By the time I feed Victoria her dinner, the rain is already coming down hard. The trees outside are shaking and the branches are whipping back and forth. Maggie headed out a couple of hours ago, renewing her invitation to come stay with her and Steve, but I turned her down. I didn’t want to leave Victoria, especially if the power went out. This is my job, after all.
While I help Victoria guide a shaky spoon filled with sweet potato to her mouth, she has one eye on the food and the other is pointed in the direction of the window, where the droplets of rain are slamming against the windowpane with some ferocity. I can hear a branch scraping against the side of the house as it shakes in the wind. It’s hard to know how much she understands about the situation. I explained to her about the rain and she just stared at me like she often does when I’m telling her something. She didn’t react, which is nothing unusual—I’ve yet to see her even smile.
But she knows my name. She understood that much. And she remembers when someone fired a gun at the tree outside her house.
Adam comes into the room with the syringe filled with her medications. Victoria stiffens at the sight of him, and I know any chance of getting her to eat is out the window.
“I want to get her into bed early tonight,” he says. “In case the power goes out.”
I step aside for him to get at her feeding tube. I clipped Victoria’s nails down to the quick, so when she scratches at his hand, she can’t break the skin. When that doesn’t work, she attempts to grab at his wrist, but she’s too weak. He’s easily able to overpower her and inject the medications.
“She hates it when you do that,” I observe.
“She doesn’t like stuff going down the tube. It must be uncomfortable.”
“Yes, but…” I lower my voice a notch, as if it would matter—Victoria can hear every word. “She hates the medication. More than the tube feeds.” I chew on my lip. “Does she really need them? They seem to make her very tired.”
Lately, I’ve been wondering if the reason Victoria is so lethargic in the morning is because of whatever medications she’s getting at night. She barely seems able to keep her eyes open within an hour of getting her meds.
He raises an eyebrow. “Yes, she needs them. The medications keep her from having seizures.”
“Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean to question you.”
His shoulders sag. “No, it’s okay. They’re strong medications and I don’t want to knock her out. But she was having seizures at the hospital and it was really scary. So there isn’t anything I can do.”
Even though she only just received the medications and they couldn’t possibly have hit her bloodstream yet, the fight seems to have gone out of Victoria. Her shoulders sag and her head tilts to the side. There’s no chance of getting her to eat now.
“Why don’t you finish up with her and come get me?” Adam looks down at his watch. “I’ll get her into bed and then we could have dinner.”
“Sounds good.”
Adam and I have been eating dinner together a few nights a week. He cooks something simple or I cook something simple, and we eat in front of the television. It’s nice to have the company. And the last thing I want is to be alone in this huge house if the power is out. I’d imagine he feels the same way.
I feel guilty about it though. I’m sure Victoria wouldn’t want another woman having dinner with her husband every night. Once I suggested to Adam that we bring her down to join us for the meal, but he pointed out that it would be a lot of hassle to get her down the stairs. I didn’t want to push him too hard, but then I felt guilty. It doesn’t seem fair to Victoria that she should have to eat every meal isolated upstairs in her room.
With Adam gone, I scoop up more sweet potato and hold it to Victoria’s lips. Her eyelids are sagging and she barely seems aware of my presence anymore.
“Sorry, Victoria,” I say.
She blinks a few times and her eyes fill with tears. “Sylvie,” she slurs.
There’s a box of tissues by her bed. I reach for one of them and hold it out to her, but she doesn’t take it. “What’s wrong, Victoria?”
“Glen Head,” she whispers. “In… Glen Head.”
I frown at her. After she talked to me about Glen Head the first time, I looked up the town. It’s not even a town, but something called a “hamlet,” which is like a small village within the town of Oyster Bay. (Trivia: Oyster Bay is the birthplace of former President Theodore Roosevelt and the arguably more famous Billy Joel.) It’s a good two-hour drive from here, so I’m not going to pop over there and check it out just out of curiosity.
“Mmmmmm,” she slurs as her head starts to loll to the side. “What’s in Glen Head?” I press her.
She shakes her head. “No. He’s…”
She says something else that’s so slurred, I can’t make it out. And then her eyes drift shut.
