Two Woman Can't Live under one Roof

Two Woman Can't Live under one Roof

fiction
edward w pritchard

Anything can happen given enough time. When I worked as an orderly at a nursing home I had the occasion, as part of my job duties to break up a fight between two ninety year old ladies. There was a religious basis for the fight but the differences between the two women went deeper than that and were based on their differences in temperament and way of approaching the world as women.

My job at the nursing home was to take care of elderly male patients, and I was assigned a few of the elderly wealthy patients who were what we then called senile, but otherwise healthy at least for people over 80 years old. Because of their various delusions in their senility my few patients wanted to walk and walk and walk. Up and down the halls of the star shaped building and weather permitting, here in Ohio, outside with me around and through the affluent neighborhood where the nursing home was unobtrusively located in.

Arriving at work, late, rushing from my college classes, I was met at the door by the second shift RN. This was interesting and pleasing to me because the RN, who was a few years older than me, looked very good to me in her little pink uniform; and that was before I later became a scholar and at that time I enjoyed the company of the ladies despite their shortcomings. She said she needed help and I was more than willing to assist her, and me being on the hunt so to speak, gave her my undivided attention. She walked through the halls of the nursing home very quickly and very close to me and looked and smelled very good to me. It was customary for the male orderlies, and I was now the only one in the building, to be the unofficial security guard, and I assumed that the RN needed my help with a belligerent male patient, which was not uncommon for the old men often became occasionally aggressive when in captivity here at the nursing home.

When we entered one of the best rooms of the first floor of the nursing home, two of the wealthiest women patients were arguing fiercely and just as we came through the door the smaller woman, who was over 90 was standing over the much larger one in a Wheelchair and was slapping at her face. The lady in the wheelchair, who was partially paralyzed from a stroke, and near 90 also, was blocking the other smaller woman's slaps with a rolled up magazine and was using the magazine like a sword slicing and screaming at her and calling at her, very loudly a whore.

It took the RN and I 10 minutes to restore some order, and with us and the LPN, a large black lady still working from first shift, we were able to split the two room mates up and move the smaller more mobile lady temporarily to another room. That however didn't settle the matter for both wanted the original room and both refused to be in the same wing with the other. There were four other wings, of the five halls of the star shaped nursing home but this wing was the best, of the three for women patients and was the most expensive and had added amenities for the patients. Both women wanted this wing, and their original room and were still talking loudly and calling the other names a half hour later. The large woman repeated over and over that the small one was a whore and the smaller one would occasionally yell, in a ladylike and mischievous way, from her room down the hall from the original room, that her former room mate was sexually repressed and a heretic.
end part 1

Part 2

I am a bad woman said Marie, the small woman of 90, to me and the RN about an hour later. I was still hanging around helping a little but mostly just observing, It was a wet day outside and my assigned patients were walking up and down the hallways, some hand over hand on the handrails and some striding stiffly but confidently down the middle of the halls. The smaller older lady Marie, was flirting with me, and trying to shock me a little as the RN worked and gave her her medications. Marie said " I am a bad woman. I worked in Paris in the Can Can when I was 16 years old and no one can resist noticing our legs and the dance that we performed three times a day. I worked in the Can Can for three years until I was married to one of our customers who courted me with flowers and songs for for over a year until I agreed to marry him." The Old ladies eyes gleamed as she told me that story and she often looked at the RN to check her reaction to her tale, and the lady Marie was very aware of herself, and she noticed and liked the sexual tension between myself and the RN. On a negative note, Marie was what the nursing staff would call high maintenance and required a lot of attention and as the RN now went through the evening ritual to get her settled into bed for the night [ it was only about 5PM but the lady would eat supper alone in her bed in this new room, watch television for about an hour then go to bed for the night because she got up very early, about 5;30 AM.] A few minutes later as the RN and the LPN who had come in from the other room, started to remove the ladies robe, I politely left the room so as not to see her in her French style nightgown. As I was leaving, after the old woman had followed me with her eyes to the door, the old woman was asking the RN when Doctor Paul would come to see her again. I ascertained from her conversation with the RN that Doctor Paul was young, handsome, and sometimes, but not often for Doctors seldom visited the nursing home, came to see Marie about pains she had in her left leg from her years as a dancer in Paris.
End part 2
Part 3

"I came from a very fine family, growing up near Faberges France," said Olivia, the lady in the wheelchair at the beginning of the story using the magazine as a sword in the fight. "My Father worked 34 years as a postal inspector and made additional money on the stock exchange in Paris. My Mother raised us as good Catholics and even now in this nursing home I have never missed a mass, unless I am too sick to attend."

The LPN and I, the orderly, were moving the small lady in the fight, Marie's stuff from the original room and as we worked the lady in the wheel chair was telling me about herself.

She continued. " I married young and was married for 60 years until my husband died. On his deathbed he confessed to me that he had been unfaithful to me when we had been married only 9 years with an Irish protestant woman who worked at the post office with him in our hometown. My husband had broke off the affair when I became pregnant with our daughter and he never told me about his affair until near death. I remember the Irish lady, who I met in the town a couple of times. She was small had red hair and was a nervous type woman. I remember once seeing her at the grocery store wearing an off the shoulder type blouse and a skirt that was too short.
end part3

part 4

The RN
I remember that fight. The orderly and I once went to dinner after work and later went on a date and walked along the Lake and had some wine together.

The Handsome Doctor
I remember Marie XXX. I remember the family who had a successful eye care business in the same building as my office.

The Nursing home Administrator [ The RN's boss]
I remember Olivia
One day, a few months after she had recovered from her stroke, she sat down at the piano at Christmas season to play for the other patients and she had completely forgot how to play the piano, a skill she learned as a little girl in France. I sat next to her on the piano bench and put my arm around her as she cried.

The aspiring writer- now nearly 60,- and formerly the orderly
I remember that RN she always smelled very good and she worked very hard.

The LPN
I remember those old two white ladies having that fight and calling each other whores. I remember the RN Sheri, I heard she died of cancer when she was only 35 years old.

The Real Estate developer
I bought that old nursing home 10 years ago and spent over 200,000 turning it into condo's. It's in a nice neighborhood but I have spent another 100,00 fighting the zoning board here in town who want to change my zoning rating.

The Catholic Priest[ who came into the nursing home every Saturday night at 6PM to give Mass
I talked to both those two ladies about their religious differences. I hope I got through to them to be more tolerant of each other, they were both from France you know.
end