Chapter 6
Chapter Six
When Nina dropped her at the front door of her grandfather’s facility, Dom had to latch onto one of the rocking chairs sitting out front to steady herself. Her legs felt like a jar of jelly and her stomach likely wouldn’t ever be the same.
She spat the debris of their flight from her mouth, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.
Yeah. That just happened.
Nina picked her up like a sack of potatoes, threw her over her shoulder and flew her to her grandfather’s facility.
Flew.
And Fletcher had flown right beside them as though they were on a day trip to the skies.
She didn’t have the time to devote to how insane all this was. Instead, she’d just be grateful they’d made it here in record time, far less time than an Uber would have taken.
“Psst! Dominique! Over here!”
She heard MC’s now familiar, cultured voice calling to her, but her eyes flew open wide when she saw him sitting under a nearby bush. “How the heck did you get here?”
“Not quite the way you did, m’dear” he joked. “But where you go, I go. Now, all you have to do is call my name and hold out your hand. I wasn’t quite ready to begin lessons, but it seems we must hasten our start.”
Dom hesitated, but Nina nudged her before gripping her shoulders, forcing her to look at the vampire. “It’s time to be a big, brave girl. Call him. Let’s do this and go check on your grandpa in case he needs you. Stop fucking wasting time.”
“Hold out your hand, Dominique,” MC insisted.
She did as she was told, holding her hand out, palm up, but what did she call him? “What do I call you? Do I summon you like they do on that cartoon—by the power of greystoke or whatever?”
She didn’t watch He-man, she was more of a Smurfs gal, but her friend’s brother in middle school had loved it.
“It’s the power of Grayskull, dingbat,” Nina groused with a roll of her eyes.
“Calling me MC is fine, Dominique. Now hurry along. Oh, and brace yourself.”
Widening her stance, Dom wanted to yell out MC, but what came out was, “Thor!”
She heard the words “oh shit” just before MC landed in her hands like a ton of bricks, flattening her against the front walkway with a solid crunch of her bones.
Dom crumbled to the ground like a house of cards, but she’d caught his handle just the same.
“Victory!” she murmured, rolling to her side with a groan as her bones creaked and her muscles screamed.
MC snickered. “We’re going to have to work on my entry. I’m far more suited to a beefier grip, my dear. My apologies. For now, this will do. Now off you go to find your grandfather. Up, up!” he encouraged.
With Nina’s help, she rose to her feet, looking toward Fletch, who sat on a bush. She gave the top of his head a stroke with her fingertip. “You wait here, buddy, okay? I’ll be right back.” Fletcher spread his wings and settled in.
Peering inside the wide glass doors, she took note that no one was manning the desk, which was unheard of. There was always someone at the desk, and at least ten night nurses on deck.
What the heck was going on?
She’d look like a loon, stomping into the facility with a hammer in her hand, but she had to find out what was happening. Yanking the door open, Dom hurried inside with Nina hot on her heels.
All was quiet in the reception area, the low-pile carpet hushing her footsteps in the deserted space. The rec room right off the entryway, where everyone gathered to play bingo and Uno, and where a yoga instructor came three times a week to help those who could, stretch, was completely empty
Nina grabbed her by the arm and sniffed the air. “Some shit ain’t right. Get behind me, hold my hand, don’t fucking let go, and tell me where your grandfather’s room is.”
Panic began to gnaw at her insides as she gripped MC’s handle with force and took Nina’s hand, comforted by her steely grip. “Down the hall, make a right, second door on the left. It has a picture of my grandma Ilena on it.”
As they went, Nina’s steps like that of a stealthy cat, Dom’s pulse raced in fear. Where was everyone? Why was it so quiet? Nighttime was always hectic here, due to several of the residents sundowning. Many dementia patients grew agitated as the sun went down—her grandfather included.
When Nina put her fingers on the door, Dom’s heart skipped another beat, terrified of what they’d find.
But when the door swung open…there was her grandfather, sitting in his favorite worn green and navy-blue armchair from the house he’d once shared with her grandmother, his lined face slack, his eyes focused on his big-screen TV.
She’d had his room meticulously recreated to reflect her grandfather’s living room from their old home.
Every tiny detail, right down to the doilies her grandmother had crocheted, sitting on the coffee table, to the pictures of her family hanging on the wall—all done in honor of him and the timeframe of his life he remembered most clearly.
Dom pushed past Nina and ran inside, kneeling in front of him and grabbing his hand. “Papa? Are you okay?”
Stavros stared straight ahead. He didn’t even cock his head full of thick white hair when she spoke. Normally, at this time of night, he was full of vim and vigor, and plenty of mischief.
She pressed a hand to his weathered cheek. “Papa? It’s me, Dominique. Talk to me. Tell me about your day. Did you make a batch of moussaka today? You know how much the customers love that.”
When he didn’t answer, she carried on as though this were a two-way conversation.
Smiling, she pulled a blanket from the top of the chair and covered his lap.
“I didn’t get my phone call from you tonight, so I figured I’d pop on over and see what you’ve been getting up to.
Are you behaving yourself, or are you and Miss Verlean up to no good again? ”
He and Verlean were on the same path in their illness, both stuck in a place they’d once treasured, and as a result, they shared similar side-effects.
She kept her tone even and conversational, treating him as though he hadn’t almost completely forgotten her and only had moments of clarity about her existence on any given day.
She’d done more than her fair share of research on dementia and Alzheimer’s since her grandfather had been diagnosed.
She’d learned the best ways to keep him calm without having to medicate him.
She knew how to approach him by rolling with the punches and without showing any surprise when he called her Toula, her mother’s name.
His memory still existed in a time when he’d lived in Astoria in Queens and ran a popular restaurant, and that’s where she let him linger—back in a time when her mother was in high school in the eighties and waited tables for him.
It appeared to be when he’d been at one of the happiest points of his life.
Her mother and grandmother had been gone a long while now, and for many years, it had just been her and Stavros.
But he didn’t appear to often remember when they’d lived together, just the two of them, or when she’d moved out and gotten her own apartment.
Mostly, he clung to the memory of her mother, his wife, their restaurant, and the life the three of them had shared before Dom was born.
“I’m gonna go look around because somethin’s up. Don’t you move a muscle. Stay with your grandad,” Nina ordered, before slipping out of her papa’s room on catlike feet.
Setting MC on the floor beside her feet, Dom put her elbows on his knees the way she used to when she was little, smiling up at him. “Papa, where is everybody? How come you and Sheffrey aren’t raiding the cookie jar in the kitchen? Where’s Verlean? For that matter, where’s Susan?”
Susan was one of the night nurses, one of his favorite. Somehow, Susan was always able to get her grandfather to do what she wanted, to do what he needed.
She was magically gifted with the patients, tolerant, kind, gentle, and Dom loved her as much as Stavros did.
Still, he didn’t answer as she searched his blue eyes. It was almost as if he was in some kind of daze. Usually, he at least acknowledged her. “Dominique, may I?” MC asked.
“May you what?”
“Set me in his lap, won’t you? I can help, if you’ll let me.”
Dom stared at the battered hammer, perplexed. “You have to be really careful not to agitate him. He’s always most confused at night. I don’t know what’s going on with him right now, or why he’s so docile. Maybe he got riled up and they had to sedate him?”
On rare occasions, when nothing else worked, they’d give him a sedative, but he typically fell asleep in that case. This was just plain weird.
“I promise to proceed with the utmost care,” he answered back.
Scooping him up, Dom put the hammer in her grandfather’s lap, unsure what to expect.
And then MC spoke to him—in Greek. His tone soft, his voice steady and clear.
Dom didn’t know her family’s native language fluently, she knew a few phrases, some obvious words, but she’d heard her grandparents speak it often enough to get the gist.
She stared at her grandfather as his eyes went wide, before he leaned forward as if he were truly listening—and more importantly, understanding. Then he nodded his head and replied in Greek, more animated than he’d been since she’d entered the room.
Dom gripped MC’s handle in surprise. “What are you saying to him?”
“I inquired about his well-being, and then we chatted about one of his favorite dishes, spanakopita, and I told him Ilena is well and she’s waiting for him to come home.”
Dom gasped, but then her breath caught and she gulped hard. He knew everything about her. “Did he say anything else?” she squeaked.
“He said someone was here to see you, Dominique. Someone he didn’t know.” The grave tone MC used frightened her, making her grip her grandfather’s hand.
But more than some stranger visiting him, he remembered her?
“He knew who I was? How can you possibly know that?”