“Take this and buy yourself something nice” Lily said, offering her bony hand to mine.
“You’ve been good to me and I’d like to repay you.”
“That’s very kind of you Lily,” I said, “But you know we’re not allowed to accept gifts. Besides, I’m only doing my job.”
But Lily’s wiry arm remained outstretched and her thin, pointy fingers began to shake with the effort of clutching the packet of tissues, which she mistakenly thought was money. Her eyes fixed mine and she lowered her chin in a slow but deliberate signal that she was not to be argued with.
I was tired of correcting her today, I sometimes had days like this, when I would find myself tutting in agreement as one of the residents moaned about a long-dead husband not coming to visit, or I would let them talk to me as though I was someone else, someone from the past.
“Well if you insist,” I said, taking the tissues and tucking them into my trouser pocket, “But you really don’t need to repay me, it’s a pleasure coming to see you.”
And I wasn’t lying. Of all my patients at St Mary’s Nursing Home, Lily was one of my favourites. Unlike many of the other residents, she still had a lot of life in her and though incidents like these were becoming increasingly regular, more often than not she was lucid, and, more importantly, fun.
A self-professed Poker shark, Lily delighted in luring her all-too forgetful neighbours into card games, which she invariably won, robbing them of their meagre stakes while she teased them with all the subtlety of a Vegas showgirl. Later, she would regale me and the other nurses with a card-by-card account of each game and fantasise about what she would spend her winnings on.
But despite her lively manner, Lily was still something of an enigma to myself and the other nurses. Although she had been at St Mary’s for almost a decade, longer than most of the staff, we knew very little about her life on the outside, as we liked to call it, and I’d never known her to have a visitor. But like all good Poker players, she gave little away. Did it make her sad that no one ever came to see her? If it did, you would never have known it.
Today I decided to do a little gentle probing. “You know what this room could do with?” I began. “Some photos, they would really brighten the place up. Have you got any that I could get framed for you?” Lily smiled blankly at me, “I don’t think so,” she said.
“None of your family? Kids? Grandkids? Siblings?”
Her face darkened, as though a cloud had passed over the light in her blue eyes. “No” she said, turning to face the window and then she was gone, disappearing back into herself.
The rest of my shift dragged as I tried to shake off the guilt of having upset Lily. By the time I had finally packed up for the day I wanted nothing more than to escape to my life outside the walls of St Mary’s, but as I was walking through the main foyer I heard my name being called. I turned to see Elaine, the manager, waiting for me. Elaine wasn’t much older than me, around 35 I would have guessed, but she dressed and acted as though she were 55 and she ran the nursing home with all the thoroughness of a bank manager. I knew immediately something was wrong.
“Could I have a word Liz?” she said.
“Yes, of course.” I said, following her into her office. She looked serious and I thought she was going to tell me that one of the residents had passed away. ‘Please not Lily,’ I thought to myself.
But as I closed the office door behind me I saw Lily sat on a plastic chair in the corner of the room. She looked as alert and poised as a porcelain doll and I was so relieved to find her OK that I forgot for a moment the seriousness of Elaine’s expression.
I was still smiling at Lily when she shrieked, “That’s her. She’s the one who took my money.”
“Wha-wha-what?” was all I could stutter.
I looked towards Elaine for support, but she was cradling her chin in her hands and her tightly pursed lips were pointing directly at me in an accusatory way.
“Lily tells me that you took advantage of her and accepted a cash tip Liz. Is this true?”
“What?”
“Well, is it?”
“No, of course it isn’t” I almost shouted.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Lily interjected.
“No” I snapped.
And then more softly, “No, but you didn’t give me any money. It was a packet of tissues but I didn’t want to offend you by correcting you so I just accepted them.”
“Tosh.” Lily retorted. “Then where is my money? I had £100 in my handbag and now it’s gone and you’re the only person that has come to see me.”
Lily quivered as she spoke and her face sagged with disappointment. And then she said it, “If you’d needed the money you only had to ask.” My face must have turned green with guilt for although I’d done nothing wrong I felt as though I’d let her down.
I stepped towards her and knelt down so that we were at eye level. “Lily, I promise you, I didn’t take any money from you. It was just a packet of tissues.”
I reached into my pocket and retrieved the packet, and then, to emphasise the point, I took a tissue out to show her. Only it wasn’t a tissue, it was a £20 note and when I looked down I could see that there were several other notes all wedged inside the packet.
I felt Elaine’s breath on my shoulder; “Liz, I’m afraid you’ve left me with no choice” she began.
“I know,” I said, and I looked to Lily, hoping for some clue as to what had just happened, but her empty expression gave nothing away.
Sally Coffey works as a writer/editor in consumer magazines.
'I am now taking my first tentative steps into the world of short story writing. Most of my scribbles don't make it from my notepad, let alone avoid the inevitable trash can, but I'm getting better at self-editing.'