Final Stroke Read Online Free Page B

and into elevators, and finally into his room, he could not see who was pushing him and be came frightened that Jan no longer existed. The second was the fact that, when they arrived on the third floor, his name was posted next to his door on an awfully permanent-looking placard, but one which, when more closely examined, proved to be not-so-permanent because, although the name was stenciled into a fake wood-grain card, the card could be easily slid out of its holder when the time came to either leave or, as residents and staff liked to put it, move upstairs.
    Marjorie Gianetti was a resident in Saint Mel’s nursing home wing.
    Although attached to Saint Mel’s main building, the nursing home’s single-story wing stuck out from the main multistory structure and, from some vantage points, actually disappeared into the woods. Some at the center claimed Saint Mel’s got its nickname, Hell in the Woods, from a clever nursing home resident observing staff members trudge in from the staff parking lot hidden off in the woods behind the nurs ing home wing. Another theory about the nickname was that the facility was already completed when a rare storm with southeasterly winds blew up and jets from O’Hare Field began taking off directly overhead. Yet another theory referred to incidents in which nursing home residents walked out the loading dock entrance when an errant worker propped open the alarmed door. In each case the walkaway failed to get anywhere because of the chain-link fence surrounding the place. The only opening in the fence was at the main entry road some distance from the nursing home wing on the opposite side of the main building, further fueling nursing home residents’ insistence that the name be changed from Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility to, simply, Hell in the Woods.
    During Steve’s first few minutes in the place, the same nurses’ aide who revealed its nickname said Marjorie Gianetti made a point of greeting new stroke victims at the facility whether they were older and moving into the nursing home wing, whether they were younger and moving into the rehab facility, or whether they were in critical condi tion at any age and moving into the skilled care hospice facility. While accompanying Steve and Jan to his room—speaking exclusively to Jan in a way that made Steve feel he already had at least a foot, if not a leg, arm, and right testicle in the grave—the nurses’ aide said Marjorie got the names of incoming stroke victims from the rehab center’s updated strokers list and was a self-appointed den mother to incoming stroke victims. According to the nurses’ aide, one had to take a lot of what Marjorie said with a grain of salt and try to ignore her curses concern ing the Pope.
    Later, after Steve attended several stroker sessions and got to know Marjorie—and especially after she found out he’d been a Chicago cop, then a private investigator—Marjorie began telling him about her suspicions of devious goings-on at Hell in the Woods. She’d say things like, “Mr. Babe, cushy TV floor heads are okay, otherwise, cab bage meals on wheels for me,” which actually was a continuation of her hard-tile-floor-Medicaid conspiracy theory that meant something like, “That’s why I only walk where it’s carpeted. If I take a fall I know this old head of mine will bear the brunt of it. When I’m in the hall ways I stay put in my chair so I won’t fall and bust my noggin open like a cabbage.”
    Maybe because he smiled so much, Marjorie told him all kinds of crazy things. Things like overmedication during state inspections and a resident named Janine steeped in the whirlpool like a tea bag. A conspiracy theory about stolen equipment sold back to the place by a medical supply company that acted as a front for the Catholic Church—and they thought the money was all from real estate. Hor ror stories about skilled-wing patients being eased ever so closer to the grave by the bean counters in