Free Deadly Dosage by Cheryl Richards Page A

previous
day. 
    “So he had a date planned
before he met you, big deal. Happens all the time. It would have been rude for
him to cancel it. Right?” She gave me a palms up gesture and a slight shrug of
her shoulders.
    “That’s plausible.” I said, still
feeling doubtful.
    “Does he have a nice ass?”
Donna checked out every guy’s ass, and I thought it bordered on a fetish. Her
boyfriend Chuck had well-toned cheeks, not that I notice that kind of thing—much.
    “Excellent! The rest of him
measures up pretty nicely too.”
    “Forget the chick,” she said,
“he sounds promising.”
    There was a rap on my door and
I saw the doorknob turn. “The Hawk!” I whispered in a panic. Donna jumped up
and pretended to be interested in my census form.
    “So, did you include Mrs.
Penske, in the Medicaid wing? I admitted her yesterday after five,” she said
louder than necessary.
    The door swung open and
Phyllis stared at us. “Where’s the census?”
    “Ah, Donna was just giving me
some last minute up..updates,” I stuttered, “I’ll have it on the wall in about
ten minutes.”
    “Donna,” she said crossing her
arms over her flat chest, “a family is waiting for a tour in the front lobby.
We don’t make money ignoring potential admissions.”
    “I’m on it,” Donna said. She
gave me a grimace and skedaddled out the door.
    “I’d appreciate you not
closing your door unless you have a family member in here,” Phyllis
reprimanded.
    “What if I’m on a call and
it’s noisy in the hall?” I inquired.
    “Fine. Just don’t make a habit
of it.” She turned and stormed out of the office. I enjoyed my small victory
and toasted myself with a drink from my icy cold, can of soda.
    Shantel rang me at 11:30 to
tell me she was off to lunch. I took some of my paperwork with me to her desk.
Manning the front desk was also a necessary evil during the lunch hour, however
the inflow of calls was much lighter and more sporadic then the early morning
hours.
         I hummed along to a song on the radio, while I
posted some cash in the computer. The work could be brain numbing at times, but
posting payments eliminated balances, thus making it look like I was doing a
swell job.
         A cough thick with phlegm startled me. I looked
up at Mrs. Ethel Cerwinski. She had oxygen tubes in her nose and always made
gross gurgling sounds. She couldn’t help it but it made me gag. She handed me a
letter, and I thought of the hand-washing seminar. She asked me to mail it. I
agreed and she left. It already had a stamp on it, so I threw it in the
outgoing mail bin. Shantel kept a bottle of hand sanitizer on her desk, so I
helped myself to some. It made me feel a teeny bit better.
         I went back to my cash entries but stopped when I
felt someone staring at me. Once again, I looked up, this time to see Mabel
Zirkowski grinning at me. Her red lipstick was smeared on in two straight lines
and she wore a vest weaved out of plastic grocery bags. I bit my lip to hold in
the laughter.
         “Hi sweetie,” she said.
         “Hi, Mabel, what can I do for you?”
         “Edna and I are going to play bingo. We’d like
$25 in small bills. Edna said she’ll pay.”
         It seemed Mabel’s dementia centered mainly on her
imaginary friend Edna. Of course her fashion sense wasn’t improving, but she
still knew how to put her clothes on the right way.
         I keyed in some information on the computer and
viewed Mabel’s patient trust fund account. She still had over two hundred
dollars available after the deposit of her Social Security check. “Mabel, looks
like Edna’s out of money this month. Did you want me to take the money from
your account?”
         She looked to her right. “Edna, did you spend all
your money on that hat?” She paused and asked me if I liked Edna’s hat.
         “Yes, very pretty. I like the yellow flowers and
ribbon.”
    Mabel looked perplexed. I
guess my embellishment