Meemaw
Deep in the hills of West Virginia, a seventy-six-year-old woman limps along the hall of a post-surgical physical therapy rehabilitation center.
She’s stealthy—the benefit of her four-foot-eleven height and thin frame—and the only sound is the swish-thump-swish of her neon blue cast sliding along the linoleum floor.
Outside, the moon peeks in and out of cloud cover.
She hears a noise, the sound of one of the nurse’s heavy footfalls.
She flattens herself against the wall, just feet from the exterior door to the parking lot. She holds her breath as she waits for the nurse to either turn down the other hallway or to find her.
Will she be given the freedom she craves?
Voices reach her ears.
“Have you seen June?” one nurse asks.
“No,” another nurse answers. “Isn’t she sleeping in her room?”
“Clearly you don’t know June.”
June sees her chance. She shuffles as quickly as she can to the exit door. She pushes it open, angling her thin, work-worn body through the crack.
She cackles as she stands on the sidewalk, tipping her face up to the cloud-covered moon.
And then the alarm sounds.
Frozen and unable to run with the cast on her foot, she puts her hands up as two nurses come running out of the same door she escaped from.
She lets out a frustrated curse as the nurses approach her.
She eyes the cars in the parking lot. Her car isn’t here, but she knows how to hot-wire one. She watched videos one afternoon on YouTube.
It’s not stealing if it’s a matter of freedom.
“Miss June, I know you don’t want to be here, but why are you running away in the middle of the night?” the younger of the two nurses asks. June likes him better. He has better manners than the older one.
She sniffs and assumes an air of dignity. “Can’t a woman get some fresh air?”
“Not in the middle of the night. Your ankle isn’t healed yet, Miss June.”
“It’s fine.” An idea takes hold. “Call my grandson, Dr. Beckett Whistler. He’ll tell you I’m fine to go home.”
“Miss June, you never mentioned a grandson who was a doctor.”
She lies and bobs her head, causing her silver hair to shake. “I forgot about him.”
The nurses frown at each other.
“Do you have his phone number?” the male nurse asks.
“Of course I do.”
She pulls out her phone and, with surprising deftness, locates his contact information. “Here.” She shows them the phone. It reads: Dr. Beckett Whistler (Next-door neighbor). “I will be leaving this place. And he’ll tell you I can.”
The nurses grimace. Clearly Dr. Beckett Whistler is not June’s grandson. But she doesn’t want to be here.
“Miss June,” the younger nurse says placatingly. “We will call your surgeon in the morning. If your surgeon gives us the ok, you can go in the morning.”
June harrumphs.
“Miss June,” the older nurse says. “You know you can’t walk on that cast, and you can’t drive with it either.”
June sniffs. The younger nurse extends an arm to her, and she leans on it, relieved to take some weight off the heavy cast on her foot.
The older nurse returns to the building and procures a wheelchair. With as much dignity as she can muster, she sits down.
The young nurse takes over wheeling her back into the facility.
The alarms are still blaring from when June pushed open the emergency exit.
No one hears the deep voice crackling from June’s cell phone.
“June? June? Is everything alright?”