Not Dead Yet! Stories from the Last Stop

By Mark Fletcher

Elsie wants to ride a rollercoaster. Thomas has an embarrassing secret. Frank and Douglas find love. Shirley launches her stand-up career. Millie organises a protest. Alexander wants them to get his name right.
'Not Dead Yet!' is an eclectic collection of fiction about nursing home life for those often forgotten.
Laugh and cry as they run, stumble, fall, get up and live at this last stop.
'Dried fruit gives me the runs
Boiled lollies hurt my gums
Giftshop flowers have no smell
Fruit jellies, well, they’re just hell'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781923065031

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This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2023 © Mark Fletcher

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

These stories are entirely a work of fiction.

No character in these stories is taken from real life.

The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

For Mum,

Lesley Fletcher.

Jill

Tap tap bang, tap tap bang. The drumbeat-like noise from the other side of her closed office door snatches thirty-something Jill’s attention from her computer screen. Silence that followed as quickly as the noise drew her back to the spreadsheet, but a few seconds later, the noise starts again.

Tap tap bang, tap tap bang. This time, it is followed by tap tap tap tap tap tap bang. After a pause, there is a bang and another bang.

Jill leaves the spreadsheet, clips on her Customer Service Manager badge, opens her office door, and almost falls over a barricade of empty walking frames placed in front of her office door and along the accompanying wall.

Looking up and over the frames blocking her doorway, Jill sees a line of ten or so residents bent and leaning into walking frames, a line of residents behind them with walking sticks, a line of residents behind them in wheelchairs, and, on the far wall opposite her doorway, several high-care residents in larger motorised chairs. Other residents are standing nearby, filling the spaces at the back of the small reception area of the aged care facility.

Everyone is looking at Jill.

Jill reflexively shields her face from the brightness of the white clothes the residents are wearing. The brightness is accentuated by the sharp fluorescent light strips throughout the reception area. ‘What’s going on?’

As if Jill’s question was a cue, in unison, the residents use their walking frames, wheelchairs and walking sticks as instruments: tap bang, tap tap bang, tap tap tap tap tap tap bang.

Smiling, Jill is upbeat and nods knowingly. ‘Very funny. Thank you. Very funny. I get it. New kid here.’ She points at herself with both thumbs and fixes a mocking smile on her face. ‘You got me good. First-time manager here.’ As she continues to hold the smile, she points at herself again. No one says anything. Jill breaks the silence. ‘Thank you. Very funny,’ she repeats before turning and taking a step towards her desk.

Jill straightens her form-fitting business dress and repositions her name badge before turning around and stepping back to the doorway where she notices the residents have not moved. She leans on one of the walking frames blocking her door. ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ Jill asks of the crowd. Again, no one responds. She continues to smile. ‘I want … I need to leave my office.’ As an afterthought to legitimise her request, Jill adds, ‘I’ve got work to do.’

‘Do you see us?’ an old woman somewhere near the back of the room calls out.

‘Sorry?’ Jill looks around and over the rows of residents for the source of the voice.

‘Do you see us?’ the voice repeats, a little louder.

‘I can hear you.’ Jill stretches, looking for the source.

‘But do you see us?’

‘Put your hand up, please, so I can see who is speaking.’

The voice calls out again, louder and with slow, specific punctuation. ‘Do. You. See. Us?’

Jill looks over her shoulder into her office as if seeking an answer. She turns back to the group and shakes her head, realising she needs to say something. ‘Of course, of course, I see you. Now, please let me out of my office.’

‘She doesn’t see us, Millie,’ Kyros calls over his shoulder sadly. He is in his eighties and is holding himself up with a walking frame as he stands among the second row of residents facing Jill’s office.

‘I do see you. I just said that I see you.’ Jill leans over the barrier of walkers to get a better look at Kyros. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name. I’ve only been here a few weeks and haven’t had time to put names to faces. But I do see you, and I see the others.’ Jill looks over the top of the group to the far wall. ‘Hello? Is anyone working over at the reception desk? I can’t see from here.’

‘Do you see us?’ Eighty-something Millie calls out again from her wheelchair, which is in the middle of the room.

‘Can we move on from this, please? I have work to do.’ Jill dials a number on her mobile phone. ‘Yes, it’s Jill. Can you please come around to the reception area? Access to my office is blocked … I am blocked in.’ She listens to the response. ‘No, I’m blocked in. Blocked in … The residents … No, nothing is broken. The building is fine. I think they’re pranking me. I am blocked in my office … Now … I want to get out now. This is serious.’ Jill ends the call.

Elsie, who is also in her eighties and is in the same row as Kyros, bent into her walking frame, now speaks up. ‘Yes, Jill, this is serious.’

‘And you are?’ Jill snaps without thinking as she turns to Elsie.

Elsie struggles against her pained and bent body to straighten herself. ‘I am not important.’

Seeing Elsie struggle to stand, Jill sighs and softens her tone. ‘Why do you say that?’

Elsie is alert, and her response is immediate. ‘You say that, Jill.’

Jill starts to think over her four weeks in this new job. ‘When? When have I said any resident here is not important?’

Elsie is calm. ‘You say it through your actions, Jill.’

‘Look, I don’t know what this is or why you are doing it, but I have work to do. Please, all of you, clear the reception area and go back inside. If something is bothering you, you know the process.’

Elsie raises a hand and cuts Jill off. ‘Jill, my name is Elsie. The chap you spoke with before—my friend here—is Kyros. The voice who spoke first … that is Millie, who’s also my friend.’

‘All right. Now that we know each other, maybe you can stop this hazing or pranking or whatever it is and let me out.’

‘It’s not a hazing, Jill,’ Elsie says.

‘I don’t know what this hazing is,’ Kyros says, ‘but I do know a prank, and this is not a prank, Jill.’

Jill raises her voice. ‘Well, whatever your game is, please stop.’

‘Or what, Jill?’ Elsie asks softly.

Jill glares at Elsie. ‘There is no or what.’ She pauses and regroups. ‘I just don’t know what this is. I don’t know what’s going on. I mean … I don’t.’

‘Do you see us now, Jill?’ As eighty-something Millie speaks, those immediately in front of her wheelchair shuffle out of the way as best they can so that she can be seen.

‘Of course, I can see you.’

‘But do you?’

‘Millie … It is Millie, isn’t it? Millie, please help me out here. Tell me what this is all about.’

‘Maybe, first, you can tell me what you see, Jill.’

‘I’m not going to play games, Millie. I have a business to run.’

‘Yes, a business … We get it,’ Millie replies.

‘If you have complaints about the food or the cleaning or the staff, you know the processes. We take your feedback very seriously, I promise.’

Millie smiles. ‘The food is okay … often good. The cleaning is good too, and the staff are excellent. Our complaint, Jill, is about you.’

‘You tell her, Millie,’ a raspy-voiced woman calls out. Several in the group clap.

‘You haven’t seen us, Jill—’

‘What?!’ Jill cuts in.

Several in the crowd repeat Millie’s words. ‘You haven’t seen us, Jill.’

Millie continues, ‘You haven’t seen us as people.’

‘Don’t be silly, of course, you are people.’ Jill’s condescending sing-song tone is met with murmurs of dissent from the group. ‘I might be new at this and new at this job, but I do have a job to do. Now, be dears and let me get on with it.’

Millie ignores Jill’s words. ‘Since you arrived a few weeks ago, you have done the usual new manager thing and made a few changes—some good, some not so good. But you haven’t sought our opinions. If you had, you might have decided not to have a sports day.’

‘Oh! You’re upset about the sports day?’ Jill is surprised but also happy at what could be a simple fix. Her phone rings. ‘I don’t know how they blocked it. No, don’t force it.’ She ends the call and looks back at the group. ‘What’s wrong with the sports day?’

‘The bedpan relay,’ the raspy-voiced woman from the back of the room calls out.

Millie holds her arms up to quell the residents who are going off-script. She reads from a flyer promoting the sports day: ‘The walking frame dash. The wheelchair roll. The walking stick throw. And, yes, the bedpan relay. Every event, Jill, is built around a disability. Every event frames us through what our bodies are able or unable to do.’

‘And it’s ageist,’ Kyros interrupts.

After taking a breath, Millie continues. ‘You didn’t ask us, and you didn’t get to know us. You probably had some KPIs—yes, we understand key performance indicators—for your first one hundred days, and you wanted to tick a box about a new resident event. We are more than what our ageing bodies can’t do.’ Millie sighs and slumps in her wheelchair.

Elsie leans over her walking frame towards Jill. ‘Why can’t we have a poetry slam or a resident concert or some sort of original art exhibition? Those are the things we want.’

Jill is frustrated. ‘The sports event is fun and easy to run. It’ll be over in an hour. Then things can get back to normal.’

Elsie glares at Jill. ‘Exactly! So, you can tick the box, write the report, submit some photos, and write it up in a newsletter to our families. Minimum work for maximum payoff. I used to be an accountant, Jill. I understand return on investment.’

‘We are more than broken dancing ponies. I paint,’ Kyros says with pride, unrolling a painting and lifting it toward Jill.

‘I write songs,’ someone in the middle of the room calls out, holding up sheets of paper.

Others join in one by one. Jill looks at each person as they speak.

‘I write jokes—usually bad jokes,’ the raspy-voiced woman at the rear of the room calls out, and others laugh.

‘I write poems.’

‘I sing.’

‘I crochet.’

‘I write letters.’

‘I knit.’

‘I research my family history.’

‘I write plays.’

‘I record books for blind friends here.’

‘I draw.’

‘I draw cartoons.’

‘I write songs and poems.’

‘I write music.’

‘I play the ukulele.’

‘I write jokes,’ the same raspy-voiced woman from before calls out. People laugh again.

Elsie looks around the room with pride, acknowl­edging those who are lifting their art towards Jill. She nods to Millie.

Jill smiles again. ‘It was meant to be a bit of fun … a simple activity. We can do whatever you want as long as it’s within the budget and parameters.’

‘Parameters?’ Millie calls out.

‘This is a business. There are KPIs, as you noted, and they define the type of activities we can hold. Activity type is one of the measurement points from head office.’

‘So, would a poetry event featuring poems from our own writing group be within