"Mrs. Henderson, you have a visitor" The cheery voice of the young nurse's aide woke Margaret from her nap. She was all ready to tear into the intruder when the voice and face sunk in. The child was far too familiar, kind and a little bumbling but with sixth sense that others whispered about. Margaret never could stay irate at someone who reminder so much of lost friends.

The other nurses spent a lot of time gossiping with confusion. Margaret, still as definite as ever, could regularly be seen haranguing any aide or nurse she thought was not up to snuff; loudly and with the strongest possible language. Mary, the aide in question, was the only one who she spared from her scathing tirades.

"Well, who is it?" The white hared woman demanded.

"I don't rightly know." She said with a short, sheepish shrug and a little half laugh. For just a moment another figure imposed itself upon Mary, just nineteen and in olive drab. "He is insisting that he talk to you about something important"

Margaret rose laboriously to a standing position, grabbing her can on the way to the door. In her mind she cursed her tired body. It had been far too long since she had been able to say nothing affected her. With steps that were far too mincing for her own peace of mind. She shambled out of the room with the bubbly woman.

"Well, show me where he is."

The aide led the way, gabbing with such force that Margaret made a note to talk to her later. They ended up in the lobby were several managers, including the Executive Director, were haranguing a filthy old man; maybe only 15 years younger than Margaret herself. The kind of man who had been homeless for some time. Clearly he was not another resident. The nurse manager of the wing saw them first simply sighed.

"Mary, you weren't actually supposed to go and get her." The woman huffed.

The old man looked up and suddenly affected a truly lecherous grin. "Hot Lips, want to head out to the oxygen tent for some heavy breathing." Then he waggled his eyebrows for good measure.

The affect was all wrong, the tone off, the accent from the wrong end of the country entirely but the words…oh the words brought her back.

The room exploded into frantic noises. Staff began shouting in outrage and at least three crashed into each other as they suddenly tried to rush the man. Margaret, for a single blessed moment, wasn't in a nursing home in the middle of the bread belt; too old by far and having outlived every she had ever known. Suddenly she was back in Korea, air crisp and frigid. Standing in an operating room, straining across a table at exhausted flu stricken young doctor; ready to drop and still flirting.

There was only one was she could respond, she burst into delighted laughter. "He really did it. He really sent a dirty old man to proposition me two years after he died."

The man not even remotely offended to be called a dirty old man nodded, "Can I consider my message delivered then. There's 5 grand waiting for me if I did."

She nodded while the staff continued to squawk; she ignored them. "Yeah, your message was delivered, do you need any kind of proof?"

He shook his head with his grin still affixed to his face. "No I got all the proof I need."

He went out the front door as she turned, still feeling buoyant. She let the granddaughter of an old friend lead her back to her room; Mary did so look like her grandpa Walter. She could never have believed he would really do it. In that moment she knew what she had been waiting for. Why she had outlived them all. She had been waiting for this moment, to see if he could really pull it off. To see if he could keep one last promise to her.