7. Winona
Winona
I don’t always say something stupid,
but when I do, I keep talking to make it worse.
~ Unknown
One thing I love about my life is that no two days are ever the same.
That’s also the thing that concerns me most about my life.
All that inconsistency isn’t normal, is it?
Most of my friends work nine-to-five jobs, or they own their own businesses.
Me? I’m a twenty-eight-year-old nursing student who now spends her days doing the oddest of jobs. Which is why I find myself here at Sycamore Assisted Living at eleven in the morning on a weekday teaching a group of seniors how to access features on their cell phones.
We’re gathered at a round table in the activity room. Everyone has their cell out in front of them. I’m fielding questions.
“How do I have so many photos on here?” Ginny Holmes says. “I didn’t take all these.”
“You took ’em,” Harold McKinney tells Ginny.
“I didn’t!” she protests.
“Well, I might not know all the modern technology, but I know a phone isn’t up and taking photos on its own,” Harold says. “You took ’em.”
I intervene before a full-blown fight ensues. “Let’s just work on deleting the ones you don’t want. Did you know you can select multiple images and delete them in batches?”
A chorus of oooooh, and ohhhh, and Really? erupts around the table. I demonstrate while everyone opens their photos app and follows along.
The hour progresses with questions like, “How’d my nephew get his own ringtone?” to which I answer, “He probably programmed it into your phone when you weren’t looking.” And then I follow up with an instruction on programming ringtones. They think I’m an IT genius. I’m totally not. I’m just Gen Z.
“How’s the nursing work going?” Wilma Chesterton asks me as we wrap up our hour together.
Each resident passes a twenty around to me and suddenly I’m one hundred and twenty dollars richer. I could kiss Daisy for coming up with Winona for Hire.
“It’s good,” I say. “I’m caring for a football player right now.”
“Oh, we know, dear,” Wilma says with a playful waggle of her brow.
“You do?”
“It’s Declan O’Connell,” Loretta Simmons says. “Everyone knows you’re caring for him.”
“What’s it like?” Frank Logan asks me.
“What part?”
“Being around a celebrity?” Frank says.
“I don’t think of him that way.”
“That’s for the best,” Loretta says. “Is he good to you?”
“He’s not good to me or bad to me. He’s just a patient—a man who broke his ankle and is out of work for a season.”
Frank’s brow draws in. “Isn’t he grateful?”
“For breaking his ankle?” I ask, confused.
Why would anyone be grateful they broke their ankle? I guess you might be grateful if you broke it by stepping off a curb and it kept you from falling in front of a bus and dying.
“No,” Frank says, smiling and huffing out a small laugh. “For your help. Is he grateful for your help?”
Is Declan grateful? I guess he might be.
“He thanks me,” I say. “So I guess he is.”
“I hope he’s paying you a whole lotta money,” Harold says.
“Now that’s just none of your business,” Wilma tells Harold.
“You’re right,” Harold says. Then he turns to me. “Is he, though?”
“He doesn’t pay me. The home health agency does. I get my usual wage to help him, just like I do for any other patient.”
“And that’s why you’re Winona for Hire,” Wilma says.
“How’s that side hustle going?” Loretta asks me.
“Pretty good. Except yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?” Loretta asks.
“Well, I had to walk dogs for Buckshot.”
Everyone groans in unison. They know Buckshot. And, apparently, they know about his dogs.
“Right?” I say. “All five of his dogs are different sizes. So, I went to walk them before going to work for Declan. And I just couldn’t figure out the leashes.
They kept crossing one another’s paths. I was trying to keep the Great Dane from tripping over the dachshund while the beagle kept stopping to sniff basically everything in sight.
“We turned a corner by the park and the dogs saw a group of squirrels. Next thing I knew …” I jump out of my seat, demonstrating the way the dogs tugged my arms forward. “... I was flying like Santa behind his reindeer, only I didn’t have a sled!”
“Oh no!” Wilma shouts.
Frank and Harold break into laughter.
“Oh, dear,” Loretta says. “What did you do?”
“Thankfully, Dustin came driving by,” I say. “When he yelled, ‘Sit!’ Every one of the dogs sat. We untangled the leashes and he loaded the dogs into the back of his pickup and drove me back to Buckshot’s.”
“Five dogs,” Loretta says, shaking her head and making a tsking sound.
“Who needs five dogs?” Frank asks.
“Buckshot, that’s who,” Wilma says. “But I don’t know that you need to walk all five at once. Maybe take them in shifts next time.”
“That’s a good idea,” I tell her. “The worst part of the story was when I arrived at Declan’s.”
“What happened?” Wilma asks. Her brows shoot up as if she knows this is going to be juicy.
“Well, after all the fuss, I was running late, so I stepped on it to get to his house. I let myself in the front door and hurried through the foyer. When I rounded into the family room, he was lying on the couch with his foot elevated. And his parents were sitting there staring at me like I had waltzed into the room buck naked! My hair was a mess. My face was flushed. I felt frayed at the edges. And there they were, pants pressed and not a hair out of place, staring at me. His dad asked if I was the hired help.”
“Well, you know those O’Connells,” Wilma says.
“Don’t we all,” Harold says.
“Patrick’s not like that,” Frank says. “He’s got a heart of gold.”
“Maeve either,” Loretta says. “She’s a sweet one.”
“Well, the parents and Declan sure are,” Wilma says. “Too good for the common man.”
“Don’t you let it get to you, Winona,” Loretta says. “Life has a way of making us all human one way or another.”
I smile at her.
“Yes sir,” Harold adds. “Even the president poops.”
“Harold!” Wilma shouts. “Do you have to go there?”
“Not right now I don’t,” Harold says with an amused chuckle. Then he looks at me. “You know what I mean. We all put our pants on one leg at a time—even those snooty O’Connells. No one’s better than anyone else.”
I smile. Declan doesn’t think he’s better than me—does he? He hasn’t acted like he does. But it’s hard telling. He’s been pretty consumed by the injury. That’s to be expected.
“What’s your next job as Winona for Hire?” Harold asks.
“You’ll never guess,” I tell him.
“Let’s see …” he looks skyward. “Helping out at the bakery?”
“Nope,” I say. “Babysitting a goat.”
The table erupts in laughter.
I only wish I were joking.
I linger a little longer, but then I leave the senior center and drive to Declan’s, blasting my favorite song on the radio.
I pass through both gates. They don’t seem as large as they did the first few times I drove through them.
Then I let myself through his private gate, park my car and walk up to the front door.
I enter the code Declan gave me and let myself in, wondering what surprise will greet me today. Hopefully not his parents again.
When I round into the family room, Declan’s on the couch with his leg up and the TV on.
“You’re here again?” he asks.
I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“That’s sort of how this works,” I say. “I can’t exactly check your vitals from another location.”
“Well, do what you’ve got to do, then.”
I stand in place, sizing him up.
It’s not my job to make him feel better about being injured. I wish I could, but I’m here as a nurse’s assistant, so I get busy putting on the blood pressure cuff around his upper arm. It barely velcros on.
“Your arms are too big,” I say by way of observation.
“No one’s ever complained about that before,” he says with a half-smile.
“I’m not complaining. It just makes it hard to take your blood pressure.”
He flexes and the cuff pops open.
“Hey!” I say.
He stares at the TV as if he didn’t just do that on purpose. But there’s a light twitch in the dimple next to his mouth that gives him away.
“What are you watching?” I ask after I’ve secured the cuff, inflated it, and taken down his vitals.
“SportsCenter. They’re talking about the teams and their performance and projections.”
I hate to ask, but … in for a penny, in for a pound.
“Projections? Like in a movie?”
Declan laughs in one short burst. His eyes crinkle at the corners and I have this random thought that he’s breathtakingly gorgeous. I have random thoughts all the time. I could be crowned the queen of random thoughts. This one makes my breath stall out.
I can not. Not. Not. Not. Think of Declan as handsome, let alone breathtakingly gorgeous.
Nope.
“Not in a movie,” Declan says. “Projections in terms of what they think each team will do in the season.”
“Oh! Like fortune telling,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says with a smile. He stares at me for a beat, his brow tugged in slightly. He’s still smiling, so I just let him stare. Then he says, “Sort of like that, I guess. Though, I’ve never thought of it that way.”
I pick up his cryogenic compression machine and walk toward the kitchen, saying over my shoulder, “Is it too hard for you to get this filled when I’m not here early?”
His deep voice follows me into the kitchen. “It’s too hard. Yes.”
I fill the machine with cold water and ice. Then I bring it out to the living room.
“It will be ready in five minutes,” I tell him.
Then I say, “Let me brainstorm a solution for you. We can’t have you going too long without cold compression.
” I tap my finger to my chin. “I can put the water in early. Before I leave each day. Maybe we’ll have to put an ice chest out here with bags of pre-measured ice in it. ”
“Or a mini-freezer,” Declan offers.
“Wow,” I say. “Fancy schmancy.”
He chuckles again. “It’s just a small freezer. Not fancy. They sell them at Home Mart.”
“Will you have it paneled to match the room? You know … so it blends into the aesthetic?”
“Are you making fun of me, Winona?”
The way he says my name feels familiar—like we’re friends.
“I am,” I confess.
And I’m not even sorry about it.
“I won’t have it paneled,” Declan says with a smile.