The Waiting Room

Death had never bothered Bernadette. It was life’s only surety; the great equaliser of race, wealth and class. She worked in Death’s waiting room, tending to those preparing to meet him when he was ready.

Physically the work exhausted her, and she took quiet joy in the days she was too weary to contemplate who would resign from her care the next.

“Is that you, Beatrice?” Robert asked wearily, rousing from the memories he had been watching dance beyond his room’s window.

“No, Robert, it’s Bernadette. I’ve brought your medicine,” she soothed, placing a plastic cup with a colourful selection of pills on his bedside table.

He grunted, “Next time bring Beatrice. She borrowed my walkman.” Robert had been gradually loosening his grip on reality for a few months, but this work had taught Bernadette patience, if nothing else.

“Your walkman is here, Robert,” her voice full of gentle reassurance as she opened his top drawer to reveal his walkman and a selection of his favourite cassettes.

He grunted again, but she knew he hadn’t heard her.

His mouth opened compliantly for his tablets, each one chased by a small sip of water which she administered by hand.

Completing his routine check up and seeing he was now dozing peacefully, she binned the empty cups and returned to her trolly.

It was time to see Agnes, and a little spark of happiness ignited in her chest. Bernadette did her best not to become attached, but Agnes had claimed residence in her heart before she had a chance to erect her walls.

Rounding the corner into her room, the afternoon sun filtered gently through the curtains and fell across the sudoku puzzle the elderly woman was completing in her arm chair.

“Hello, Agnes. How are you?”

The elderly lady tutted, “Really, Bernie, how many times must I ask you not to interrupt my thriving social life?”

She removed her glasses and peered up at Bernadette fondly through periwinkle eyes.

“I do apologise,” Bernadette teased in return. “There’s a line of suitors at your door and I just can’t keep turning them away.”

“I trust you will show in the lookers,” she accepted the cup of tablets offered to her.

“Shall we pick up where we left off?” Bernadette asked, retrieving To Kill a Mockingbird from the top of a teetering pile of books by the foot of her bed.

Agnes smiled and nodded whilst dutifully swallowing her tablets.

Bernadette intentionally left Agnes until the end of her rounds, so she settled on the end of her bed, knowing this was the only place she was needed.

The characters took on their own voices and Bernadette placed inflection where it was needed, in the way she knew Agnes loved. With enthralled eyes and ears, the old woman watched on, allowing herself to escape the too-familiar walls, however fleetingly.

She read as the fading sun birthed fledgling shadows which sprawled across the room, and the daily clatter in the hallways fell silent.

“That’s enough for today, dear,” Agnes seized upon a momentary pause as Bernadette turned a page. “I daresay you have more exciting plans for this evening than keeping an old bitty company.”

“Oh, of course,” Bernadette fished her trustworthy notebook from her scrubs with her free hand, thumbing open the black leather cover to a random page, knowing it didn’t matter which one it fell on. “I do have a dinner date with Edgar which he will never forgive me for missing.”

Edgar was a portly, overfed tabby cat she had adopted from the shelter a few years ago. He was pleasant company in an otherwise dull and depressing apartment and a less than desirable area.

“I live in hope there will come a day when you rush in to tell me about a handsome boy who has captured your heart. Life is too short to waste your talents on me,” she gestured vaguely to her frail body, concealed by layers of cardigans and a voluminous blanket.

“You are the only one who deserves them, Agnes,” Bernadette rose from the bed, returning the book to its place.

“Don’t forget, you promised you would move out of that awful unit before the end of the year. I don’t like you getting home so late with those hoodlums hanging around.”

Bernadette bit down on a chuckle, “I know, I’m working on it.”

Time marched relentlessly onwards, with residents arriving and departing from the waiting room as reliably as the tides.

Death was ready for Robert on Agnes’s birthday. He had been surrounded by his family, and Bernadette hoped there was something in him that knew. She had known it would be soon, but passing a newly empty bed always jarred her slightly.

Entering Agnes’s room with a small bouquet of freshly picked flowers from the garden, she knew her dear elderly friend had not had visitors.

As always, she was sitting in her armchair, but today with a phone to her ear.

“I know dear, not to worry. At my age, I’d rather forget about them anyway,” she laughed lightly, but Bernadette knew the usual sparkle in her eyes was absent.

“It’s nice to hear from you. Perhaps there’s another day you can visit.”

Fetching a glass of water to hold the flowers, Bernadette’s jaw clenched as she fussed over the blankets on her bed and plumped her pillows.

Ending the call with the usual uncertainty of a senior handling a phone, Agnes’s eyes brightened as they feasted on the bouquet.

“They’re beautiful, Bernie, thank you,” but she held up her aged hands in shock when Bernadette produced a package from the trolley. “Oh, what have you done?”

“It’s as much for me as it is for you,” she replied lightly. “I don’t think you have this one.”

Opening the brown paper with the tender care of someone who begrudged waste, she gasped in delight at the pristine copy of The Bell Jar now sitting in her lap.

They were nearing the end of To Kill a Mockingbird and, together, had worked all the way through Agnes’s impressive collection.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Agnes whispered, running a wrinkled hand lovingly across the cover.

“Oh, okay,” Bernadette joked, “Give it back then.”

Agnes broke into a fluttery giggle, a sound Bernadette treasured.

“How would you like to spend this afternoon?”

“How I spend every day,” Agnes replied, before adding, “But would it be too much trouble if we sat in the garden?”

The old woman could have asked to sit on the top of the Eiffel Tower and Bernadette would have done everything in her power to make it happen.

And so the young woman helped her senior into a wheelchair and broke free of the waiting room’s walls, touring past the tall shrubbery and hibiscus which offered the residents privacy from the street, to the shade of an ample pine tree.

Bernadette parked Agnes’s chair against the trunk, settled herself on the grass at her feet and again began to read. A gentle breeze wrapped around her words and, from the corner of her eye, Bernadatte noticed as Agnes slid her feet out of her slippers and wiggled her toes in the grass.

Leafy shadows danced across the pages as the distant chatter of birds seeking refuge for the night announced the approaching evening. Glancing up from the book, Bernadette found Agnes had dozed off with her head resting on the trunk.

She sat there for a while, enjoying the company of her dear friend and contemplating how such a remarkable woman could have such an absent family.

Agnes roused a short while later, starting when she realised where she was. “Oh, Bernie, I’m so sorry. I’m just very tired.”

“Up late again entertaining your guests?” Bernadette teased, rising to her feet and brushing the grass from her pants.

“You know me too well,” Agnes mused, humming contentedly as Bernadette pushed her back to her room.

Though it was usually the night worker’s task, Bernadette helped Agnes into her pyjamas and provided a strong arm as she climbed into bed. Tucking the covers firmly around her, she kissed one of her sun-spotted hands affectionately.

“You’re a good girl, Bernie. You’ve done so much for me. But you still have to get out of that apartment.”

“I’m working on it,” Bernadette gave her usual response.

“Did we finish the book today?” Agnes asked blearily, eyes drifting shut.

“Not yet, we’ll finish it tomorrow.”

“Yes, you must finish it,” Agnes insisted softly before succumbing to sleep.

~ * ~

Bernadette arrived at work the next morning to find the Coroner’s van parked in the bay. Someone had passed during the night and she idly wondered who.

She greeted the receptionist, stopping short when she saw the pitiful expression he gave her. She knew who Death had come for.

Heart splitting, eyes beginning to overflow, she dropped her bag where she stood and jogged down the hallway to Anges’s room.

Her sheets had already been stripped, curtains pulled back to baptise the room. If it were not for the books now packed neatly into a cardboard box sitting on the foot of the bed, no one could have known Agnes had waited there.

No one, perhaps, except for the tall, slick-haired man in a well-pressed suit who was pacing the room on his phone.

“Nothing? What do you mean nothing?” He was agitated. “Yes, we sold the house years ago. That’s already been done. So there’s nothing?”

Snatching the phone away from his ear, he turned on Bernadette, face wet and hands trembling but holding her composure.

“What is it? Do you need something else from me?” He snapped.

She swallowed and breathed deeply, “I suppose you are her son.”

“Yes, that would stack up, wouldn’t it? Is there something you need?” He asked again, tone short.

“Will you be taking the books?” She gestured to the brimming box.

He glanced down at them like she had just asked if he would like to swallow each one whole. “Uh, no. You can dispose of them. If there’s nothing else, I have other matters to attend to.”

Expensive cologne wafted over her as he skirted past. “It’s a shame you couldn’t make it yesterday,” she said calmly. “You know, being her birthday. But I know now she was not the one who missed out.”

He blinked at her stupidly for a second before snorting and turning on his heel.

This is why you don’t become attached, she chastised herself as she settled on Agnes’s bed and searched the space for something the night staff might have forgotten. But they had done their job well.

Turning to the books, The Bell Jar sat still waiting to be opened and loved atop the pile. She lifted each book out carefully, feeling the weight of the worlds they’d allowed the old woman to escape to in her later years.

At last, on the box’s floor, she found To Kill a Mockingbird, bookmark almost at the very end. She had asked her to finish it and so she opened it and read. Her words were thick and distorted as her throat constricted, but she read on. She tasted the salt of her tears and her vision was blurry, but she read on.

Until finally she turned to the last page and two folded pieces of paper fell into her lap.

Opening one, Agnes’s cursive writing curled across the canvas like wisps of smoke. “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.” Bernadette recognised the quote as it had stuck with her, too.

“Don’t wait until you’ve lost life to begin to love it. Stop working on it, start living it.”

At the bottom were the details to a bank account. Frowning, Bernadette unfolded the other note to find it was a transfer receipt, account in her own name, for twenty thousand dollars.

“You didn’t,” she choked to the empty room, waiting dutifully for its next Agnes.