A/N Charlaine Harris owns this wonderful universe and characters, gosh darn it.
All mistakes are purely my own.
I've found it odd over the past few years I've been involved with this fandom, that considering it's based around vampires, no one ever really wants to deal with mortality. Some how Sookie ends up being eternally beautiful and youthful. I wonder if , as a group, our fascination for vampires is driven by our own fears of our impending aging and death. My father turned 81 last month and had to have a pacemaker installed to keep his heart pumping regular and I had a birthday as well, so these themes have been on my mind. So , I decided to see what would happen if I began a story towards the end of Sookie's life.
This is a short story, it will only be a couple chapters. I hope you like it.
For some reason, I love it when night falls. It's strange, this sense of anticipation that comes over me as the sun makes its slow dive into the trees outside my window. My love of the sunshine and outdoors is well known. Even in winter, I manage to finagle myself a little fresh air time. And yet the cloak of night comes bringing a comfort that is absent during the day. Who knows if I'll ever figure it out why. I'll push myself to stay awake until the entire building of residents is asleep and my mind can feel rested. Then I allow sleep to take me. The next morning I have to start all over again.
Relatively speaking, breakfast is one of the better meals served here, at Green Forest Nursing Home. Breakfast food is fairly bland to begin with, so I don't notice the lack of seasoning like with our other meals. I've had to adjust to the generic nature of the bulk meals the kitchen here cooks for the residents. I don't know if it's the result of all these Mid-Western Ohio cooks or the overly careful administration. Causing gastrointestinal issues for your patients creates for more work for the staff, especially when most of those patients require assistance with the bathroom. I am one of those patients and I feel for them, I really do, but I'd still love some New Orleans style dirty rice and beans or gumbo every once in a while.
I have time to think about these things since I've been in this nursing home for years now. I'm not sure how long, my perception and interest in time's passage has waned as I get closer to my own personal end. I was placed here when I was no longer able to care for myself without endangering myself in the process. All the people, or rather humans I've ever known are gone and the vampires I worked for had no interest in keeping me around once my abilities started to become unstable. But they weren't without some sense of responsibility towards me. They put me in this home which is a clean, well run facility and the people working in it are nice enough. No one has ever asked me to pay a bill, so I assume the vampires are paying for it.
It's not so bad, but I've learned to not speak of my previous employers and especially not let anyone know of my telepathic talent. My doctors suddenly find reasons to give me various pills and I lose time, drifting through my day in a medicated fog. It wreaks havoc with my ability to keep other people out of my head. I can't tell where their thoughts and mine begin and end, it's disturbing as all get out. So, I keep my mouth shut and pretend. Something I've become very good at over the years, especially when I ran away from Louisiana and all the baggage, drama, and mayhem that surrounded me there. I don't know if it was the right decision, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have reached this age if I had stayed there.
Some nights, like tonight , as the trees brown, lose their leaves and squirrels scamper getting ready for winter; I indulge myself a little. Pulling some exciting, fun memory from my youth, I sit next to my window and laugh a little. My body is still capable of feeling lust and desire, but they are distant relatives now, phoning occasionally to say hello and find out if I'm still alive. It's just as well, my memories involving various physical delights are a pleasure that takes me outside these walls to places I can no longer go.
So, it's not so bad, this aging thing. People tend to focus on what you've lost, but they forget you gain other things as well, perspective for starters. I've reached a certain comfort in the fact that I know death is not too far away and at least I know where. The How remains to be determined, but the list gets narrower as more of my various body functions deteriorate or break down entirely. Death loses a lot of its fear factor when uncertainty is removed.
I am interrupted from my musings by one of the nurses coming in, she starts fussing when she sees that I'm still awake, ignoring the tv program blaring in the corner.
"Oh, Miss Sookie, my little night owl! It's time you got to bed, don't you think? " she smiled at me. She was a decent person, really she was, but the innate patronizing inherent in her manner got on my nerves. I reminded myself of my manners.
"I guess I forgot the time. You know how it is", I answered blithely.
"Of course! Let's get you ready for bed", she responded spritely. Patients in bed meant they could get other work done, that's what she was thinking.
It wasn't like there was any big reason to fight her on this. Although, I still had some sort of feeling that something important was close by on the edge of my consciousness, trying to talk to me. She got me changed back into my dressing gown and robe, we took care of the bathroom activities. A fresh diaper was slid on me since I had been having problems in that area. Wetting a bed more than once pretty much earned you a nighttime diaper. I had argued and lost on this. After all, I wasn't the one who had to clean it up. And bedsores were a real possibility and could cause all sorts of other problems.
"Would you like me to open the curtains so you can get the sunshine in the morning?" she asked on her way out.
"Yes, please" I answered as I pondered the end of another day. The bed was comfortable enough, the room temperature warm and there was no reason for me not to fall asleep immediately. But it took a while and I lay in the dark wondering why.
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I blearily shifted and blinked in confusion at the light in the room. Was it morning already? Then I realized that my bedside lamp had been turned on. There was a figure sitting next to my bed. What was this all about? They didn't allow visitors at this late hour, not that I'd had any for a number of years. That's what happens when you outlive everyone.
My glasses were removed from the nightstand and pushed onto my nose. I blinked a few more times and blankly stared at the man in front of me. It took a few seconds for the name to come to my lips.
"Bill?"
"Hello Sookie", he said. He looked exactly the same as the last time I had seen him. The dark hair was neatly combed back, the sideburns framing his angular beautiful face. The brown eyes rested on me steadily as he patiently waited for me to speak again.
At this point, I thought I was dreaming but usually the dreams weren't here in my room. Then he reached out and long cool fingers intertwined with mine. They gently squeezed as he favored me with a slight smile. Okay, not a dream then, this was real.
"Bill" I repeated, this time not a question.
"Yes, I'm here"
"How are you?" I asked a filler question because I couldn't figure out how and why he'd come to this place.
"I am fine, how are you?" he asked politely as ever. His Southern manners were sticking to him like glue it seemed.
"Okay, I guess. Getting older as you can see" I said with a little humor, trying to keep the mood light.
"Yes, I can see that" he said gently.
Rallying my brain cells to organize the troops took a couple more seconds, then I asked the question," What are you doing here? "
He squeezed my hand a little harder. "We want to bring you home".
TBC
Intrigued? I hope so, the second chapter will be up in a couple days, it's being tweaked as we speak.
