She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Room Six

The hospice was dark at three in the morning, except for the lamp at the nurses' station.

Miriam rang the side bell, and Arlene opened the door herself in her navy scrubs with a mug in her hand.

She looked at Miriam's coat, her bare face and the keys still hanging from her fingers.

"I take it you're not here for the eviction," Arlene said.

"I came to sit in room six," Miriam said. "If it's empty."

"It's been empty since he left with me."

Arlene did not say anything else. She stepped back and held the door.

The hall smelled the way it had when I was alive, of floor wax and boiled coffee.

Miriam walked down it slowly, past the closed doors, and I walked a pace behind.

Room six had a stripped bed and a folding chair.

On the sill stood the jar, and somebody had put fresh carnations in it.

"The director won't let anyone else in it yet," Arlene said from the doorway. "She says it isn't time."

Miriam stood in the middle of the room.

She turned slowly, looking at the peeling paint over the bed.

It was the same paint she had looked at that first day with her chin up.

"This is where you ended up," she said, very quietly, to the room.

It was what she had said to me the first time.

This time it was not an insult.

She sat down on the edge of the bare mattress, and she put both hands flat on her knees.

"Did he sleep?" she asked.

"Not much. He told jokes instead."

"Did he ask for me?"

Arlene took a long time answering.

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