Aging with Gracie (6 page)

“So you have, my precious wife.”

As Grace sat on the sofa, she began to realize the gravity of her situation. She had been in town for less than a week, and she was already in
totally
over her head. She was used to blueprints and portfolios. Fact sheets and cost-analyses. She soared with those things.

People were a completely different commodity. And when it came to caring for elderly people? Why, that was off the chart! She had no idea what she was doing!

For crying out loud! She didn’t know the first thing about old people and the conditions they suffered from. Sure, she had heard of Alzheimer’s disease, which she figured was the likely culprit in this man’s dementia, but now that she had actually seen how it affected someone, she began to get a better grasp of the helplessness of the situation. She could only imagine how this poor man was dealing with it and how his family members must be suffering.

The guilt crept over her as she remembered her ire at the assignment and the complaints she had repeated over and over on her way up the Blue Ridge Mountains.

What if this sweet little man was your Grandpa Woodhouse
? She felt a prick of shame deep in her heart and closed her eyes.

“Father, God,” she whispered to herself. “Please forgive my selfishness. I’m lost here, and I need your guidance. Please don’t leave me. Please help me help these people. Amen.”

After her prayer, Grace sat by her companion, listening to his steady breathing and pondering her situation. It was sobering when she thought about it. The place actually needed her! She had never found herself in that position before. Ever! And in some deranged way of thinking, it actually gave her an uncanny sense of independence. Of
freedom
.

Her delight in suddenly discovering that she might actually have something to offer the people of Mansfield Park was interrupted by a shrieking voice.

“This place needs a paging system,” Grace mumbled under her breath. She reached for her phone to make a note then thought better of it. With the constant yelling, she would have no problem remembering
that
need.

“Agatha! Theodore has escaped again!” Grace heard the loud voice just before she saw a man rounding the corner.

It was the bone-crushing, people-parting Moses from the day of her accident. Remembering how one of the tiny female residents had been practically flattened by his girth, Grace pulled her sore ankle closer to the sofa as he headed their way.

“Miss Woodhouse,” he gushed. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.” He looked at her companion then glanced around nervously as if waiting for some type of intervention. A few moments later, the white-capped Nurse North entered the room and walked toward Grace’s new admirer.

“Let’s go back to your room, Theodore.” The nurse thrust out her hand.

Grace’s sidekick ignored the woman and returned his gaze to the window. When Nurse North reached down to take his arm, he tightened his grip on Grace’s hand. Realizing that disaster was merely seconds away, Grace gently turned the old man’s face to hers.

“Theodore, dear,” she began, “I think that it’s time for us to head home.”

“Of course, Marianne.” He stood up and offered her his arm. Before Grace could take it, Nurse North wedged herself between them.

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Woodhouse.” The nurse grabbed the man’s arm and tugged him toward the door.

Without really thinking of the consequences, Grace picked up her cane and held it out between the nurse and the door.

“No, I think that it
is
necessary that I walk Theodore to his room.”

Knowing that her flimsy hold on her cane was not much of a deterrent, Grace aimed for a stern tone. It must have worked, too, because not only was Nurse North stopped in her steps, but the portly bystander stood there in open-mouthed shock.

Grace held in a grin at the sight of the man’s slack jaw.

She felt like doing a juvenile little cheer, but with her current injuries, she decided against it. After managing to pull herself into a standing position, she hobbled to stand by the man she now thought of as
Theo
. She turned to the other man with a piercing glare.

“Now, Mr. Watson, I presume?” There was really no mistaking his identity. He could be none other than the resident director.

He nodded.

“If you will direct me to my companion’s room, I will deliver him safely. Then, I hope we will have an opportunity to chat about my plans for the center.”

“Certainly, Miss Woodhouse,” he said as he tucked his wrinkled white oxford into the seam-splitting waistband of his khakis. “If you’ll just follow me.”

•∞•∞•

“I apologize for Theodore,” the director told Grace a few minutes later.

She had delivered the man to his suite without any problems and had left him kicked back in his recliner watching an episode of “Matlock”.

Grace watched from her seat as Richard Watson hefted himself into a large leather chair behind an equally large desk. Her eyes darted around the office. It was a taxidermist’s dream. Grace calculated that he had to have spent a fortune getting all of the animals stuffed. She glanced over her shoulder and cringed at the head of a snarling black bear that hovered merely a hairbreadth away.

“It was no problem,” she assured him, and indeed, it had not been. The entire episode had been an eye-opener, but it had been one that, in her naivety, she had desperately needed.

“In a few weeks, residents like him won’t pose a problem for the center.” His smug grin suggested that he thought the statement would offer her some sort of assurance.

“What do you mean?” Grace asked as she cut her eyes to make sure a raccoon’s beady little gaze hadn’t followed her to her seat. To her relief, they were still fixed in glassy oblivion.

“The Alzheimer’s cases,” he mumbled as if she should know what he was talking about.

“What about them?”

“I’ve arranged for those residents requiring around-the-clock care to be transferred to the nursing home over in Scarsdale,” he told her.

“And what do their families say about this?”

“They don’t have any choice,” he smiled. “That’s the beauty of our little home here. We can do whatever we like.”

Grace was dangerously close to wielding her cane again...right across the man’s poor excuse for a comb-over. She struggled to get a grip on her emotions.

“Mr. Watson,” she began, “I will admit that I’m relatively new to this industry, but I’m pretty sure that you’re not allowed to evict a resident based on an illness.”

“I beg to differ, Miss Woodhouse,” he said. “The rules are very clear. If a person is not ambulatory…you know, if they can’t walk…our center reserves the right to ask them to find other accommodations.”

“I’m aware of the definition of ‘ambulatory’, Mr. Watson, and Theodore is most certainly ambulatory,” she reminded him. “There’s no question of that. I walked with him down the hallway.”

“However, there
is
the question of his ability to care for himself,” Mr. Watson added.

“Isn’t that why he’s here?” she asked. “If he were able to care for himself, he’d be at his own home? Right?”

“For the most part, yes,” he explained. “But many of our residents have moved here to simply free themselves from the demands of caring for their own homes. We have everything here that they would ever need. Housekeepers, a chef, medication oversight, and all the activities an elderly person might enjoy.”

“I suppose I’m confused,” Grace frowned. “If this place is so great, then why does it look like a dump?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Grace took a deep breath and prepared herself for battle.

“Mr. Watson, during the past few days, I have made a list of several problems I detected within just a few minutes of my arrival at Mansfield Park.” She pulled the list, along with another set of papers, from the confines of her bag. “The past half-hour in your presence has offered only further evidence that my decision is a sound one.”

“And what decision is that,
Miss Woodhouse
,” he spat out her name as if he thought her incapable of stringing a few words into a sentence, much less making a corporate decision.

“You’re fired, Mr. Watson.” Grace handed him the termination papers. “I will expect this office to be cleared out by the end of the day.” She rose from her chair with as much dignity as her condition would allow and hobbled toward the door.

“You can’t do this!” he called after her. “I’ll take you and that rich daddy of yours to court.”

“Bring it on, Mr. Watson. We live in a “Right to Work” state,” she told him. “I don’t have to justify firing you. Furthermore, from where I’m standing, you’re just lucky I haven’t called the police.”

She flashed him the “Boss” smile she had learned from her father and headed down the long, foul-smelling hallway with a mile-long list already flying through her head.

•∞•∞•

Over the next two days, Grace consumed every bit of information she could find on Mansfield Park. She poured over state regulations for assisted living homes, reviewed the staff, and studied the patient files like a gung-ho freshman cramming for her first mid-terms.

She became utterly fascinated with the place. When her father had thrust his little pet project into her hands, she had balked at the idea. It had seemed more distasteful than a slice of stale wedding cake, and she had vowed that she would find a way out of the one-red-light-town that, at first, had seemed like an embarrassment to its big-city namesake.

Grace smiled. It was funny how the love of a man turned a woman’s world upside-down. And that was exactly what Theodore Harrison Brown has done for Grace!

With a gentle grip on her hand and a softly spoken word, the seventy-five-year-old had captured her heart. Now, she was bound and determined to take care of him...and not just Theodore, but the rest of the motley crew that was fast becoming her extended family. It wasn’t quite the
thing
to do in a business sense, but Grace was more than convinced that it was what her heart felt was right.

She looked around the room at the newly familiar faces and smiled. She had gathered them all together for an impromptu meeting just minutes before.

“So you see, Ladies and Gentleman,” she paused. Even though she was attempting to project her voice to a level that would reach even those sitting at the back of the dining room, she noticed that the group at the front table seemed to be having a hard time hearing. She tried again with a louder voice. “So you see--”

“What are you yelling for, girl?” a portly man in a pair of crisply-ironed blue jean overalls called from his place near the door. “That voice of yours is sure to give us the indigestion if you don’t lower it a notch or two!”

Shocked at his lack of decorum, Grace looked around to find quite a few of the residents nodding their heads in agreement. Nervously, she twisted her hands and searched for the words she had so painstakingly memorized earlier in the afternoon.

“I apologize,” she began again in a normal speaking voice and saw a wave of appreciation pass over the crowd. “I wanted to formally introduce myself. I am Grace Woodhouse, and my father’s company has recently purchased Magnolia Manor. Not only will we be changing the name to Mansfield Park, but we will be undertaking a major renovation in order to make your home a nicer place.”

“How much is it gonna’ cost us?” an old man with shockingly red hair piped in.

“There will be no additional cost,” she assured him. “The renovations will fall under operating expenses. Unfortunately, the previous management has not maintained the residence at the level of excellence required by our company. We expected that major renovations would be needed when we negotiated the purchase price and allotted funds for such.”

Grace watched as a few more residents began to nod their heads. The rest seemed completely enamored with their roast beef and mashed potatoes. Her stomach grumbled, and she realized that she had not eaten since breakfast. As good as Mrs. Elderman’s strawberry scones had tasted, they had not added much to her nutritional stores.

“Before I go, I wanted to let you know that I have placed a suggestion box in the foyer. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts on any improvements that you would like to see here at Mansfield Park. Also, I feel that I must inform you that Mr. Watson will no longer be the manager here.”

Before she was able to close her folder, the room erupted in applause. She wanted to think that her inspiring speech had done the trick, but she suspected that Mr. Watson’s termination was the kicker. Of course, the lot of them could have been simply been showing their relief that she was leaving them to enjoy their lunch in peace. Regardless of the reason, she could always hope that she had done a good thing for the residents by firing Mr. Watson. In her heart, she believed that she had.

Unfortunately, the look of disgust coming from the perpetually sour Nurse North who stood at the back of the room did little to raise her hopes.

“Oh, well,” she sighed. “Let the games begin!”

•∞•∞•

A short while later, Grace slipped her arm out of the sling and propped it up on the pillow that Sally, the sweetest nursing assistant the world had ever seen, had provided for her new employer. For the past two days, Grace had made the table her temporary work station. She just hadn’t been able to stomach the decor, not to mention the smell, in Mr. Watson’s old office.

“You just make sure you keep that arm above the level of your heart, honey,” the woman had given Grace the curt command before hurrying off toward the middle of the room to settle a dispute that had broken out between two of the residents.

Grace repositioned her arm and lifted her injured ankle onto the worn seat of a chair. It was really a shame that the place had been neglected for so long, she thought as she looked around the room. The bones of the place, like most well-built southern homes, were impressive. They weren’t just bits of plastic and plaster. They were sturdy materials, brick and wood, that had withstood both time and wear. The furniture fell into basically the same category. Hardy old pieces that basically needed a week’s worth of elbow grease and a fabric facelift in order to restore them to their original glory.