The dribble of apple sauce on his chin bothered Carol Dunning more than she would ever admit. Her husband, Larry Dunning, sat limply in his recliner under an old orange knitted blanket and couldn’t swallow the last of his lunch. The last twenty years were the most stressful of the eighty-eight she had endured and it was all for naught in the end; Larry was going to die and their savings had almost dried up. Perhaps, she had thought, it would have been easier to deal with his sudden death than the slow degeneration he was going through. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so worn down and bitter and he wouldn’t need ‘round-the-clock care just to keep breathing under some false hope that he might recover. Now, he sits in his chair, moved only for bathing by a hospice nurse in the mornings, and connected to three different machines that beep asynchronously to let Carol know the only thing keeping him alive is technology and her stubbornness.
She wiped his chin, kissed his forehead, and stared into his glassy eyes for a moment before swallowing and walking away. It was time for the weekly weeding of her flourishing garden and the thought of doing something else made her feel giddy. With thick white gloves and a new trowel, Carol stepped outside into the blazing California sun and soaked in the blue of the sky for a moment. Gardening was not a new hobby for her, but her previous attempts had failed for various reasons, and now she found an obsession with ensuring she could make something stay alive and thriving. With a deep breath, she went to work pulling weeds and watering plants, moving in a pattern that led to her standing near the fence so she can say good afternoon to Janet Byson jogging by. It was Carol’s favorite part of the day, saying hello to a neighbor, and something she never knew she would need. The Dunnings were a reclusive and childless couple who rarely attended functions and never went to parties. Thankfully, the neighbors seem to hold no grudge against the old, tired couple and left them to their quiet. So, it was certainly a surprise to Janet when Carol began routinely saying hello.
“Janet! Good afternoon!” Carol said, waving her gloved hand and offering a toothy smile. She made sure to keep the interaction as routine as possible and Janet seemed to pick up on this.
“Carol!” Janet said, her long blonde ponytail coming to a rest on her shoulder as she slowed to a stop. Sweat poured into her eye and she wiped it away with her sleeve. “How are the Marigolds coming along?”
Carol’s smile widened as she tilted her head. “Oh, they’re coming along beautifully. Tell Jason I said hello.” With the interaction over with, Carol knelt down and pretended to check the stem of a flower as Janet jogged away. That was all the social energy she had for the day and she relished in the warm feeling it brought. It didn’t take long, though, for her smile to disappear as her thoughts began to darken. Today was the last day of her retirement and tomorrow she would work as a data entry clerk at Rowan & Buck. The pay was decent but much lower than the wages she retired from and it was certainly not an absolute fix to their financial woes, but it felt like a better solution than selling the beautiful house they’d worked so hard to obtain. None of that concerned her more than being forced back to work after twenty years of freedom though, especially with a new job and her aging mind. She spent the next four hours tending her garden before going back inside to make Larry’s dinner.
A knock woke her up, jolting her from a dream she couldn’t remember on a king-sized bed she slept in the middle of. Another knock followed soon after, this time sounding frustrated and heavy. Carol cursed to herself as she looked at the analog clock next to her bed, she had slept in for thirty minutes and the hospice nurse was waiting outside. In a rush, Carol jumped out of bed and threw on her robe, ignoring the crisp chill of the wooden stairs under her bare feet, and threw open the heavy front door. Nurse Julie Bristol was a young woman full of energy and attitude with wide eyes set perfectly on a beautiful face framed by a bob of straight blonde hair. Hands on hips, Julie gave Carol the harshest look she’d ever seen on the young nurse.
“I was about to call the hospital, Carol. You really need to get that key made for me.” Julie said, her voice fast and high-pitched.
Before Carol could respond, Julie pushed past her in a rush, shaking her head. Carol waited at the front door, vaguely staring at her garden as she imagined Julie’s voice yelling out from the living room about Larry’s passing, but only bird chirps and early morning traffic could be heard. Without another thought, Carol went back upstairs and got ready for work.
Despite waking up late, Carol arrived at work too early and she was directed to sit in her new boss’s office until he arrived. Rowan & Buck was a successful business with a big building, security, and a lot of employees, but Carol wasn’t exactly sure what the business really was. When she applied and was interviewed, there was mention of stocks, banking, and real estate, but only in terms of the type of paperwork she would be handling. She had guessed it was insurance for people with large amounts of money. She sat in the same room she was interviewed in, in a plastic chair against the wall below a single motivational poster about goals. Cold and white, the room felt like it was meant for efficiency only, like it was dead. The room’s thin door opened and closed quickly with a click, and her new boss, Aaron Sock, walked to his desk with cellphone in one hand and coffee in the other. Carol was about to say something when he sat down, but he cleared his throat loudly at her first sound and stared at his computer pointedly. Carol gripped her purse tightly and took a shaky breath, wishing she was in her garden again.
“Carol Dunning, right?” Aaron said, still looking at the monitor.
“Yes.”
“You’re working with Tom this morning. I have a bunch of Zoom meetings today and can’t babysit you.”
Carol made several movements with her mouth before finding the words that wouldn’t get her fired. “I don’t know who Tom is, but I’m excited to get started anyway.”
“Right,” Aaron said and then started tapping away on his phone with his thumbs, still never looking at her. After what felt like an eternity, he looked up and gestured to the door. “You can wait in the hall. Zoom meetings, remember?”
Slowly, she stood, her knees creaking, and walked out the door to a hallway that stretched to her left and right. There were no chairs, water fountains, or doors that indicated it was the bathroom, so with nothing to orient herself she leaned against a wall and waited for Tom.
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A few doors opened and young people walked by, but they only briefly smiled at her and didn’t introduce themselves as Tom, so she waited even longer. Finally, a young man with a strange mustache walked up to her holding a large square phone and a bright smile.
“Carol, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
He stuck out his free hand for a shake. “I’m Tom. Aaron assigned me to be your trainer today.”
She took his hand and shook it, surprised by the heat and gentle grip. “Aaron told me. Said he had a whole day of fast meetings.”
Tom laughed, “Is that right?”
Without waiting for her reply, Tom turned and began walking away at a marathon pace and she struggled to keep up. Rounding a few corners and going through two doors, they arrived in a large open-space office with several desks in a large circle surrounding the center. Tom led her to a desk and gestured for her to sit down in front of a monitor with a black screen.
“This is a training computer you’ll be using to get up to speed on how the filing process works here. It comes with all the basic programs like Excel to keep it simple and there’s even a help F.A.Q if you have any questions. Of course, you should text me if you run into any major trouble, but we’ve kept everything as early-2000s as possible so you won’t get lost in the weeds.”
Carol perked up at the last word. “Oh, yes. I know a thing or two about weeds. I have a garden you know.”
Tom laughed. “My wife is totally into vertical farming, but can’t keep her house plants alive. Anyway, my number is on the table there for you, make sure you text.”
“Just one question, Tom, before you go. Where are the filing cabinets? I think a data entry clerk needs something to enter!” This time she laughed.
“Our company is green, actually. We don’t use wasteful paper. No, you’ll receive emails, Docs, and PDFs detailing all the information you’ll need to file. Everything you need to get started is on the desktop. I’ve got my own Zoom meetings today so good luck and remember to text first.” Tom walked away quickly and left her alone.
With a deep breath, Carol scooted the rolling chair closer to the desk and squinted at the icons on the computer. She had used a computer before at the library, mostly as a tool to print papers from the internet, though she had the librarian to guide her through the options. Larry had always told her she should learn more about computers because they run everything now, but Carol had suspected Larry was exaggerating. It wasn’t that Carol didn’t want to learn, she just had a nice paper-based routine set up for bills, banking, and taxes, and a computer didn’t seem necessary. Slowly, she grabbed the pointing device and slid it across the wooden table, moving the white arrow over a green square that said, “EXEL” under it. She clicked on it and it became highlighted in purple but didn’t do anything else. “Oh, right,” Carol said to herself and quickly double-clicked on it, which finally caused a new window to pop up. Suddenly, a whole array of different colored squares and rectangles filled the screen, with several numbers and words scattered about. After a minute or two of analyzing the contents, she could make out the places where she was supposed to put the data and now she just needed to find the data.
She remembered the three symbols on the top right of the screen changed the window somehow, so she click on the X and it closed the entire window. Panicking, she double-clicked on the green square again and sighed in relief when everything looked the same. This time, she tried the dash symbol and the window looked like it closed again, but the symbol stayed lit up on the bottom of the black bar. Now, she navigated to the icon that had the same symbol as the company’s logo and another window popped open with a screen asking for a Log-In. Frowning, she looked around the desk for the credentials, but couldn’t find anything. She sighed, grabbed the sticky note with Tom’s number, and stood up to look for the room’s phone, but didn’t see one. Then she remembered they probably expected her to have a cellphone, another piece of technology she didn’t feel the need to have. If someone wanted to reach the Dunnings, they could call the house or send a letter, any more than that felt intrusive. With no choice, she left the room to find Tom.
Once in the hallway, that looked exactly like the last hallway she waited in, she realized she was lost. After a minute, a young woman with glasses carrying an open laptop walked by and Carol waved her down. “Excuse me, do you know where Tom is?”
The woman furrowed her eyebrows as she looked up. “Which Tom?”
Carol chuckled. “Boss Tom? Trainer Tom? I don’t know his last name.”
The woman closed the laptop and nodded. “Oh, you want Tom Gavin then. Alright, follow me.”
Relieved to have a guide, Carol followed the fast-walking woman around twists and turns she would never be able to memorize until they reached a door that looked like any other door in the building, only it had a nameplate that said, “Tom Gavin” on it.
“Here you go.” The woman said and walked away with her laptop opened again.
Another deep breath and Carol knocked on the door. A few seconds passed and she couldn’t hear anything inside. Just before she turned away, the door opened a crack and Tom stuck his head out.
“What?!” He said.
Taken aback by his sudden attitude, Carol fumbled her words. “I need. I need the credentials for the company log-in for the data.”
“I told you to text me and that I have a Zoom meeting, you can’t interrupt like this.”
“I just thought that if I were to get started-”
“You don’t need to login into anything. Just read the F.A.Q, it’s real simple. If you can’t text me, just wait in the room until I’m done and I’ll guide you through it.”
The door clicked shut and Carol felt flush with anger and shame at feeling helpless. Tears welled up in her eyes and she turned around to find herself completely alone and lost again. Through her tears, she looked at the end of the hallway and saw a glowing green “EXIT” sign. Sighing and wiping away the tears, she followed the exit signs and quit the job on her first day. The drive home was an hour of reflection and resignation as her plans for the last few years of Larry’s life, and her’s, played out in her head. They had spent so much time getting the perfect house in California with space for a garden and away from the bustle, but now it was time to let all that go. With no children or heirs of any kind to what little fortune they had left, Carol realized the best thing to do was to complete her retirement with the few hundred thousand selling the house would bring. The world had moved on without her and it would take longer than she had to catch back up. Larry would understand if he knew, she hoped.
Arriving home, she thanked Julie for her service and sent her home for the day with the intention of canceling hospice care in general. She sat in front of her sleeping husband and held his cold heavy hand. “I’m going to sell the house, Larry. You and me are going to live in a small and cheap apartment until the end, okay?” Larry’s snores filled the otherwise silent room and Carol started crying. Standing up, she patted Larry on the hand and walked out to her garden to take in the fruits of her labor one more time. Shaking her head at a few weeds she missed, she grabbed her white gloves and new trowel and got back to work.