Queen Bee Goes Home Again Read Online Free

urine, stale sweat, overcooked food, and despair.
    As usual, they kept the thermostat at eighty-five. I breathed through my mouth and tried not to think what germs Daddy and Uncle Bedford were exposed to daily from the overbooked, underpaid nursing assistants.
    The Home had remained perpetually understaffed through four owners, and it didn’t take a genius to know why. With only a few exceptions, they’d never paid the aides enough to keep anybody decent, so turnover was brisk, and most of the ones they hired came from the dregs of the work pool.
    And as usual, there was nobody at the nurses’ station when I passed it on the way to Daddy and Uncle Bedford’s room in the Alzheimer’s wing. At the security door to the wing, I punched in the daily access code written on a Post-it note stuck to the wall above the keypad, then went inside.
    Halfway down the hall, I found Daddy’s door slightly ajar, so I knocked softly as I opened it. “Hey. It’s Lin.”
    What I found inside took me aback. Clothes and bed linens had been hurled every which way. Uncle Bedford’s bare mattress was on the floor (the bed frame wasn’t even in the room), and he and Daddy were lying on their exposed plastic mattresses, butt naked except for the sheets that covered them!
    Daddy looked awful, but Uncle Bedford was a waxy yellow and didn’t even seem to be breathing. Alarmed, I went over and shook him, hard. “Uncle Bedford,” I shouted. “Wake up!”
    He didn’t budge. “Uncle Bedford!” I yelled into his ear.
    Of course, he was stone deaf without his hearing aids, as was Daddy. The two of them carried on totally separate demented conversations at the top of their lungs all the time, but Uncle Bedford now gave off an unfamiliar sour smell and still didn’t respond to my vigorous shaking.
    As pitiful as their lives had become, I panicked at the thought that either of them might be dead. I’d prayed for God to take them both from their misery, but that didn’t mean I was ready for it to happen that day.
    To my relief, Daddy let out a rasping gasp, his jaw dropping, then started sawing logs, which at least told me he was still alive.
    I grabbed the call button from his bed and punched it again and again, but nobody answered.
    Frantic, I hurried out into the hall, where I spotted one of the few longtime nursing assistants emerging at a snail’s pace from the Alzheimer’s dining area at the far end of the corridor. “Shalayne!” I called to her. “Hurry! Something’s wrong with Uncle Bedford.”
    â€œHold yer horses,” she said, clearly unimpressed. Her progress didn’t speed up one whit. “I’m a-comin’. These blessed bunions is killin’ me. Just hang on. It’s all good.”
    Frustrated beyond endurance, I went back into Daddy’s room and tried to rouse Uncle Bedford again, with no success.
    My Aunt Glory would never forgive me if I simply stood there and did nothing. She felt guilty enough as it was, for finally throwing in the towel and committing him.
    The General hadn’t been in the Home for two weeks before Aunt Glory gave in to Uncle B’s constant agitated demands that we find his brother. So she’d had her husband of fifty-seven years declared incompetent (duh!), then committed him to the Home on the condition that Uncle B and Daddy could be roommates, bless her heart.
    Free at last, she’d fled Mimosa Branch in Uncle Bedford’s red Corvette, to live with my cousin Susan in Alpharetta, where she had central air-conditioning, her own bathroom, peace and quiet, and mahjong groups aplenty.
    My cousins Susan and Laura took turns coming up to check on Uncle Bedford, but only once a week.
    Not that I could throw stones. I’d been avoiding the Home for months, since Daddy had stopped recognizing me.
    I looked down at my uncle, who lay there like a corpse.
    Should I do CPR?