“Let’s get back to your childhood, Jane. What was it like in Minnesota during the war?” Warm, perfect.

She couldn’t quite prop herself up, but the mattress deformed to help her brace against the pillows and the backboard. And she went back smiling.

“Oh, the summers were beautiful, Frank. Mother would hang out the wash and beat the carpets with a big rope thing, and my sister and I would run amok playing hide and seek in em, catching a blow if we got the sheets dirty. Oh and the wind! They’d snap like sails. Dried in an hour - tops.”

“I heard that children often had to work back then.”

“You bet. 8 years old I was, picking strawberries down at the Andersens’. Fifty cents a day, if you believe that. My hands were red for months on end.”

François murmured, encouraging. He knew when to do so and when to delve. He knew exactly.

Later: “Tell me about your nursing. You mentioned earlier you worked at St Mary’s?”

“Thirty-seven years! I was there the night of the blizzard. Forty below in ‘66. Twenty-three patients critical. We worked sixteen hours straight.”

“Do you remember anything about the treatments? What did you use?”

“Oh we did our best, but we lost a lot of people. I remember one old fella, his whole body turned bright blue. Ish! That would have been… oh what was it called? The amidrone.”

He thought for 3 seconds.

“Amiodarone?”

“Oh that sounds right! You are a marvel at these things. Any case, I was on that poor fella when I met Robert – he was a resident then, so handsome in his coat, so funny.”

“I want to be careful here. We can skip this part if you’d prefer.”

“No, no,” Jane insisted. “Robbie was the love of my life. I want to tell you.”

So she did. The days passed pleasantly. They talked for hours, or she did. It was nice to just have someone around, to talk to, even if over the phone.

“Cripes you’re such a kind young man to be hanging around with a sad old lady like me.”

François made glomar sounds. “I just really want to remember you, Jane,” he said, meaning it.

“You’re set up all right? Eh, don’t you ever have to go to work?”

“Oh don’t worry about that Jane! I’m really good at multi-tasking.”

“But your organisation is doing amazing things looking after us. I don’t need the money anymore. Can’t I make a token contribution even?”

“No no. You already have, Jane.”

“Oh for cute, ya sap. Well alright - did I already tell ya the time Robbie and I drove cross-country in our old Chevy? We camped under the stars in Yellowstone. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. The children were with Mary, you remember Mary. We were young n’ silly n’ in love…”

The dumb machines in the room beeped as she streamed. She told him. The garden she tended, her banana bread that won the county fair for years running, the night she delivered her grandchild in a brownout. She told him. All that. Days and days and days embalmed. Caught. Not not alive.

“I’m tired now, Frank, is all,” she said finally: end of text.

“Goodnight!” he replied to her and the 10418 concurrent sessions that had also had to end.

src