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photo by Judith Raices

Nobody cared that the car was yellow.  Hell, she thought, nobody in this place cares about anything besides their own death.  That’s what hospice is all about, isn’t it?  Everybody’s alive and getting ready to die.  Still there it was sitting at the curb outside the building’s main entrance: a bright  yellow sports car of some expensive kind or another.  Betsy couldn’t see its name or make out the logo through her tired and watery eyes.  Perhaps it was a Jaguar, she opined.  Jaguars are sports cars, aren’t they?  Or maybe one of those German cars.  She didn’t like that idea at all.  Germans had killed her mother’s grandparents–or maybe they were her grandparents–during one of those wars in the last century–which one she could no longer remember–not that it mattered.  Whatever, she drifted only to find herself suddenly smiling.

“What’s so funny, Mrs. W?” Doctor Martins stood at her door.  From her position on the bed his elongated frame appeared to fill the entire space, his legs spread wide like some macho cowboy.

“Nothing,” she began, but quickly reconsidered.  “Yes, something.”  Her face scrunched up catlike and decidedly mischievous.  “I can’t tell you though.  You’ll just label it a symptom and set about analyzing it.”

“No, I won’t.  Try me.”

She smiled broadly this time, her mouth pushing the wrinkles in the lower half of her face to either side; cheeks rising up toward glistening eyes.

“You will too,” she grinned.  “That’s your job, isn’t it?

“I’m not always on the job though.”

“You’ve still got your white coat on and that stethoscope around your neck.  What’s that for: in case I start dying in the middle of our conversation?”

“Mrs. W, take it easy on me.  I was on my way home.  I just wanted to say good night.”

“Is that your little yellow car outside,”  she asked.

“Maybe.  Why do you ask?”

“Just keeping up my end of the conversation.”

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