feel worse.
“I should say so,” Olive said. “This is horrible.”
“Don’t worry,” the nurse said. “It happens.”
“It does?” Olive demanded, and the nurse said, Yes, sometimes it did, it was the antibiotics she’d been on for her pneumonia, let’s get you into the shower and she’d change the bed, and when Olive came out of the shower the bed was changed and on the bed was a huge papery diaper.
When Dr. Rabolinski showed up the next morning, Olive waited to see if he had heard of her horror, and when he did not mention it, she finally said, “My bowels moved with a frightful ferocity.” She made herself look at him when she said that. He said, “It’s the antibiotics,” and gave a small shrug. So she relaxed a tiny bit and asked when she could go home, and he said, Any day now. He sat on the bed after that, without saying anything, and Olive gazed out the window. For a few moments she felt something close to bliss, but it was more as though time had stopped—just for these few moments time had stopped—and there was only the doctor and life, and it sat with her in the morning sunshine that fell over the bed. She put her hand on his briefly, and still looking out the window she said, quietly, “Thank you,” and he said, quietly, “You’re welcome.”
* * *
Back home, Olive felt awful. She couldn’t understand how she had lived in this house—Jack’s house—for so many years, it seemed very different to her, and she worried that it would always feel that way. It was chilly, and she turned the heat up high, which she had never done before. The living room seemed huge, she felt she could barely walk across it, and she slept in the guest room downstairs. But Betty showed up—the first home healthcare aide—and she was a big person. Not fat, just big. Her maroon cotton pants were tight on her, her shirt barely closed; she was probably fifty years old. She sat down immediately in a chair. “What’s up?” she asked Olive, and Olive didn’t care for that.
“I’ve had a heart attack and apparently you’re supposed to babysit me.”
“Don’t know that I’d call it that,” Betty said. “I’m a nurse’s aide.”
“Fine,” said Olive. “Call yourself whatever you want. You’re still here to babysit me.”
When Olive, walking to the kitchen a few minutes later, looked out the window at the truck that Betty had driven over in and saw on the back of it a bumper sticker for that horrible orange-haired man who was president, she almost died. She took a deep breath and walked back to where Betty sat, and she said to Betty, loudly, “Listen to me. We will not talk about politics. Do you hear me?” And Betty shrugged and said, “Okay, whatever.” Olive shuddered every time she thought about that bumper sticker.
But after a few days of Betty, Olive sort of got used to her. It turned out that Olive had had the woman years ago in Olive’s seventh-grade math class; she had forgotten until Betty reminded her. “You sent me to the principal’s office a lot,” Betty said.
“Why?” Olive asked. “What could you have done?”
“I wouldn’t stop talking in class. I was mouthy.”
“And I sent you to the principal’s office?”
Betty nodded. “I’d do it on purpose. I had such a crush on him.”
Olive watched her from across the room.
“Oh, did I have a crush on that man,” Betty said. “Mr. Skyler. Whoa.”
“Jerry Skyler,” said Olive. “He was a nice man, I liked him myself. He’d always say to people, ‘You’re doin’ excellent.’ He’d been a coach.”
Betty laughed. “You’re right! He’d always say that. Well, I really liked him. You know, I was skinny back then,” and she ran her hand down in front of herself. “And kind of cute. And I think he thought I was kind of cute. Who knows. But, boy, I was crazy about that guy.” Betty shook her head slowly, then pointed a finger at Olive and said, “You’re doin’ excellent.”
* * *
—
At four o’clock a different woman would show up; her name was Jane, and she was pleasant but Olive found her bland. Jane made dinner for her, and Olive told her she would like to be alone, so Jane went upstairs. And then when Olive woke up in the morning yet another woman was there, but she left soon and Betty came back.
A few days later, around four o’clock—when