“Yes, ma’am.”
The nurse glanced at me. She stopped short of rolling her eyes, but she may as well have. I gathered they’d been through this routine many times before.
Ruth touched a hand to my shoulder. “Daisy, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to see Jo Ellen out.”
They walked out of the room and I sat in the chair next to the bed. Even though I didn’t know much about how to deal with a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s, I knew I should talk to Stanley as normally as I could. If there was a part of him that could still comprehend, I wanted to respect his dignity.
I tried to ignore the faint odor hanging in the air that reminded me of teaching school in the early days, when some of the little kids didn’t always make it to the bathroom on time. I wondered how long he’d been lying here like that. Surely Ruth paid the nurse well enough that she could have handled the task, unappealing as it admittedly was.
I struggled to think of something to say.
Throughout the house there were hundreds of books. He’d been such a vibrant, educated man. There were even two bookshelves on the back wall of this huge master bedroom.
I’d always relished our conversations about novels we’d enjoyed, the current state of world affairs, and even news of his chemical research. He had a way of explaining things that made it easy to understand.
We also shared a passion for quirky historical facts.
“Hey, Stanley, did you know that Charles Dickens always faced to the north when sleeping?” I said to him, hoping to see some sort of familiar answering spark in his eyes.
“Or that ketchup was sold in the 1830s as a medicine?” He used to tease me about my penchant for putting the tomato condiment on anything and everything.
He stared unblinking at the ceiling.
Never mind not recognizing me, it was as if he couldn’t hear me at all.
I sighed, remembering one time when the four of us had gone out to dinner, right before he retired. Stanley insisted on taking the bill when it came to the table because Joe and I had treated the time before. But then he took so long figuring out the tip that Ruth pulled out her own credit card. Stanley was furious at his wife and it was an uncomfortable scene, to say the least. She’d excused the episode afterward by saying he’d been under a lot of stress at work.
Now I wondered if Stanley had retired because he’d had a premonition that something might be going wrong.
His thin fingers plucked restlessly at the sheet and he turned to look at me.
“I know you.” His face crumpled and he started crying. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. And I forgot your birthday.”
“No, no, it’s not my birthday. It’s okay. Really.”
“Card. I should have bought you a card.”
I tried again to tell him it wasn’t my birthday, but he wouldn’t be consoled. In fact, the more I protested, the more agitated he became. Desperate, I looked around. There was a small writing desk near the window with a stack of expensive cream-colored writing paper.
“Okay, you know what, Stanley? You’re right. It is my birthday. So let’s make a card. What should I put on it?”
But he lapsed into silence once more.
I knew he liked dogs, so I drew a stick figure of a dog that looked a bit like my golden retriever mix puppy. I added a bunch of flowers and wrote Happy Birthday inside.
I came back to the bed and sat next to him. “Look. Here it is. Do you want to give it to me now?”