The Old Man and the Cell

Yea, I know the title would make Hemingway cringe. ;)

The Old Man and the Cell

Legion

22AUG10

 

It would have been the silliest grin on someone's face if it weren't for the fact that the old man was now dead. He also held an old cell phone up to his right ear. His bony arm locked at the elbow to keep it in place. The orderly gently pulled the device out of the gnarled fingers of the frail, elderly gentleman and handed it to the ward nurse who took it with reverance and a deep fascination.

"He seldom let this thing out of his grasp and only a few he would let hold or touch it you know" the nurse commented.

The orderly covered the old man with the white sheet of the bed and turned to the nurse. "Why was that? Seems like an old piece of junk. I've never even seen one like that before."

The nurse, turning the phone over and over in her hand while examining it, replied, "It is an old piece. I think it's about thirty years old or older. He's had it since he came here over ten years ago. I remember him having it the day he came. Never let it out of his sight. He'd only let you touch it if he trusted you or if you were one of his grandkids that would come every day to see him."

She glanced back up at the orderly who was rather new to the nursing home. He'd been working here maybe a month and had hardly known the now deceased. He didn't know the story very well. Probably had heard bits and pieces from others but she doubted that he knew it all.

"He had once told me, shortly after his arrival, that it belonged to his wife many years ago. He had kept it after she died. Said it was the only thing of hers that contained a recording of her voice. You know, the one where if she missed your call it would say something along the lines of 'This is so and so. I'm unable to take your call right now so please leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.' or something like that."

The orderly knodded, "I can understand that. But it is pretty old. Did it still work after all these years?"

"Well,' the nurse stared down at the covered corpse, 'that was the oddest thing. You would think it would have given up the ghost, so to speak, a long time ago, but it seemed to keep working after all this time." She slid the phone into the front pocket of her scrubs making a mental note of the odd thing she had just witnessed concerning the contraption while examing it and to make sure that she gave it to his grandchildren when they arrived after being notified of his passing. It was something very odd indeed pertaining to what she had just seen.

"Why did he have it to his ear like that after we found him?" the orderly questioned.

She smiled, "Probably listening to his wife's voice."

"Very interesting. You think that recording was still audible?"

Her smile broadened a bit more, but had a hint of bittersweetness about it. "No, I doubt he was actually listening to the recording. He told me he had only listened to that once shortly after her death."

The orderly's left eyebrow raised a bit, "But you said he was probably listening to her voice."

"Yes,' now her smile became more of a smirk, 'probably was. But not the recording." She paused and waved the orderly over to a couple of chairs at the small table that came with the room. "We've got a few minutes. Sit and I'll tell you his story if you're curious." She walked over to one of the chairs and sat down while pointing to the other for him to follow suit.

The orderly looked at the covered figure on the bed, turned away and followed her to the table where he too sat.

The nurse looked down at her hands as she folded them neatly together upon the table. She took a deep breath and then looked up into the eyes of her assistant. The story began.

"Several years ago, he finally felt comfortable enough with me to tell me his story and the tale of the phone. He told me that he met the woman of his dreams back in his twenties and, of course, they had fallen in love and eventually married. It was a match 'made in heaven' as he put it. They also birthed and raised two children. A boy and a girl. Had a wonderful three bedroom house on two acres with a garden and a small workshop out back for storage and making and repairing whatever was needed. He had a good job and so did she. The kids did well in school and made many friends who would hang out at their place after school and on weekends so it always seemed that they were raising more children than their own two. 'It was all good', he had told me."

She paused for a moment in the story, cleared her throat and then proceeded.

"But things have a way of turning on you. And that is exactly what had happened to them. About the time the kids entered junior high, his wife had gone to work one day like all the other days leading up to that particular 'one day'. She was going through her normal routine when the problem occurred. She lifted something the wrong way that particular moment and that action blew out several discs in her lower back. The pain was tremendous. She could not move at all. An ambulance was called as well as her husband. The ambulance arrived first and took her to the hospital. He followed shortly after receiving directions from her place of employment as to where she had been taken. She was admitted and for the next several hours all kinds of tests were run to determine the cause of the problem and the course of action to take to relieve her pain. Surgery was the course decided upon and a time was set. The next morning would be that time, but until then the doctors had kept her drugged to alleviate the pain she was enduring.

So, the next morning, the surgery was completed. Unfortunately, it was not the 'cure' that they had expected. It gave her some small relief, but the pain persisted. It was bad enough that she began taking pain killers and was eventually labeled legally disabled. Their marraige took on a different meaning than what it had started out as, but they still loved one another and he did everything he could to keep it from falling apart. Took care of her. The children. Got a second job on occassion when it became necessary to help with the bills. Literally anything he could do, he did. 'It was hard' he told me, but he wouldn't give up no matter what.

She tried as well, but her pain and the drugs took her away from everything and everyone often. She missed much of their children growing into adults. Vaguely remembered her parents passing on. Had a hard time recollecting things from her past as well as the present. Even the birth of her grandchildren seemed a cloudy haze. Her life became nothing more than a progression of pain and pills. She had discovered that it is very hard to see through the mist of morphine and agony. Most of all though, she missed him. And he missed her and who she used to be as well.

One day though, something even more dreadful happened. A few days before that day, he had taken her to one of her usual doctor's appointments. The doctor decided to try a new medication to help with her pain. What the doctor failed to notice though was that this new medicine did not go well with one of her older medications that he did not tell her to stop taking along with a slew of other pills she downed daily. Several days later, he had gone off to work after kissing her slumbering form good-bye like he'd done since the time after their betrothal. Apparently, like she did every day, she had gotten up sometime later that morning and taken her daily dose of pharmaceuticals. The contradictive drugs finally did their damage that day. He tried calling her several times during his work day with no response. He thought nothing of this since this happened quite frequently if she was having a bad day. She would usually sleep through the whole day when that happened. He would often come home and find her still in bed. On days like that, he would gently wake her to see how bad it was and if she would like some supper. If it was too bad, she would often go back to sleep. If it wasn't, he would then go into the kitchen and cook something for them to eat that evening. This day should have been no different.

He came home after work and noticed, as usual, all the lights were off in the house. Thinking she was having one of those days, he proceeded into the bedroom. She lay there silently. He moved toward her. After stepping to her side of the bed, he leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. She was cold. A little too cold. The fan wasn't on and the air-conditioning wasn't running at that moment either. She also didn't stir like she usually did. He quickly reached over and turned the light on her night stand to the on position.

The image he saw in the light literally put him on the floor. His knees buckled and he sat straight down on the carpet beside the bed. He began to cry. It was a cry that could have cleared the Stygian Stables with its intensity.

He said that his son, who had stopped by about an hour later to borrow some tools to work on his car, found him still sitting on the carpet crying. It was the son who had alerted the authorities after getting his dad off the floor and putting the old man in the nearby chair that he usually sat in to put on his shoes in the morning before going to work.

Several days later, after all was said and done, it was determined by the coroner that the cause of death had been a bad interaction with the pills she was taking. She died shortly after taking the concoction early that morning.

After the funeral, everyone offered their condolences and eventually found their way back to their lives, but he, of course, was heart broken which eventually found comfort in its miserable companion...loneliness.

He found himself lying in their bed which he'd not slept in for several days after her death wishing things had turned out differently for them. Not their love for one another, of course, but the path that life had sent them down without warning. He was also longing to hear her voice just one more time.

One more time.

Then the thought occurred to him. Her cell phone was still lying upon the night stand by her side of the bed hooked up to its charger.

He quickly rolled over and snagged it off the stand pulling the charging cord out unintentionally. He turned it on and immediately began thumbing through her applications until he found her voice mail settings. Once there, he set the phone to play her pre-recorded message. Her voice came over the small speaker of the phone. His heart lept out of his chest and tears of joy and sorrow wept from his eyes as he listened to the message. To her voice.

After the recording ended, even though he wasn't actually calling her phone, he began to leave his own message out loud in hopes that somehow, somewhere she could hear him. He told me that it was a very long message about how much he loved her and missed her and all the things he wished could have been and how much the time that they did have with one another had been cherished even if it had been through the hardship that they had experienced together. He cried through the whole thing. Eventually, he fell asleep with the phone lying on his chest."

"Very touching" the orderly interjected gazing back at the old man's form for a moment.

"Yes, but the story gets stranger." The nurse found herself staring at the body as well.

"He said he slept the whole night in a very peaceful sleep. Probably the most peaceful he'd had since she had gotten hurt. The next day, while he was going through some of her things trying to decided what to keep and what to give to the kids if they wanted it or to donate to a local charity, the strangest thing ever to happen to him happened. Her phone, which he had left laying on the bed, rang.

He froze, dropping the shirt of hers he'd been pulling out of her closet to set aside for donation.

The phone rang again.

He ran and leapt onto the bed grasping at the phone before it could ring again.

'Who could be calling this number now?' he thought aloud.

He hit the answer button and put the phone up to his ear. Before he could say 'hello', his heart felt as if it had stopped. A voice began speaking on the other end of the line.

It was her voice.

He was thrilled and frightened at the same time, but he stood rooted to the spot and listened.

He never did tell me the contents of that conversation. Said it was too personal. I didn't prod him on it either. He kept that phone after that and told me that everyday it would ring and each time he would answer it. Each time it would be her and he would listen and sometimes speak while she listened. Usually, he said, it was to tell her how much he loved and missed her as well as what was going on in his life and the kids and the grandkids.

He had told her how he had gotten a big settlement from the doctor's insurance and didn't have to work anymore because of it. He had decided to stay home and baby-sit the grandchildren while the kids were working which helped them out by saving on day care fees. He found he was very good at it. As time passed they grew up and, although he wasn't needed as much, especially to baby-sit, they still came around to see their grandpaw and hang out with him.

He had told her through the years how their two children had passed on as well. Their daughter had died in a tragic car accident in her late forties and their son had gone over due to a failed bout with cancer later on. Of course, he said she already knew that because they were together now which made him happy through the sadness of it all.

He relayed to her how he had gotten too old to take care of himself so he was checking into a retirement home even though his grandchildren objected and all wanted him to come live with them. He didn't want to burden anyone, he told them, so he ended up coming here. They came to see him daily though and he was all right with that.

Everyday, he would talk to her. No matter what.

The phone would ring, or so he would say, even though no one else could hear it and he would pick it up and talk for what seemed like hours most of the time. He always seemed happiest afterwards and became very anxious waiting for the next call.

Occasionally he would let me or someone else look at the phone and he would even hold it up to our ear so we could hear his wife say hello to us. We never did hear anything, but we played along like we did. It was sweet and sad at the same time, but who were any of us to take that away from him. So we kept up the delusion with him as well as for him.

But now he's gone. From the look of that grin on his face, I'd have to say that he is with her right now enjoying the best time of their lives if you want to call it that."

The nurse stopped talking which drew the orderly's attention back toward her and away from the dead man in the bed.

He asked, "So, do you think he really was talking to her or not?"

She gazed into the young man's eyes and replied, "I have no idea for sure, but there is one thing that I do find odd."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the cell phone.

"As you know, our phones today don't need a cable to charge them since they basically run on a cold fusion battery and can run indefinetely or so I'm told."

"Yes" the orderly looked at the cell that she had removed from her pocket and now rested upon the table in front of him face up.

"These older phones from back in the day needed a cable to connect them to some source of energy such as a wall socket or an old USB port on a computer to charge. Without it, they would lose that charge very rapidly depending on usage."

"Yea, so."

She grinned at the orderly, "Well, that is what is odd. From the time that he came in to this home, he did not have a charger. Never had one nor asked for one even if we could have found one that would fit this ancient piece of hardware. Providing it worked on top of that. Without a charger, this thing would have been useless years ago. Should have been useless years ago. But it always kept a full charge. Always. How is that possible?"

The young orderly seemed to become a bit nervous at the sight of the phone now.

"When you took it from his hand and gave it to me,' she continued, 'I saw the light on the display go out. Like the old man, the phone is completely dead now."

Author's Note

Something I wrote for an anthology on KPN.

Reviews

[MomzillaNC]

Very moving tale… one that's easy to identify with. Well done.

NOTES: I recommend a larger font size. A larger font size will also make the lines shorter and easier to follow. I also recommend you double space after paragraph breaks. As my old art teacher used to tell us: "White space is your friend."

[Skai Rain]

This is a lovely story and an honor to read. One suggestion... I would ask you give a little spacing between lines and paragraphs so it does not seem so overwhelming to read. However, it was a great work and keep it up!

[Jennie Baron]

I see "moving" and "touching" are the most common words used to describe this story and they are apt. It's heartwarming, real, and makes the reader believe in the power of love to overcome even death. Outstanding!

[NoelHC]

A lovely tale, well laid out and narrated. Good work.
I did notice the odd typo to be cleaned up, and suggest a line break between paragraphs would make it easier for the reader.
Well done.

[Mila]

Very sweet story! I had to read it a few times to let it sink it. It was very touching and you are good at conveying feeling to the point where we, as readers, can really see and FEEL what is going on!
Well done with this one! :)

-Mila

[BLBrown]

Wow, this is so moving. It's mystical without being silly, and so touching. I could feel the phone in my hand. You know my story, so you can probably figure out why this has touched me so. Really descriptive writing...I was there.

"but he, of course, was heart broken which eventually found comfort in its miserable companion...loneliness." Pairing the two like that, it is brillant.

And the twist at the end is wonderful! Great job!