Storm for Her

ISABEL LANZETTA

The walls were caked in deodorizer and the scent of looming death. Three days. This is the time it takes ~ on average ~ for the bodies entering the doorway of the shoddy hospice to succumb to whatever crippling effect old age burdens on their skeletal frames. The week had been eerily quiet, all rooms empty but the last at the end of the hall, and the sky had taken on such a cloudy gray sheen that, once inside, it was nearly impossible to tell whether it was night or day.

The nurse loaded a stained plastic tray with three meager dishes: a glass of water, an ambien, and a slice of untoasted bread. Unhurried, she traced the stickered shoe prints down the tiled floor to the end of the hall. Out of habit, she knocked, entering without expecting a reply.

From the once-white sheets a pair of nostrils peered at her in greeting. A wrinkled foot stuck out from the bottom of the twin cot, the toenails yellow and thick with fungus.

Fifty-one days. The woman in bed had not uttered a word since her admission, but had stared silently at the rattling fan above, letting her eyes roll and roll and roll about in circles around her skull. The nurses had taken to calling her Curtis. In part, because her hair was wildly curly, unfurling from her widow’s peak and spiraling into a mass of split ends and frizz into the single pillow that held up her head. This, and because when she checked herself in the nearly two months prior, she had given them no charts or identification from which to prepare for her decline, except to say it’s time. This, and because when asked for the contact of her next of kin and billing address she had simply clucked her tongue at them, hard, and then carefully undressed, opening her arms and waiting for the nurses to drape her in one of their disposable paper gowns.

The tray scraped against the table as she set it down, offering the sliced bread to the greying eyes that had, momentarily, stopped their circling. After several immobile moments, the nurse popped it into her own mouth and chewed carefully. The food was more a courtesy, overpowered by the I.V. dripping steadily into Curtis’ curled hand.

The cold had begun to creep into the open window, brought on by the late season and the clouds. She reached to close the glass panel when five fingers like electric ice grasped the hem of her scrubs. Below, the older woman had lifted her chin from the sheets, placing one index finger carefully on the linens. This late in the day, the staff had already emptied out of the creaking building one by one, and the overnight shift had hours still to go.

The nurse obliged. The hand traced along the bedframe and slowly followed the metal to the table on its side. It felt, gingerly, around the flat top, brushing away breadcrumbs until it poked the edge of a wide toothed comb. When the nurse did not respond, the hand tapped its handle again, and again.

She looked back towards the woman in bed, but her body moved to indicate it hadn’t noticed the disturbance of this limb. She picked up the comb. The hair on the pillow bristled.

The wind picked up, its long body rocking the floor of the valley. The forecast hadn’t called for rain, but the air’s salty taste said otherwise.

Curtis had shifted ever so slightly in bed, her head tilting to one side. The nurse took a small lock of hair in one hand. She began to run the comb along its ragged ends, gently untangling knots built by bedrest. She worked her way upwards, each stroke resting closer to the nape of the woman’s neck. Outside, the quiet droplets of rain had begun to fall. The first lock fell from Curtis and into her hand. She gazed at it, thinking of the long-haired dog she had as a girl, who had expelled its hair at each changing season, the thick wads spilling into hallways and curtains and clothing. The old woman had shifted her gaze, and was staring at her intently, palm open. Not knowing what else to do, the nurse set the smoothed mass into the outstretched hand, which took it between two fingers and held it there, teetering on a fold in the sheets.

The storm grew louder, the fan’s whizzing becoming a fluttering bee beneath a chopper’s wings.

The comb moved again, leading the nurse’s hand down and up the tangled strands of hair. The wind picked up. The second lock fell.

Curtis made no motion of surprise at each clump that landed again in her palm with the speed of raindrops on the roadway, only blinking as if with the simple satisfaction of knowing.

The third lock fell, then the fourth, and fifth. The rain had grown heavy-bellied and struck the asphalt lot outside the window as though cannonballing into a community pool. The evening had come, or it hadn’t. It made no difference inside.

As if awakening, the nurse startled at the last curl outstretched from Curtis’ forehead. It tickled the old woman’s nose.

This one came without the comb, loosening itself into the nurses hand and then Curtis’. The bald face before her was completely naked: un-freckled and scratched like the newborn she had seen her sister give birth to a year before. It wrinkled in odd places, sagging around the woman’s ears and rounding her eyes like globes.

For a moment, the room lay still.

A heartbeat, and then Curtis had taken the thick curls from her hand, popped them into her half-open mouth and swallowed them whole.

The nurse drove home in a hailstorm that night, each splatter of rain a lock of hair falling from the sky. By the time she clocked into work the next morning, Curtis had died.

Isabel Lanzetta is a student of English and Creative Writing at Colorado College. A poet by nature, Isabel Lanzetta’s work has appeared in Convergence: Best Teen Writers of Arizona, Curios, The Telepoem Booth and Leviathan Magazine. She has been reintroduced to the art of fiction writing in the past year. “Storm for Her” is her first piece of flash fiction.