldn’t help feeling pathetic.  Without visitors he felt like he was just a body with no family. Just a body with no life.

6.
Nelda Black

After being told the name of the dead woman, Nelda Black walked quickly to the parking lot and began sobbing as she hauled herself into her car.  A woman with no family, a woman with no heart and a woman with no life lay upon the bed in that room. What’s worse than that, she thought, is a woman with no family, heart, or life sits right here in this car.

As Nelda Black, teary eyed, turned the key and dropped the shifter into reverse, she looked up and noticed Dr. Roser’s son solemnly observing her through the window in his room. With that, Nelda Black gave him a hint of a smile and a three-finger steering-wheel-wave as she backed out of her place and headed toward her own home.