Free Too Near the Edge by Lynn Osterkamp Page B

go, this one provides pretty decent care.
    I saw Gramma coming along the hall. She
looked pretty, dressed in a loose lavender dress. with her white
hair freshly brushed. Her eyes looked worried, but she smiled when
she saw me. I gave her a hug, walked with her into the dining room,
and sat with her until the food came out. Her meal was mostly
pureed since one of her Alzheimer’s symptoms is that she doesn’t
like to chew—or maybe she has forgotten how to do it. The
multi-colored mounds of mush took my appetite away, but she began
spooning it in. I said goodbye, leaving her to her lunch.
    In the parking lot, I ran into Sharon. “Hey,
Cleo. I was just going out for a quick lunch. Want to join me?” she
said. “We could grab a salad at Wild Oats.”
    “Sounds good. I have to be at the office by
1:00,” I said. “I’ll meet you over there.”
    We sat on the covered patio outside the Wild
Oats grocery and café on Broadway and Arapahoe, munching our salads
of assorted baby greens, veggies, sprouts, tofu and sunflower
seeds, and enjoying the mountain view. At the next table, a man in
his late 50s with thinning gray hair in a pony tail shared a
sandwich with a black Labrador retriever, while pretending not to
stare at a 20-something girl in a low-riding sheer ruffled
raspberry-colored skirt, bare midriff and a pink slip-like top, as
she walked past us into the store. She didn’t look in his
direction, but I figured she knew the effect she had. I never
dressed like that in my twenties, but now that I’m 37 I kind of
wish I’d tried it out back then.
    “I hope I didn’t get Erik in trouble today,”
I said, as I tried to spear a cherry tomato with my plastic fork.
“At Gramma’s care conference, I asked Dr. Ahmed to consider
valerian to help her sleep at night, but he got kind of huffy about
Erik and the whole herb thing.”
    “Ahmed’s a strange one,” Sharon said,
breaking off a piece of her whole-grain roll. “He does a lot of his
work in nursing homes. Some of the residents on other units, who
aren’t confused, have complained about him—don’t want to take the
medications he prescribes.” Sharon absently rolled pieces of bread
into pea-sized balls as she spoke. “When I talked to him last month
about their right to refuse treatment, he told me that grief was
clouding my judgment. Then he offered me drugs. He gives out
samples to the staff whenever they ask—which makes him pretty
popular with some.”
    “I don’t like him myself,” I said. “So does
that mean I can ask for him not to see Gramma anymore?”
    “You should talk to Betsy about it since
she’s Martha’s social worker. But, if you can find another
physician to see her, you can switch. I shouldn’t really get into
this with you, but confidentially I thought last year that Ahmed
might be ripping off Medicaid.”
    “Really? How come?”
    “He prescribes so many meds that come from
the pharmacy next to the pain clinic he owns. Would you believe
they call it the We Feel Your Pain Clinic? He prescribes oxycontin
and a bunch of other drugs to everyone who goes there. I know about
that because he hired Adam last year to put up a web site for him,
and Adam spent some time over at the clinic. He thought Ahmed was
kind of a shady character.”
    I wanted to get more information from Sharon
about Dr. Ahmed, but before I could come up with an appropriate
question, she choked, spraying iced tea all over the table. Color
drained from her face as she jumped up to face a slim, tan, young
man with dark wavy hair and what looked like a three-day growth of
dark beard. He wore khaki shorts, Teva sandals, and a black tee
shirt with a red and gold elephant on the front. And he grinned
from ear to ear.
    “Joel?” Sharon gasped. “What are you doing
here?”
    Did she say Joel? As in Nathan’s father,
Joel? The guy she said she hadn’t seen for years?
    The smiling guy standing directly in front of
Sharon reached out to hug her, but she backed away.