The Book, the Goth, and the Angel

Katherine had left her bag right here. Right. Here. On this sad little side table. It was one of those spindly wooden ones that would’ve looked cute in an 18th century farmhouse, but under the fluorescent lighting of the soulless waiting room/community center/reception/‘family room’, it just looked dirty.

Katherine scanned the room to see if any of the elderly patients had snatched her bag. There was supposed to be an attendant at the door by this desk for this very reason. There was even a sign above the ugly table that read: Please leave all bags and belongings on/under Ward Table before entering the ward.

Katherine hated that word. Ward. It surrounded her on all sides. On the table’s plaque, above the auto locking doors, even on the Chief Nurse’s business cards. Katherine had visited her mother here every Saturday since she’d arrived last year. To combat her dementia, Katherine brought her mother feathers, seashells, and tons of knick knacks. She suspected the nurses threw away most of it. If they didn’t, her room would likely overflow into the hallway. The good stuff like pretty wine bottles and favorite sex toys (Katherine had been shocked to learn she regularly requested them from the nurses) were rejected outright by nursing staff as ‘unsafe’.

Whatever. It wasn’t like you couldn’t choke someone with a dildo.

“Excuse me,” Katherine said, approaching the front desk. It was behind a plexiglass barrier meant to keep patients from rifling through the cabinets. The receptionist was a goth teenager barely passing as work appropriate with huge drooping earlobes and sporting more eyeliner than Katherine owned. She wished his manager had let him keep the gauges in, because his ears looked like melted wax. “I left my bag at the Ward Table before visiting my mother and now it's gone.”

He looked up in surprise and removed a hidden earbud. He lifted his head to peer over her shoulder at the Ward Table. “I don’t see it over there,” he said.

No shit.

Katherine drummed her fingers on the desk. “Did you see anyone take it?”

Goth Receptionist took several seconds to chew, blow, and pop a large bubble of minty fresh before answering. “Are you certain you left it over there?”

“Yes,” she said, enunciating each word, “And it had my wallet, keys, and my notebook.”

She wanted her black notebook back most of all. She could handle replacing a phone, she was on a first name basis with the Genius Bar staff. But her favored stone notebook was filled with ideas, stories, doodles, project ideas and recipes she copied nowhere else.

“Did you leave it in a patient room?” Goth Receptionist asked.

Katherine blinked at him, in disbelief. She pointed to the sign above the Ward Table and said, “No.” Unable to keep the edge from her voice now.

Seeing that Katherine wasn’t leaving, Goth Receptionist said: “I can check the security footage, but it will take a while, I have to wait for my manager to come back.”

“You can’t just look now?” Katherine quipped. “I can’t leave without my bag.”

“No ma’am, I’m really-”

She didn’t catch the rest of his lame apology because someone seized her elbow and bellowed into her ear- “A BAG? A BIG BAG?”

Deafened, Katherine twisted around. A wizened man stood at her elbow, sporting a provocative bugs bunny t-shirt complete with mustard stains and walker. She tried to extricate herself gently, but he yanked on her sleeve and shouted, “I SAW it. JUST today!”

“You saw her bag, Edgar?” Goth Receptionist asked loudly, unfazed. Katherine stepped back, ears ringing, trying to get out of range, but no avail.

“I saw a bag! A GORGEOUS piece.” Edgar hollered, apparently pleased with himself, “Looked like my granddaughter's bag. She LOVES me, and bags.”

“Did you see the bag on that table?” Katherine pointed to the ward station.

Edgar grinned and shook his head. “NO! No! It was LAURA’S!”

Goth Receptionist went pale. Pretty impressive, Katherine thought, because he was already super white. But panic was Katherine’s best friend, so she knew the signs.

“You saw Laura with it?” he pushed the plexiglass screen aside and stumbled around the desk. Oddly, watching him panic did wonders for Katherines nerves, and in a brief moment of insanity she wondered if this was perhaps therapeutic.

“It WAS Laura’s!” Edgar cackled. “OF COURSE she had IT.”

“Ma’am,” Goth Receptionist valiantly ignored Edgar as he blew hot wet puffs on the back of his neck. Katherine’s opinion of him rose several notches. “Please come with me.”

They walked through the back double doors as Edgar shouted after them, “IT WAS FUN PLAYING CHESS WITH YOU!”

“This way,” Goth Receptionist led her out into the courtyard. It was walled in by patient rooms and flower beds bursting with imported begonias and Azalea’s early to bloom. It was unseasonably warm for March, so many of the nurses had taken their charges outside.

“Please, uh, wait here a moment,” Goth Receptionist trotted over to one such nurse to whisper in her ear.

Katherine, alone for a moment, made the mistake of catching the eye of another elderly patient in a short blue nightdress and plush fur coat. Her holey, threadbare socks seemed as old as she. Upon seeing Katherine, she scooted down the bench, a pile of dirt cupped reverently in one hand, like some angel of the garden.

“Psssst!”

Katherine looked for the receptionist. He was still busy talking to the nurse. The nurse looked over at Katherine, who waved. The nurse’s expression darkened. Katherine dropped her hand like it had been burned.

“PSST!” Garden Angel leaned over the railing. She looked around conspiratorially, and waved Katherine closer.

“Hello,” Katherine shifted from foot to foot, not quite wanting to be pulled into another conversation.

“Do I know you?” Garden Angel squinted up at Katherine. It sounded like she’d smoked a pack a day for fifty years straight. She was hunchbacked, the few wisps of hair on the top of her head formed a dusty halo.

“No.” Katherine laughed, wiping sweaty hands on her pants. “Everyone asks me that. Just my face I suppose.”

“Where’s Laura?” Garden Angel leaned ever closer, clutching the dirt close to her chest.

Katherine perked up. “I don’t know. Do you know her?”

She grinned and patted the bench next to her.

Katherine reluctantly sat. The woman scooted close enough that their elbows brushed. Her skin was papery. She lifted the dirt to eye level and said, “This is lucky dirt.”

Katherine tried to smile, completely at a loss for what to say.

“Know why?” She prompted.

“Will it grow flowers?” Katherine asked.

Garden Angel wrinkled her nose in disappointment, then tutted. “No. Guess again!”

“Is it special dirt?” Katherine guessed distractedly. The conversation between Goth Receptionist and the nurse had gotten heated. They wheeled about and dashed inside.

“Hey!” she scolded. “You haven’t guessed why the dirt is lucky!”

“I don’t know!” Katherine looked around for clues. Across the courtyard, two grandchildren drew with chalk, playing Pictionary with their grandfather. Then Katherine noticed that of all the patients outside, this woman was the only patient without a nurse or a visitor.

“Tell me why it’s lucky.” She said gently.

Garden Angel beamed, showering Katherine with warmth. “Because it has this!” She let the dirt drain through her fingers until all that remained in her caked palm was a worn and filthy scratch off ticket.

Katherine forced a laugh. “Ah! Are you going to win with it?”

The old woman shook her head and laughed again, like a chorus of bullfrogs. “Then it wouldn’t be lucky!”

Just then, Goth Receptionist returned, the nurse suspiciously absent.

“Ms…?”

“Cooper.” Katherine supplied. “Did you find my bag?”

“Um, yes.” But you’re not going to like it, was the unspoken ending to that sentence.

“Where is it?” Katherine demanded.

Goth Receptionist scratched the back of his head. “Our nurses are giving it a bit of a cleaning for you.” At the word cleaning, Katherine’s stomach hollowed out in dread.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“Well, we sincerely apologize that this was not caught by staff earlier. We will subtract a month of payment from your mothers bill in exchange--”

“Where is my bag?” Katherine asked again, her voice rising in pitch. Garden Angel tugged on her sleeve but she barely noticed.

The nurse appeared at his elbow holding two plastic bags. In one was her leather backpack. Thoroughly soaked, and hastily dried so it now stuck to the plastic. In the other was her wallet, keys, chapstick, and umbrella, all equally soaked. The only thing to come out unscathed was her phone, which the nurse held out bag-free.

“Lucky!” The old woman exclaimed, brandishing the lottery ticket.

“Yes, Amanita,” the nurse crooned, pressing the plastic bags into Katherine’s arms, “It’s so lucky we found her things!”

“My--” Katherine’s words got strangled in her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this angry, or believe how calmly the nurse had just handed over her ruined things as if this was expected and unavoidable.

“I’m not sure what Chris told you--”

Ah. Chris. The darling.

“Chris hasn’t told me shit.” Katherine snapped, losing it. Goth Receptionist shrank back from her rage. “My bag got stolen, you brought it back to me sopping wet and I’m still missing my book!”

Regretfully the nurse explained that Laura, one of the Ward's longtime dementia patients, had slipped out of her room unwatched, and pried open the Ward’s doors which had not latched properly.

“As for your book, I do apologize again ma’am, but it unfortunately was destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” Katherine squeaked. Getting a hold of herself, Katherine said, “I’ll take it damaged, I just really need it back.”

The nurse and Goth Receptionist exchanged looks. “I’m sorry, ma’am.” The nurse said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing left of it. Laura tore it to pieces and flushed it. Well, she tried to flush the whole bag, but we were able to salvage it.”

Katherine gaped at them.

“I’m very sorry,” the nurse said.

“I’ll handle the compensation for you at the front,” Goth Receptionist said.

“Lucky!” Amanita exclaimed.

No. Katherine thought. Very, very, bad luck.

Goth Receptionist waved her back towards the doors, as Katherine stood to leave Amanita cried:

“Wait!” She brandished the lottery ticket. “Take your luck!”

“Keep it.” Katherine said wearily, anger now gone. She turned to leave. She just wanted to get out of here.

“No!” Amanita wailed, “You must!”

Katherine took the scratch off just to quiet her, because folks were beginning to stare. The nurse lifted Amanita from her seat. “Why don’t we go watch some programs Amanita? Change those socks?”

After settling for two free months for her mother, Katherine drove home. She sank into her couch, wallowing in the fact that she’d just lost a lifetime of recipes, years of poetry, and even precious family photos that she’d wedged into the seams. Feeling something in her pocket, Katherine pulled out the dirty scratch-off. She brushed it off, looking for a date and wondering how long Amanita had been holding onto this thing.

She was surprised to see it was a recent ticket, and unscratched.

“Fuck it.” She went to get a penny. She carefully scratched. Then, stared at the numbers for a full minute. Until she knew her eyes weren’t lying. Her lips mouthed the number that was too impossible to be spoken aloud.

Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.

Katherine whooped. Then she berated herself.

The next day she went back to the facility and asked for Amanita. Goth Receptionist just stared at her like she’d grown a second head.

Katherine sighed. “She gave me this lotto ticket? And well, it was a winner, so I thought she might want it back.”

Goth Receptionist swallowed.

“Ms. Cooper, Amanita died last night.”

Katherine walked out into the sunlight, wondering if the Garden Angel could hear her whispered thanks.