Part 5 – The Fall
It took three calls and the kindness of a neighbor for me to get to Jim’s building.
I don’t drive anymore, but Mrs. Rivera on the third floor still does, and when I knocked on her door and explained, she grabbed her keys without a second thought.
“This the man who brought you home from the hospital?” she asked as we shuffled to her small car.
“Yes,” I said. “And he has my husband’s name on his arm.”
She raised her eyebrows at that but didn’t ask for the story. Sometimes older women know when there isn’t time for all the details.
Jim’s building was across town, a squat, aging structure with flaking paint and a cracked walkway. The lobby was empty except for a couple of mailboxes hanging crooked and a bulletin board with outdated flyers for community dinners that had come and gone.
“Third floor,” he had said on the phone. “Apartment 307. Door’s unlocked. Dog might bark, but he won’t bite.”
The elevator creaked and complained as it carried us up. On the third floor, the hallway smelled faintly of cooking and cleaning solution. I could hear a television blaring somewhere behind a closed door, the laugh track slightly off from the scene it belonged to.
Apartment 307’s door was ajar, just enough to show a wedge of light.
I pushed it open with my fingertips.
“Jim?” I called. “It’s Evelyn.”
The dog barked once, then appeared around the corner, tail wagging, nails clicking on the worn linoleum. He sniffed my hand, decided I was acceptable, then trotted back toward the living room, glancing over his shoulder as if to make sure I was following.
Jim was on the floor near an old armchair, his back against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him at an awkward angle. A small folding chair lay on its side nearby, the guilty party.
“Well,” he said, attempting a smile, “this is not how I pictured you seeing my place for the first time.”
His face was pale, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. The lines around his eyes were deeper than they had been yesterday.
“What happened?” I asked, moving closer with the careful shuffle of someone who has learned the hard way not to rush.
“Thought I’d be useful and change a lightbulb,” he said. “Forgot that gravity has opinions about seventy-eight-year-old men on chairs. Heard something pop that shouldn’t have. Been sitting here arguing with myself about whether to call an ambulance.”
Mrs. Rivera knelt beside him, her knees cracking audibly. “Can you move your toes?” she asked.
He wiggled them. “Yeah. Just hurts like the devil from the knee down. Don’t think it’s broken, but I’m no doctor.”
“We should call for help,” I said.
His jaw tightened. “I don’t want to be a bother.”
I thought of myself in the waiting room, sitting with my hands folded while the clock moved past common sense. “You are not a bother,” I said firmly. “You are a man on the floor who can’t stand up. Pride doesn’t get a vote.”
I dialed the emergency number with fingers that felt steadier than they had for a long time. I gave the operator the address, the room number, the basic facts. They said they were sending someone “as soon as possible,” which I had learned could mean anything from five minutes to forty.
Those minutes, whatever they were, we filled with small talk that wasn’t really small at all.
“Nice dog,” Mrs. Rivera said, scratching behind his ears.
“Name’s Lucky,” Jim said. “Found him at a shelter when he was the only one not barking. Figured anybody who could keep that calm in that kind of noise would understand me.”
I looked around the apartment. It was clean in the way men’s places sometimes are—no dust you could see, but stacks of papers and a few boxes shoved into corners. Photos on the wall of young men in uniforms, some with their arms thrown around each other, grinning at a camera in a place that did not deserve smiles.
On the kitchen counter lay the eviction notice, weighed down by a salt shaker.
“They send that yesterday?” I asked.
His eyes followed my gaze. “Yeah,” he said. “Happy mail.”
The wail of sirens approached, then cut off as the ambulance pulled up outside.
Two paramedics came in, professional and kind, asking questions about pain and dizziness and medications. They lifted Jim onto a stretcher with practiced care. He tried to joke his way through it, but the lines around his mouth tightened when they moved his leg.
“Are you his family?” one of them asked me, glancing between us as they prepared to wheel him out.
The word hung in the air.
I thought of Mark and the hospital waiting room. I thought of Jim carrying my husband’s name on his arm and my name in his memory because he had chosen not to forget.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m family.”
The paramedic nodded, writing something on a form. “You can ride up front if you’d like to come along,” he said.
Mrs. Rivera squeezed my arm. “Go,” she said. “I’ll lock up here and feed the dog. Bring him back in one piece if you can.”
At the hospital, everything smelled the same as it had the day before. The waiting room, the antiseptic, the quiet rush of people trying not to disturb each other’s bad news.
They took Jim through a set of double doors, leaving me in a chair with a clipboard of my own, this time full of questions about his medical history that I did my best to help answer.
“Does he have any known allergies?” the nurse asked.
“Only to asking for help,” I replied, and she smiled despite herself.
Hours passed in the strange elastic way they do in medical places. Eventually, a doctor with kind eyes and lines of fatigue across his forehead came to talk to me.
“Good news,” he said. “No fracture. Just a bad sprain. He’ll need to stay off it for a few days, keep it elevated, maybe use a cane or walker for a bit. We’d like to keep him overnight for observation, given his age and blood pressure, but barring any surprises he should be fine.”
I felt my shoulders drop several inches. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it with my whole being.
The doctor hesitated. “We’ll need to know who to list as his emergency contact,” he added. “We don’t have anyone in his file.”
“Put my name,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Are you related?”
“I am now,” I said simply.
Later, when they finally let me in to see him, Jim was propped up in a bed, his leg wrapped, a hospital bracelet on his wrist that matched the one I had worn yesterday.
“Well,” he said, “looks like I’m the one with the stylish jewelry today.”
“You scared me,” I told him.
“You came,” he replied. “Most people don’t.”
We sat quietly for a minute, the beeping of the monitor filling in the spaces we didn’t rush to cover with words.
“This looks familiar,” I said, nodding toward the hallway outside. “Only yesterday I was the one in the chair and you were the one pacing.”
He smiled. “Guess we’re even,” he said.
“I told them I was your family,” I confessed.
He didn’t laugh.
Instead, his eyes went a little shiny.
“You sure you want that on your record?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
A nurse poked her head in. “Mr. Walker, we’re going to keep you tonight and see how your numbers look in the morning,” she said. “Mrs… Carter, is it? You’re welcome to stay for a bit, but visiting hours end at eight.”
“I know how that works,” I said. “I’ll stay.”
I sat in the uncomfortable chair beside his bed and watched the sky outside the small window darken from blue to gray to black. Nurses moved in and out, checking machines, adjusting pillows, leaving little plastic cups of pills behind.
At some point, I must have drifted off. I woke with a start to the sound of voices in the hallway.
“…Adult Protective Services,” someone said. “They’re here to follow up on a report.”
My heart stuttered.
Jim looked over at me, his brow furrowing.
A woman in a plain suit appeared at the door, a folder in her hands. She glanced at Jim, then at me, and then at the chart at the foot of the bed.
“Mrs. Carter?” she asked. “I’m from the agency that checks on older adults when someone’s concerned. We need to talk about what happened yesterday at this hospital. And Mr. Walker, we may need your statement too.”
Part 6 – Investigations
The woman from the agency had a calm voice and tired eyes.
She pulled a chair from the corner and sat down near the foot of Jim’s bed, opening her folder with the practiced motions of someone who had done this many times.
“My name is Ms. Doyle,” she said. “I understand this may feel intrusive, but I want you to know I’m here to make sure you’re both safe and your wishes are respected.”
Wishes.
It was the second time in as many days someone had used that word around me as if I still had some.
She turned to me first. “Mrs. Carter, can you tell me in your own words what happened yesterday when you were here?”
I told her about the waiting room. About Mark saying he would move the car. About the hours that followed and the empty space where he should have been. I tried to be fair. I tried not to make excuses that didn’t exist.
Jim listened quietly, his fingers resting on the blanket, the tendons tight.
“And then Mr. Walker came along,” she prompted.
“He was the only one who asked why an old woman was crying alone in a chair,” I said. “He checked with the staff. He told me the truth when it would have been easier to let me believe my son was stuck in traffic. He drove me home when no one else did.”
Ms. Doyle made notes.
“And your son?” she asked. “Has he contacted you since?”
“Yes,” I said. “He says he came back and I was gone. He says there was an emergency at work. He says he’s been looking into a place where I’ll have more help.”
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
I thought of the form with his signature. Of the little box checked where it said “resident agrees,” next to words I had never read.
“I believe he’s overwhelmed,” I said carefully. “I believe he wants his life to be easier. I don’t know if he understands what he’s asking me to give up.”
She nodded, then turned to Jim. “And you, Mr. Walker? How did you come to be involved?”
He shifted under the blankets, wincing as his leg protested. “I was here for some routine tests,” he said. “I saw her sitting there alone for a long time. I’ve seen that before. Too many times. I wasn’t about to add her to that list.”
“You drove her home yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “No funny business. Just an old truck and an older man making sure somebody’s wife got back to her own bed.”
She gave him a small, genuine smile at that. “We appreciate people looking out for each other,” she said. “Sometimes, though, family members see outside help as interference. I won’t ask you to stop being kind, but I do need to know if anyone has threatened you or suggested you stay away.”
“Her son hasn’t said a word to me,” Jim replied. “Hasn’t asked who I am. Hasn’t thanked me. Far as I know, I’m just a name his mother happened to mention.”
Ms. Doyle closed the folder partway, resting her hands on it.
“Here’s what I can tell you,” she said. “We have enough information to be concerned that there may have been neglect in how you were left here, Mrs. Carter. That doesn’t mean we’re marching your son off in handcuffs. It means we’ll be speaking with him about your rights and his responsibilities. It also means someone from our office may check on you from time to time.”
“Check on me how?” I asked.
“Phone calls. Visits. Making sure you have food, medications, that you’re not afraid of the people who are supposed to help you.”
“I’m not afraid of my son,” I said quickly.
I was afraid of being invisible to him.
“That’s good,” she replied. “If that ever changes, you call us. If anyone pressures you to sign anything you don’t understand, you call us. We can’t stop every unkind thing in the world, but we can stand in the way of some of them.”
She turned back to Jim. “And you?”
He gave a little shrug. “I’m fine,” he said.
Her gaze flicked to the eviction notice I’d mentioned earlier, now tucked into his file. “Housing is a safety issue too, Mr. Walker,” she said. “I see here that your building isn’t renewing your lease. Do you have a plan?”
“Working on it,” he said.
“Would you be open to talking with someone at our office who specializes in housing for older adults and veterans?”
He hesitated. “I’ve talked to enough offices in my life,” he said. “Most of them have long lists and short tempers.”
“This one might have some options you haven’t heard of yet,” she said gently. “You don’t have to decide now. Just think about it.”
After she left, the room felt bigger and smaller at the same time.
“Do you think she’ll do anything?” I asked.
“I think she’ll do what she can,” Jim said. “The rest is up to us.”
“Up to us how?”
He looked at me like I’d asked why the sky was blue. “By telling the truth,” he said. “By not pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. By not letting other people make all the decisions just because their legs move faster.”
Later that day, they discharged him with instructions about ice and elevation and a pair of crutches he clearly hated at first sight.
“I can manage at home,” he insisted when the nurse asked if he had anyone to help him.
I spoke up before I could stop myself. “He’s coming home with me,” I said.
Both of them looked at me.
“To your apartment?” Jim asked.
“For a little while,” I said. “Until you can manage the stairs without looking like you’re negotiating a peace treaty. I’ve got a couch. You’ve got a dog. Between the three of us, we can probably keep each other from falling again.”
“Mrs. Carter, that’s a lot to take on,” the nurse said.
“So is being old alone,” I replied.
Jim protested, of course.
He said he didn’t want to impose, that he had his own place, that this was temporary.
“Your own place is becoming someone else’s place in less than a month,” I reminded him. “You might as well practice being somewhere you’re actually wanted.”
We arranged it like a small military operation.
Mrs. Rivera agreed to drive us both home. One of Jim’s neighbors promised to bring Lucky over later with his bed and bowl. The nurse gave us a stack of papers with instructions printed in large, friendly letters that said things like “Rest” and “Avoid standing too long” and “Ask for help.”
When we got to my building, Mrs. Lewis’s eyes nearly popped out of her head at the sight of us—me with my walker, Jim with his crutches, a bundle of hospital discharge papers under my arm.
“What on earth—” she began.
“This is my friend Jim,” I said. “He’s staying for a few days while he gets back on his feet.”
“We have rules about overnight guests,” she said, clutching her clipboard.
“And we have an agency that just told me my wishes matter,” I replied. “My wish is not to let a man who helped me spend the night alone falling out of chairs.”
She looked from me to Jim, to the hospital bracelet still on his wrist, and something softened in her face. “Fill out the temporary guest form,” she said. “And no loud parties.”
“As if we have the energy,” I muttered, and she laughed despite herself.
Inside my apartment, I cleared the stack of magazines off the couch and fussed with pillows until I found the right combination of firm and soft. Jim lowered himself down with a grimace and an exhale.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “An old lady taking in an old soldier like a stray cat.”
“I’ve always liked cats,” I replied. “And I’m tired of being the one people make decisions about. I’d rather be the one making at least one decision for myself.”
He looked around my small living room—the lace curtains, the framed photographs of children and grandchildren, the little vase with one fake flower that had fooled more than one visitor.
“You sure about this?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Besides, I have a feeling the agency will sleep better knowing we’re not both alone in separate buildings waiting for the floor to jump up at us again.”
That night, after Lucky arrived and put his head firmly on Jim’s chest as if staking a claim, I went to my bedroom and opened the drawer of my nightstand.
Inside, under a stack of old birthday cards, lay a folder Mark had dropped off a few weeks back. “Just some insurance stuff,” he’d said. “Sign where I highlighted.”
I hadn’t asked many questions then.
Now, with Ms. Doyle’s words about signing things you don’t understand echoing in my head, I pulled the papers out and flipped through them.
Near the back was a form that looked different from the others.
The words “appointed representative” and “authority to make decisions” swam into focus. My signature sat at the bottom in shaky ink.
I realized, with a cold clarity that made my fingers go numb, that I had already given Mark more control over my life than I had ever intended.
From the couch in the living room, I heard Jim shifting, the creak of springs, the soft murmur he made in his sleep when old memories came to visit. Lucky sighed and resettled.
I sat there at my little desk, the pages spread out in front of me, and understood that if I didn’t start speaking up soon, other people’s choices would become my reality, whether I liked it or not.
