Medicine
Nursing Home (Photo credit: LOLren)
The same question that had hounded her for years continued to pummel Irene: At the end of my life, what will I have to show for it?
The answer, she decided, wasn’t in this place—a box-like room full of white sheets, a white blanket, a white commode and the sickly smell of urine, feces and vomit.
She dragged her legs to the edge of the bed, grabbed the rubber handles of her walker, encrusted with the grime of three weeks in the nursing home, and made her way to the apple red crash cart parked down the hall where she copped a vial of potassium chloride, a 22-gauge needle, a syringe and tourniquet from the drawer that should have been locked.
After signing herself out against medical advice, she took a taxi home—her happy yellow house with the flower boxes on the window sill that had just come into bloom—the place where she had chosen to die.
Purty, her calico cat greeted her at the door, purring and winding herself about the ankles of the old nurse, who suddenly realized that the medicine stashed inside her purse wasn’t what she really wanted, not as long as Purty needed her.
Shared with Five Sentence Fiction over at Lillie McFerrin’s blog, where this week’s prompt is Medicine. Perhaps you’d like to join us with a Flash Fiction of your own!
Victoria C. Slotto, Author 