Shelley Galloway - My True Cowboy

He rolled his eyes as he hopped off his chair and walked to throw his napkin in the trash. “I’ve heard that before.”

Holding his tray, Susan followed slowly behind. It was hard to see resignation fill his expression time and again, but no matter how hard she was trying, Susan knew she wasn’t going to make everything with him all right.

Somehow he’d still gotten diabetes.

The adjustment to Texas still wasn’t going all that well, even though she’d promised Hank that things would be better for them real soon. The hospital, while state-of-the-art, was no match to Cincinnati Children’s.

And now that she’d moved so far away from her parents and brother and sister, she had no one to help her with Hank.

After tossing the last of his lunch in the trash can, she led Hank back to his room.

“I wish we weren’t here, Mom,” he said quietly before he walked inside.

“I know.” What she didn’t dare add was that a lot of times, she wished they’d never moved to Texas, too.

Two days later, Susan was back at work and was dividing her time between performance evaluations, hiring teenagers to work as servers in the dining room and listening to way too many complaints about other coworkers.

Now, with just one hour left of her day, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was time to play gin rummy with Rosa Ventura. After a brief knock at her partially open door, she peeked into her room. “Want to play cards today, Mrs. Ventura?”

The older woman, confined to a wheelchair for most of the last three years, looked up from the pile of newspapers by her side. “Who’s playing?”

“Just me.”

She looked Susan over, the way she always did, as if trying to determine if she was a worthy opponent. “All right, I guess. Care to bet?”

“Of course.” Susan shook the Mason jar of pennies she’d just fished out of her locker. “I came prepared.”

“If you can get a table away from that crazy Stan and find us two cups of coffee, I’ll meet you in the main room in five minutes.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said with a smile. She didn’t need to ask who Stan was. The man who’d lost a leg in World War II and his pleasant disposition around 1972 was Rosa’s archenemy at the retirement home. The two disagreed on just about everything, but couldn’t seem to help egging each other on.

Susan had a feeling there was more to their relationship than simple dislike. After all, never were the disagreements about anything too meaningful. Yesterday an argument had erupted about the original seven Crayola colors. Last week it was the order of the first twenty presidents of the United States. That one had gotten so noisy Susan had been called in to mediate … and then had gotten a pounding from both of them when she admitted she’d never memorized all the presidents’ names.

Most staff members were afraid of both Stan and Rosa. Susan agreed each was intimidating in his or her own way. But, well, she’d been through harder things, so she took their behavior in stride.

Susan shook her head as she entered the large community room of the Electra Lodge. She really would have thought at this point in their lives the two of them would have learned that there were far more important things to worry about.

She sure did. Every fifteen minutes, she’d been checking to see if the lab at the hospital had called and left a message. The wait for Hank’s latest test results seemed to be taking forever. His insulin levels were high, so she was going to need to readjust his diet and medication once again.

At home, she was trying to put a positive spin on things. However, the reality was that she was still feeling guilty for Hank even having diabetes in the first place. No matter how many doctors or nurses said it had nothing to do with his lifestyle or diet, Susan was sure her crazy work schedule and single parenting was at fault.

After claiming the back game table, Susan pulled out the deck of cards and set her jar down. She’d just filled two coffee cups when Kay Lawson, her boss, stepped in.

“How are things going today, Susan?”

“Just fine. Mrs. Ventura and I are about to play cards.”

“Uh-oh. I have a feeling you’re about to get soundly beaten. Again. Didn’t I see the two of you playing cards yesterday?”

“Yes. We are having ourselves a rematch.”

Kay grinned as she looked at her notebook. “Already I can’t imagine what we would do without you here. You’ve sure livened things up.”

“I try.” Not wanting her boss to think she hadn’t been doing her real job, too, she said, “I put a report on your desk about the new hires for the dining room.”

“I saw it. Thank you.”

“And I think the nurses on the second floor have figured out their schedules now.”

Kay patted Susan’s shoulder. “I didn’t stop by to check on you. Just to say hello.”

Susan bit her lip. Once again, she was letting her experience with the administrator in Ohio cloud her relationship with Kay.

When her old boss had hired her, she had seemed to have no problem with Susan. However, soon afterward, Susan felt as though she’d somehow landed on the director’s bad side.

She’d begun to get reprimanded for not putting in enough hours, though she already worked more than the forty hours in her contract. Then other minor offenses had been written down.

Finally, Susan had known it was time to move on. She’d been very thankful when the employment recruiter had told her about Kay Lawson and the Electra Lodge. Against her family’s wishes and Hank’s complaints, they’d moved away from the big city and to the small Texas town.

And she’d been right. Things here really were better, work wise. Kay was a dream to work for, polite and dedicated, and appreciative of Susan’s efforts.

It was just that everything else in Electra wasn’t so hot. Hank wasn’t making a lot of friends at school, and was already complaining about after-school day care.

And then there was the hospital. Everything just seemed to move at a slower pace. She was constantly waiting for test results or for nurses to call her back with answers to her questions.

“Well, good luck with the game,” Kay said, bringing Susan back to the present. “Who knows? Maybe someone will want to take Rosa on besides you.”

“I doubt that.” There wasn’t a person in the home who wanted to play cutthroat gin rummy the way she and Rosa Ventura did.

Just as Kay walked away, Susan spied the topic of their conversation at the entrance to the room. “I’ve got us a spot over here,” Susan said brightly. “Let’s get started.”

Rosa wheeled her way to the back table. As soon as they were in whispering distance, she murmured, “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, sure. She was just checking in.”

“You looked so serious. For a moment I was worried that it was about your son.”

“It really was nothing. Hank’s doing okay.”

Rosa rubbed her hands together. “All righty, then. Let’s get started before Stan comes around.”

“Yes, let’s definitely do that.”

As Rosa started dealing, the elderly lady looked Susan up and down. “Are you sure you’re all right? Something about you looks different today.”

“I’m fine.” She picked up her cards. “Let’s just concentrate on our hands, shall we?”

But instead of accepting Susan’s efforts to move them on, the older lady grimaced. “Don’t you start talking to me like I don’t have a brain in my head, Susan Young.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“You better not, you hear me? You’re one of the few people in this place who treats me like I still have my wits about me. A couple of the nurses here talk to me like I’m in kindergarten. Yesterday, at dinner, one of them asked if I needed help cutting my chicken.”