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With that, we walked into the care center and got visitor badges and a room number and walked down the halls that I swear felt oppressive, like the sadness of the people living there seeped into the walls. I literally felt heavier with every step I took.
"Feels like death in here," Duke said, surprising me that he felt it as well.
"She can't stay here," I said back, shaking my head.
"She's got to get better," Duke reasoned and he was right. I couldn't care for her with a broken hip. I knew nothing about things like that. "You can move her somewhere else after she gets better. There's a retirement community over in Silver Neck."
I felt marginally better because of that as we walked up to my grandmother's room. The door was slightly open but I knocked on it anyway.
"Unless you're my granddaughter you can just go straight to hell with all your poking and prodding," her voice called from inside, making me smile big for the first time all day.
I looked over at Duke and his head tilted at the sight of my smile. "She's got spirit, huh?" he asked.
"She likes to call it 'gumption' and says that it's a shame that most modern women don't know the art of it."
"Like black and white movie stars," Duke said with a nod.
"Exactly," I agreed. My grandmother was a huge Katherine Hepburn fan. I felt a tug of connection again to him and had to remind myself to not allow it as I turned back to the room.
"It's me, Grams," I said, moving inside, my nose wrinkling up at the smell of hospital that seemed to be everywhere. I couldn't place the exact scents that made it that way, maybe a mix of plastic and hand sanitizer and maybe a hint of crummy food and rubbing alcohol.
"I know I said I didn't want you to uproot your life to come up here, but where the hell have you been?" she asked as I stepped inside to find her laying in one of those moving hospital beds, bent upward, her legs raised a bit as well. She had on a dark blue house dress and a matching robe that I knew she would never be caught dead in outside of an emergency situation.
Just because I'm old, doesn't mean I have to dress like I am none too patiently waiting for death.
That was what she told my mother when she had mistakingly bought her a house dress for Christmas.
I usually found my grandmother in slacks and a blouse, her makeup done, clip-on earrings at her lobes, some giant stone necklace around her throat. She didn't do stiletto-type heels, but she always had a little bit of height under her feet. And her hair was always dyed and curled.
So seeing her in a house dress with only socks on her feet and her gray roots around her forehead, her hair flat and lifeless, yeah, it showed me how unwell she really was.
"I'm sorry, Grams," I said, meaning it, feeling guilt down to my bones. "Moving got a little more... complicated than I thought," I said, and it was somewhat honest.
But I found that she was no longer looking at me. Her full attention was on the giant, hulking, stupidly good-looking man behind my shoulder.
Her keen blue eyes cut to me and a brow lifted. "Those manners of yours need some brushing up, dear."
"Right," I said, shaking my head, feeling way too chastised for a grown woman. "Sorry. Grandma, this is Duke. Duke, this is Patty Weber, my grandmother."
Then my grandmother did the damnedest thing. She held out her hand for him to take and freaking batted her eyes at him.
Duke moved out from behind me, touching my hip in the process and, if he wasn't a racist jackass, I would have found his constant need to touch me incredibly attractive and endearing. He moved beside the bed, taking her hand and giving it a little squeeze.
"Charmed, I'm sure," she said, giving him a saucy little smile and I realized for the first time that my grandmother was a dirty old flirt. I had never seen her with a man save for my grandfather and he died when I was too young to notice such things. But the woman obviously had more flirting skills than I did. "I'm so glad Penny has found herself a nice man. It's not healthy for a girl like her to be alone all the time."
"Grandma, we aren't..." I started to object, but Duke cut me off.
"All those afghans," he said with a conspirative smile that she bought right into.
"Knitting when she should be out dancing and dining and practicing making babies..."
"Grandma!" I shrieked, feeling my cheeks heat up immediately.
Now, granted, it wasn't exactly the first time my grandmother told me I needed to get laid. For an older lady, she was quite keen on the idea of "test driving before you buy" and she believed I should have put aside a lot more time to the art of finding a man. But she generally kept those conversations between the two of us.
