Bark

You know, I'd seen her around. 

She looked different in her teal-colored scrubs. Imagine all of the blood and piss those things have seen since she put them on this morning. Ratty hair tied up in a mediocre ponytail and her zits as pink as ever. She'd graduated a few years before me. But looking at her now, I felt bile churn in my stomach, wafting this taste of three-day-old roadkill onto my tongue. I smacked my lips together quietly. Where was the f*****g vending machine?

I left the room, listening to the heels of my feet clack against my cheap foam flip flops. My breasts jostled against the inside of my slept-in sweatshirt, bra-less. I felt air tickle the peach fuzz at the tops of my thighs below the legs of my pajama shorts. Didn't even have to inhale to know that the air was doused in cleaning fluid and muscle tranquilizers and catheter contents. After inserting money into the vending machine and letting some off-brand pretzels drop into the collecting bin, I plucked them out and went back to the room.

The damn CNA was still there. Perhaps I wouldn't have hated her, if I wasn't so jealous of her. There she was, elevating the hospice bed with a foot pedal, RN guiding her the whole way, as if the electric bed was some goddamn space craft or something. My dead grandma was on top, and I swear to god, if she jostled that thing even the slightest bit, I'd bark at her like a f*****g dog. 

I didn't want the zit-in-training touching her. And hell, once the bed was finally lowered, she started wiping my dead grandma's a*s. I vaguely recall her warbling little voice telling me that I should leave, but I didn't move, because my white knuckles were rapping against the bare curve of my upper thigh. God, I was so jealous. I was jealous of this piss-soaked CNA because she was wiping the s**t off of my grandma's a*s and I wanted to do it, I wanted to touch her some more before the funeral home got there. 

Those b******s were late, I wondered if they were late to be kind or just because they were busy. How many other people had died that morning? I didn't really care. I didn't care about anything, really. I was just pretending not to be bitter about not getting to clean out my grandma's stinking bedpan.

God, being at that hospice center for two weeks made me tired. Where would I go now? 

The funeral home got there, and I drove home.