Page 67 of The Heat of Us

“Sure is. I recommend you tell me what the hell is going on.”

Where was I supposed to begin?

Should I start with how my grandma called me by my father’s name the other day? She had been disproportionately angry when I tried to explain that she couldn’t open a tin of tuna with a teaspoon.

“I’ve been cooking longer than you’ve been alive, Ivan. Don’t tell me what to do,” she scolded me.

I had to push her to attend appointments and drive her to tests. She fought me the whole time and I hated how it strained our relationship.

Her doctors confirmed what I already knew.

How do I even begin to explain that the final tipping point for moving her into a care facility came when I returned home one day to my grandma sitting in her own waste because my fucking father thought it was beneath him to help her?

Every emotion tied to those awful walls I had to call home was suffused in shame.

Shame that I’d failed her.

Shame that I was failing her still somehow by needing others to care for her.

“My grandma hasn’t been well,” I said, stabbing the tines of my fork repeatedly into a watermelon.

Ben’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. He put it back down and regarded me thoughtfully. “I assume you would’ve already checked but I gotta ask — is it anything St Elizabeth’s can help with?”

I shook my head. “Not more than they already have. She’s been seeing Dr. Lewis from the DCHP.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Dementia. Fuck.”

“Yep.”

“Well, Frank’s great. She’s in good hands.” Ben dipped his head and searched my face. “Are you ok?”

My melon was basically mush now and I moved onto mutilating a grape. “I’m helping her move into a care facility tomorrow.”

“Which one?”

“Willowbrook.”

“Your grandma’s name if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Yelena Sokolova.”

Ben flipped open his notebook and jotted down something quickly. He did a double take and tapped the page with the end of his pen. “Not Sokolov like yours?”

I shook my head. “Russian surnames are gendered.”

“Gotcha. I’ll see if there’s anything that can help make her transition as easy as possible,” he said, like it was a given that he was part of this too. He shut his notebook with definitive smack. “Now, would you like a distraction so you don’t have to think about it anymore?”

I almost did a double take. “What kind of distraction?”

“A gossip-y, dumpster-fire distraction.”

I wasn’t a saint. “Hell yes.”

Ben glanced behind me at the bustling cafeteria. “Patty!” he called, waving his arm in the air. I looked behind me to see the charge nurse and one of my mentors waltzing over.

“Hello my sweets,” Patty addressed us affectionately. She was probably one shared shift away from heading into hair-ruffling territory.

“Patty, tell Aleks about hm-mmm coming in and finding hm-mmm with hm-mmm in Room 302. Oh and don’t forget to mention how they were—” Ben made some sort of complicated charade that was definitely something inappropriate.

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