Chapter 7 chapter Five

Then I cry like a stupid old man like me, and that's it. I guess I fell asleep.I could have sworn I was twenty-three seconds ago and now I am in this shriveled old shell. I sniff, wipe away ridiculous tears, and try to pull myself together, because here comes the girl, the busty girl in pink.Either she worked all night or I messed up the day without realizing it, don't know which one the answer is, nasty. I also hope to remember her name, but I don't have that memory.No way, that's the way people are at ninety or ninety-three. "Good morning, Mr. Jankowski. It's time to get up," said the nurse, turning on the light.She went to the window and adjusted the angle of the horizontal blades of the blinds to let in the sunlight.

"What are you doing up?" I muttered. "Because the good God has given you another day." She came to me and pressed a button on the bed rail, and the bed began to hum.After a few seconds, I was in a sitting position. "Besides, you're going to the circus tomorrow." circus!That said, I didn't lose a day for nothing. She put a disposable cover on the ear thermometer and inserted it into my ear to take my temperature.They poked and prodded every morning, as if I were a piece of meat dug out of the deepest part of the refrigerator, and they had to deal with it until it proved that I was healthy.

The ear thermometer beeped, she peeled off the cover and threw it in the trash can, made two notes in the medical record, and pulled the blood pressure monitor from the wall. "Are you going to the cafeteria for breakfast? Or do you want me to bring it here?" she asked, helping me put on the wristband of the blood pressure monitor and start to inflate it. "I will not eat." "Come on, Mr. Jankowski. You have to maintain your strength," she said, pressing the stethoscope to the inside of my elbow and watching the reading. I desperately peeked at her name tag. "Staying strong for what? Running a marathon?"

"That way you don't get sick and miss the circus," she said.When the breath of the wristband died down, she removed it, put it away and hung it on the wall. It's not easy!Finally saw her name tag. "Then I'll have breakfast here, Rosemary," I said, proving that I remembered her name.Maintaining the illusion of sanity is not easy, but it is important.Anyway, I'm not really stupid, I just have to pay more attention to the situation around me than others. "I admit you are as big as a horse," she said.After making the last entry, she closed my medical record, "If you can gain weight, I bet you can live another ten years."

"Handsome." When Rosemary came to push me to the corridor, I asked her to place me by the window so that I could see the movement in the park. The sky was high and crisp, and the sun was streaming down through the fat, fluffy clouds.It's better that way, I know all too well what it's like to build a circus in bad weather.Circus work is no longer the same as in previous years. I am afraid that even the handyman has changed to a nice title these days.The quality of their accommodation is definitely better, look at those minivans, some even have mobile satellite dishes. Shortly after lunch, I caught a glimpse of the first nursing home resident pushed out into the street by a relative.Ten minutes later, there was an endless stream of wheelchairs from the inmates, forming a veritable caravan.There is Ruxi, oh, and Nali Canton, isn't it superfluous?Her mind was so confused that she couldn't remember anything.And Dorothy, that must be the Randall she was always talking about.And McQuendy the bastard tortoise, oh yes, the mountain king sitting on the top of the hill, surrounded by his family, Scottish blankets on his lap, no doubt talking about elephants.

Behind the tent was a line of handsome Percherons, each shining white.Perhaps a show horse for dressage riding?The horses are traditionally white to conceal the powdered resin that entertainers use to stabilize their feet. Even if it was horses performing unmanned equestrianism, there was no reason to think that they would be as powerful as Malena's horses.There is nothing and no one like Malena. I searched for the elephant, half frightened, half disappointed. Later in the afternoon, the caravan formed by the inmates came back, with balloons tied to their wheelchairs and hats that looked like donkeys.Some people even hold marshmallows in plastic bags on their laps, plastic bags!That candy might last for a week.In my day, we all took paper sticks and stretched them into the machine to make whole marshmallows.

At five o'clock a slender horse-faced nurse came down the corridor. "Ready for dinner, Mr. Jankowski?" She released the brakes and turned the wheelchair around. "Yeah." I said, annoyed, she shouldn't have touched the wheelchair without waiting for my answer. We came to the cafeteria and she pushed me to my old table. "Hey, wait a minute! I'm not sitting here tonight," I said. "Don't worry, Mr. Jankowski. Mr. McQuendy must have forgiven you for last night." "Yeah, huh, I didn't forgive him. I'm going to sit over there." I pointed to another table.

"There's no one sitting there." "That's right." "Well, Mr. Jankowski, why don't you let me—" "Damn it, let me sit where I want." My wheelchair stopped, and there was a dead silence behind me.A few seconds later, the wheelchair started moving again.The nurse pushed me to my assigned table and brought my dinner.She pouted angrily and slammed the dinner plate down in front of me. The hardest thing about sitting alone at a table is that there is nothing to distract you, so that you are bound to hear other people chatting.I had no intention of eavesdropping, but I just would.They're mostly talking about circuses, it doesn't matter, what I can't stand is old bastard McQuendy sitting at my table like King Arthur at his court, with my lady friends.Not only that, he apparently told the circus people that he used to carry water for elephants, and they upgraded his ticket to put him in the first row!Incredible!Now he's sitting at my table, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I can't stand it.I surveyed my plate, which contained some kind of stew dripping with gravy, next to a pitted jelly. "Nurse! Nurse!" I cried. One of them raised his eyes and saw that I was clearly showing no signs of dying, so he walked slowly. "What's the matter, Mr. Jankowski?" "Can I have real food?" "I don't understand, can you explain?" "Real food, you know, what people who don't live in nursing homes eat." "Well, Mr. Jankowski—" "Don't say 'Well, Mr. Jankowski,' miss, it's nursery food. I know I'm not five. I'm ninety or ninety-three."

"This is not nursery food." "Why not, there's nothing solid in it, look—" I scooped up the gravy-covered lump with a fork, and it fell back to the plate in a snap, leaving only the fork covered with a layer of mush. "Can this be called food? I want food that I can bite with my teeth. Something that squeaks when I bite. Also, what the hell is this?" I poked at the lump of red jelly, and it trembled Outrageous, like someone's breasts I've ever seen. "That's salad." "Salad? Do you see any vegetables? I don't." "This is fruit salad," she said, her voice firm but forced.

"Did you see any fruit?" "Yeah, I did see it," she said, pointing to a dent. "There, and there, that's a banana, that's a grape. Why don't you eat and see?" "Why don't you eat and see for yourself?" She crossed her arms, and the old-fashioned woman lost her patience. "This is food for nursing home residents. The dishes are specially designed by nutritionists who specialize in geriatric medicine—" "I don't want this, I want real food." There was a dead silence in the cafeteria.I look around and every eye rests on me.I said out loud, "What? Is that asking too much? Am I the only one here who misses real food? You can't all love this...this...semi-liquid food?" I put my hand on the edge of the plate and pushed for a moment. Just a little bit. real. My plate flew across the table and fell to the floor and shattered. They summoned Dr. Rashid.She sat by my bed and asked questions, and I tried to be as polite as possible.But I'm really tired of them treating me as an unreasonable person, and I'm afraid they are a little bit more gunpowder towards her. After half an hour, she asked the nurse to come with her to the corridor.I strained my ears, and although my old ears were hideously large, I caught only fragments of words. "Very, very depressed" and "provoked behavioral aggression, which is not unusual in geriatric patients." "I'm not deaf, and you don't know! I'm just old!" I yelled on the bed. Dr. Rashid took a peek at me, took the nurse by the hand and walked away, out of my hearing range. That night, there was a new pill in the paper cup.After the pills were poured into the palm of my hand, I noticed that there was one I hadn't seen before. "What's this one?" I said, pushing it and turning it over to look at the other side. "What?" said the nurse. "This." I poked at the pill in question, "It's this one, I haven't seen it before." "It's amitriptyline." "What is it for?" "Pharmaceuticals that make you feel better." "For what?" I repeated the question. She didn't answer, I looked up at her, and our eyes met. "Depression," she finally said. "I will not eat." "Mr. Jankowski—" "I'm not depressed." "It's Dr. Rashid's medicine, and it'll make you—" "You want to stun me and turn me into a sheep eating jelly. Let me tell you, I won't eat it." "Mr. Jankowski, I have to give medicine to twelve patients, please take the medicine now." "Aren't we residents?" Her taut features hardened. "I won't take this one, I'll take the others," I said, flicking the pill out of my hand.It flew out and fell to the floor.I stuffed the others into my mouth, "Where's the water?" I mumbled, trying to keep the pills in the center of my tongue so they wouldn't run away. She hands me a plastic cup, picks up the pills off the floor, and walks into my bathroom.I heard the toilet flush and she came back to me. "Mr. Jankowski, I'm going to get another amiteline. If you still don't take it, I will inform Dr. Rashid, and she will change the medicine to injection. It doesn't matter whether you take medicine or injection, Anyway, it’s all amitriptyline, it depends on which way you like to use it, you can choose it yourself.” When she brought the pills, I swallowed them.Fifteen minutes later, I also received an injection, not amitriptyline, but something else.Not fair, I swallowed that damn pill. Within minutes, I was a bleating sheep eating jelly.Well, it's sheep anyway.I keep thinking about how I got into this bad luck today, and I realize that if someone told me to eat crappy jelly now, I would just eat it. What have they done to me. I gather all the emotions in this broken shell, trying to maintain the anger, but in vain.The anger ebbed away, like a wave leaving the shore.I pondered the sad truth, and suddenly became aware of a dark drowsiness hovering over my head.Sleepiness has been staring at me for a while, waiting there, getting closer to me with each circle.At this time, my anger was only an empty shell. I gave up, told myself in my heart that I would remember to be angry when I woke up tomorrow morning, and then let my consciousness drift.I can't control my thoughts at all.