One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Short Story

I hope you enjoy my short story. It was published in the Crossing Borders Anthology by Down & Out Books in March 2020.




She was already dead.
To most, that fact wouldn’t be remarkable. Angela Willis was an elderly-before-her-time woman in the advanced stages of lung cancer, activated by a secret smoking habit that even her deceased husband had never known about.
But I knew that her death had happened too early.
Because I was supposed to kill her.

*****

My day began like any other. I traveled from hand to hand, blown through the air by a cough, then a sneeze, in a convoluted route of public buses, eighteen-wheeled behemoths, and inside a particularly fruitful family minivan with stickers on the back window, each with a child’s name, the window just begging for an attack by a serial killer. It would have to settle for me. If I could feel pity, I’d have reserved some for the mother of the soon-to-be coughing, sneezing and whining family.
Some would imagine that I was a simple virus, but they’d be dangerously wrong. I am the superhero of illness. A demi-god of influenza. A first cousin to Death.
Not that he showed up at family reunions or anything.
Cincinnati had been suffocatingly hot, but spring had decided to stay in Winslow, Ohio past its check out date. The people of the town seemed to be enjoying the weather. They certainly talked about it enough during my tour of the town’s highlights – the 7-11 store and Target. I jumped ship from my mom transport at the grocery store.
I used my extra sensory perception to find my next ride – just kidding. I spotted the Udall Hospice Care Center employee badge clipped to the scrubs pocket on a customer behind me in the checkout line and waited on the keypad, a cesspool of bacteria and lesser viruses. Udall was my destination, and “Idalia Young,” according to her badge was going to get me there.
Idalia looked exactly like her name. Wide-eyed and fresh as a daisy. I lurked deep within the pad to avoid the elderly man she let in front of her with only one item.
“Good morning, Nancy,” she said to the check-out lady in a perky tone that seemed to burst with the joy of living.
Even an ancient cynic like me felt a stirring inside, like it might actually be a good day.
“Good morning, Idalia,” the older woman replied. “Off to work?”
“Oh yes. Another day, another dollar.” Idalia gave a little laugh.
The lack of originality was disappointing but her enthusiasm was admirable.
Nancy didn’t even bother looking in Idalia’s brown bag from the deli to confirm its contents. “The usual?”
“Yep,” Idalia said, as if that was just fine with her. “Same old, same old.” She turned to punch in her telephone number on the keypad. Just as I was about to leap aboard my express shuttle, a stray sunbeam shone through the edge of the curtain shielding the customers, causing her brown hair to glow in a halo and lighting the gold flecks in her eyes.
I stopped still, entranced. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t had feelings this strong since my massacre of 1918. I’d experienced what I believe humans feel on a roller coaster – the glee of my power had taken hold of me until absolute devastation had reigned. I’d kept myself in check, relatively, since then.
“Ham and cheese sandwich and large coffee.” Nancy clicked away. “Four ninety-five.”
Damn. I’d forgotten to jump. I scurried to the edge of the keypad, not wanting to miss my ride. I also didn’t want to miss out on the experience of the delightful young lady.
“Here you go,” Idalia said, handing over exact change instead of sliding her credit card.
It was like she knew what I was doing.
“Thanks so much,” the clerk said. “You have a nice day at work, okay?”
“Hope so,” Idalia said.
No! She moved past me, too far away to attempt something drastic. I didn’t understand the depths of my disappointment. What was wrong with me? I’d just have to wait for another potential lift.
“Don’t forget your sandwich,” Nancy said.
Idalia shook her head. “Silly me.” She turned back and I lurched onto her sleeve as she grabbed the bag.
I held on tight and felt something entirely unfamiliar.
Happiness. Just being in the presence of such a cheerful, innocent person. The feeling was both foreign and recognizable. To a human, it would be the nostalgia of a long lost memory, brought to life with a photograph.
I moved onto her arm, and the scent of her lemon and lavender soap filled my senses. Yes, I have senses. Not like humans, but I know lemon when I smell it.
Then I sensed something else. Alcohol residue. Idalia was fighting off a hangover.
And still so chipper. What an angel.
And then I went deeper. Was that an elevated level of leucocytes and nitrites? Ah, the beginnings of a bladder infection.
Alcohol plus a UTI? Maybe Idalia wasn’t so innocent. Even better. Complex heroines are much more captivating.
Soon we were in an ancient Honda with a clattering catalytic converter – not quite a death rattle – and on our way. All too soon, she’d pulled into the parking lot behind the hospice and it was time to do my job. From the outside, the center looked charming. A quaint, vaguely Victorian house, with rocking chairs on the wrap-around porch.
Before Idalia exited the car, she surprised me once again. She bowed her head, clasped her hands together and said, “God Almighty. I know in your infinite wisdom that your plans for my patients are just. Please help me to ease their pain and to make their journey towards you happy and joyful. Amen.”
Someone like Idalia would be idealistic enough to believe in an omnipotent power. I couldn’t help but believe that any god worth his salt would surely be busy curing Ebola (a rather nasty fellow) rather than deciding when a nobody in small town Ohio should die.
Idalia’s phone dinged outside the Employee Only entrance and she pulled it out of her pocket. A text from Roger read, Last night was awesome!
Her heart started to race and she smiled. Then she blew out a breath. “Play it cool,” she whispered to herself, and I felt her heartbeat slow. Nice control. She typed out Had a great time!
along with a bunch of heart emojis. Her finger hovered over the phone and then she deleted all the hearts and the exclamation point before hitting Send. She turned off the sound and put it back in her pocket.
This girl knew how to play the game.
You wouldn’t think I’d be a romantic but I am. A hopeless romantic. I’ve been known to hold off on my duty to see the outcome of an exchanged glance, a lingering touch, or a shuddering kiss.
I also love me some villains. Ooh, the chill of a jealous scowl, the attack of a vicious smile, or the calculation of a devious plan.
The endless ability of humans to cheat, steal, murder – to dehumanize – their fellow humans never ceases to fascinate me.
I’m also a bit of a bird watcher.
Inside the hospice looked just as charming as the outside, but the Fabreeze-esque attempts to mask the scent of approaching death proved ineffectual. Flowers (fake) in plastic vases dotted the living room. The rose pattern on the sofa hid stains of patients’ failing bladders and loosened bowels but could do nothing about the filth interred inside the cushions – never quite drying excrement that released its scent whenever an unsuspecting first-time guest made the unfortunate choice to sit down, never to make that mistake again.
Idalia stopped in the doorway of the employee lounge and greeted a tired woman clocking out, with a cheerful “Good morning!” She took her own time card out of the slot.
The woman said, “Good night,” with a smile, and left.
The lounge was a small room painted gray of all things, with a flickering fluorescent light, four chairs scavenged from the Salvation Army, and a plastic table typically used to sell counterfeit purses on street corners. A microwave sat on a tiny counter beside a deep utility sink, next to a small refrigerator.
A middle-aged man with “Harold” on his name tag gave Idalia a too loud, “Yo!” sounding like the very Jersey Shore part of New Jersey. He watched her bend over to put her lunch in the refrigerator, surreptitiously pulling at his crotch. A woman wearing a “Mabel” name tag came into the room and glared at him. He looked guilty enough for me to realize they had a relationship, if not a marriage, between them.
Mabel tried and failed to quell her expression of resentment of Idalia, most likely due to the girl’s youth and what Mabel assumed was a glowing future that didn’t involve bedpans. “Quick turnaround for you.” She may have been trying to be friendly but it came out sarcastically, as if she couldn’t help herself. “Didn’t you just work until midnight?”
“I don’t mind,” Idalia said.
Mabel left without a word. Idalia washed her hands at the sink and put on her latex gloves. She smiled at the woman at the “Nurse Station” and paged through standing folders marked with employee names. Inside was her list of patients, with Angela Willis at the bottom.
My assignment.
I knew I had to fulfill my duty, but I already felt a loss from having to move on from Idalia. She walked down to the end of the hall, right into Angela’s room first.
Wait! So soon?
“Good morning,” Idalia said in a sing-song voice until she got a good look at her patient.
Angela was already dead. How was this possible? She was supposed to die of me.
Idalia recognized the obvious right away, slapping the emergency button as she cried, “Oh no!” Her heart began pounding.
Mabel came running from the next room, as fast as her large size could bring her.
If I hadn’t been so astonished myself – after all, Angela was my assignment – I might have paid more attention to their reactions. My plan had been to travel down one of Angela’s many tubes, leak into her blood stream, and whirl to her lungs where my presence would be revealed. The lungs would ineffectively fight back, the resulting inflammation stopping the work of her bronchi. The coup de grȃce would be a massive fluid build-up that would make breathing impossible. Death would have been mercifully swift at that point.
Instead, she was already gone. This hadn’t occurred to me in decades.
The inexplicable mystery intrigued me. I certainly could have taken the credit and moved on. But it had been so long since my boredom had been so effectively dislodged that I couldn’t help myself.
I ran along the bed rail and jumped to Angela’s hand. I scanned her as best I could, given that none of her functions were functioning, and sensed that something was off. I centered my chakras and used my psychic abilities to – I’m kidding. I’ve been in so many human bodies that I can tell a lot about a person by taking a dip into their skin and bloodstream. I could even translate the chemical building blocks of emotions.
That’s me. A viral tricorder.
Poor Angela’s bloodstream had already turned into a swamp mess of coagulation, with an overload of toxins from chemotherapy, and most interesting, an obvious overdose of insulin.
This woman had been killed. Was it gross negligence or deliberate?
If I could figure out who had administered the insulin, I could solve my little mystery and be on my way.
I followed the drip line to the IV clamp and tried to figure out who was the last to touch it. Unfortunately, the residue of too many hands clung to it, evidence that this place was a petri dish of reused gloves and other unfollowed health precautions.
From that viewpoint I took stock of the room. Fresh flowers stood on a short counter against the wall, with a standard notecard saying, “Get Well Soon, Your loving son, John,” perched on a plastic stand. A teddy bear sat beside it, all but announcing “Nanny Cam” to the world.
Whoa. The camera was turned toward the side of the room, where it could record only the wall.
I was already thinking that the most obvious suspects were employees of the hospice but this solidified it. I tried to cast aside the unlikely idea that Idalia was capable of murder, but in the interests of being thorough, I grabbed onto her skin for a short scan. Nothing but dismay and a strong desire to pee.
I moved to Mabel.
Whew. Mabel needed a shower. She oozed regret and anger, and perhaps guilt. Emotion isn’t an exact science.
“I’ll let Wally know.” Mabel tried to infuse sadness into her voice, but only sounded worried. “She’ll want to notify the judge.”
Judge?
I rode along as Mabel detoured to the employee lounge where Harold still sat, even though his employment card was punched in, eating a tuna fish sandwich from the kitchen.
“She’s dead,” Mabel said accusingly.
“Who?”
“Angela Willis!”
“Already?” He jumped up, alarmed.
“Yes!”
“Did you-?”
“Sh!” She stuck her head out the door to make sure no one could hear.
My eyebrows rose, metaphorically at least. How intriguing.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
“It wasn’t me,” he said.
“Goddammit,” she said. “You go tell him right now it was you.”
His face actually turned white. “But what if-?” Who was he so afraid of?
“What if nuthin.” She grabbed his arm and shoved him out the door. “I’ll tell Wally you’re sick and going home.”
“I don’t have any sick time,” he protested.
“You tell him you done it and get the money and you won’t need no sick time.”
Much as my heart broke over the poor grammar from these pitiful examples of English language users, I listened with rapt attention.
Who was “he?” And what money was she talking about?
Before I could leap onto Harold, he was out the door. I’m embarrassed to admit that I even tried to jump and missed completely, landing in an undignified face plant on the scarred plastic chair.
I scrabbled back onto Mabel whose scent had become even more unpleasant with the addition of fear.
She hustled down the hallway, through the utilitarian kitchen humid with the result of boiling potatoes and onions, and knocked on the door of what had once been a storage room. Cigarette smoke leaked from around the door, in spite of the “Udall Hospice Care Center is a Smoke-free Environment” signs.
A rail-thin, sixty-something woman opened the door, waving her hand around at the smoke. This must be Wally.
“Angela Willis has passed,” Mabel told her. “I thought you’d want to tell her family.”
Wally’s eyes widened. “Shit.”
Mabel became defensive. “Well, she’s been close to the end for ages,” she said. “They can’t be surprised.”
Wally tugged at the bottom of her jacket, a vintage Dior that probably fit the era of most of her patients. “I’ll take care of the notification.” She slammed the door.
Mabel leaned a hand on the wall, taking a deep breath, and I ran down her arm, crawled down the door jam and entered the tiny office.
Wally slid into her desk chair and pulled a cell phone out of her purse. Since an iPhone with a neon pink cover sat prominently on her desk, I suspected that the one in her hand was a burner phone. I moved as fast as I could along the wall and hopped onto her desk.
She dialed a number by heart and waited for someone to answer.
I scooted up her arm to her earlobe.
Someone answered the phone, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s done,” she said, and hung up.
Ooh. I was riveted.
Then she picked up the pink cell, garishly decorated with crystals, what people call “bling” these days, and dialed a number listed under the name, “Wence at morgue.” How odd.
“This is Wence,” he answered.
I giggled inside.
“Patient number 476,” Wally said. “Protocol 1.”
“Will do,” he said, a little too cheerfully for someone who was just told that someone had died.
Wally hung up, swiped through the contacts to “Asshole,” and hit the phone icon to dial.
“Asshole” answered with an impatient, “Yes.”
“Mr. Summersby?” she said. “I wanted to let you know the unfortunate news that Angela Willis passed away early this morning. Would you like to handle the notification of her son or would you like me to do it?”
There was silence on the other end, as if he was evaluating a variety of scenarios.
After a moment, she asked, “Mr. Summersby?”
“You may call,” he said, and hung up. None of society’s niceties for either one of these two.
Wally let out a breath that was more relief than annoyance, pulled a file folder from a desk drawer and opened it. Then she used the office phone to dial the number beside “Next of kin.”
John D. Willis, JD. The loving son. This must be the judge that Mabel mentioned.
“Ms. Wally Long for Judge Willis,” she told the woman who answered. She waited for a moment. “Mr. Willis, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
The judge accepted the news stoically. “Thank you for letting me know.”
I suddenly wished I could travel through the phone, like a cyber virus, to see what he did next.
But then Wally picked up a lethal looking letter opener, stood up and locked her door. I was right where I needed to be.
She opened her file cabinet, stood on her tiptoes and pushed the file folders toward the front. Then she jimmied open a barely perceptible trap door at the back with the letter opener, pulling out what looked like an old-fashioned accounting ledger.
She stuck it in her oversized burgundy bag and rushed out the back door of the hospice. I had a birds-eye view on her shoulder as she got into her ancient Kia. Her smoking-induced asthmatic breathing became little moaning heaves as she threw the car into reverse and turned the wheel. She zoomed out of the employee parking lot. “Too soon, too soon, too soon,” she muttered over and over in a curious mixture of prayer and hopeless certainty that all was lost.
She forced a merge onto the two lane road that backed up to the hospice center and I watched with rapt attention as she darted into the other lane and wrenched the car back, narrowly avoiding an oncoming car that wasn’t backing down. She drove like a NASCAR driver without any of the finesse.
Within minutes, she’d driven into a parking garage, all the way to the bottom floor. She grabbed her bag and got out, brushing by a shiny black SUV and almost dislodging me. I landed in an even more unpleasant position on her knee, gainfully clinging to her support hose. She yanked on her skirt and it covered me so I couldn’t see anything but the ground.
Wally walked into the bowels of a dim stairwell that reeked of urine. Then she gave a short cry and fell to the ground and I heard someone run away. It took me ages to slide out between her limp skin and the damp cement. Her attacker was long gone and he’d taken her bag. What was in it?
Wally moaned and a few minutes later, a middle-aged woman looked over the railing and gasped. Within minutes of calling 911, an ambulance appeared. I hitched a ride to the hospital.

****

After a whirlwind of activity in the ER, Wally was settled in a curtained cubicle, asleep. Mabel sat in the plastic chair beside her, seeming not quite sure why she was there.
A detective walked into the room, took one look at the unconscious Wally, and zeroed in on Mabel. He was in his fifties and had a lot of muscle under a small beer belly, like the flab was simply camouflage.
He introduced himself to Mabel – Detective Duke Bailey – and asked her the usual questions: name, relationship to the patient, what she knew about the assault.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mabel said. “She’s a manager at a hospice center. She takes care of people.” Sweat formed on her upper lip.
The detective’s eyes glanced at the sweat. His expression didn’t change but I could tell his interest in Mabel skyrocketed. “Anyone have a grudge against her?”
Mabel answered with a too emphatic, “No,” and then added weakly, “Not that I know of.”
“Really?” He sounded mildly skeptical. “She’s never had an employee who didn’t like her for no good reason other than she’s the boss?”
“No.” Her eyes slid away.
He waited.
She didn’t rise to the bait.
Detective Bailey gave a heavy sigh, trying The Disappointment Approach. “We have to get in front of this, before someone else is hurt. Or killed. And I think you can help.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m going to interview every single employee Ms. Wally has or had in the last, say, five years. And if any of them tell me that you knew of someone with a problem with her, then I’m going to bring you to the station and charge you with obstruction of justice. Do you know what that is?”
Ooh. Bad Cop. I hopped onto the sleeve of his sports coat and headed up to his face, wanting to see what he saw.
She met his eyes, and even the detective could smell her perspiration from across the room. “Maybe Malcolm Salem?”
The detective wrote the name in his notebook. “What’s his beef?”
She seemed almost grateful to give him somewhere to go with his inquiries. “Wally fired him a month ago. They had a big blowout in front of some of the staff.”
“Who?”
“Louise Cardinal, the night nurse,” she said. “And Idalia Young.”
I felt a quiver at her name.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
“Not that I can think of,” she said. “I’m just in shock about this and not thinking clearly.”
He raised his eyebrows, which were impressively bushy, but let her get away with the evasion.
“Is it okay if I go?” she asked. “I should probably see if they need me at Udall.”
“Yes,” he said. “Do not discuss this with any of the other employees.”
Did he really think anyone follows an order like that?
Which of these humans should I follow? As much as I’d love to see Idalia again, the best source of information was the detective.
After Mabel scurried off, Detective Duke took one look at Wally as if disgusted she was unconscious and not helping his investigation. He stepped into the hall and placed a call on his cell. “Hey. Anything going on today? This attack can’t be random.”
“Nothing juicy,” the man on the other end said. “Just an old lady with cancer.”
Hmm. Was that my old lady with cancer?
“Okay.” He seemed about to hang up.
No! How could I get him to ask about Angela? I moved to his neck and dove into a hair follicle, forcing it to rise. Its neighbors joined in like a bunch of lemmings. Then a visible chill ran down the detective’s neck.
“Wait,” he said. “Tell me about that old lady.”
“She was a patient at the Udall Hospice Center, so nothing suspicious. Wence is taking the body straight to the crematorium. Not sure what the rush is,” he said.
I furiously went to work again, causing another chill. “You call off that cremation,” Duke said. “I got a feeling about this. I want a full autopsy.”

****

The next day, I was reunited with Idalia. I’d had a lot of boring time to daydream about her, while Detective Duke interviewed a slew of suspects. Poor Malcolm got the worst treatment, but had a rock solid alibi of being on security cameras at a bordello, to say it politely.
The detective had visited Judge John Willis, but while the not-so-grief-stricken son noted that he had many enemies, he couldn’t imagine how hurrying his mother’s impending death along a few days faster helped anyone. I’d shuffled through a few papers on the judge’s desk and found nothing of interest, except an apparent tobacco chewing habit. Disgusting.
The preliminary autopsy report noted the elevated levels of insulin, and the detective returned to Udall, wanting to know who had administered it. He’d viewed the nanny cam video and saw that two days before Angela died, Idalia had been cleaning and had replaced the bear in a different spot, facing the wall.
“Ms. Young,” my buddy Duke said. “Are you familiar with nanny cams?”
They met in the employee break room. It took me forever to reach her hand, across a sea of mottled plastic. She was perfectly calm, her heartbeat and nervous system not reacting at all to his questions. Definitely innocent. On the other hand, Harold couldn’t help but listen at the door, his heart pounding out of his chest and his body odor pooling along the floor and creeping in like a fetid fog. I couldn’t trigger the detective’s “intuition” without pointing to Idalia.
“Of course,” she said. “But I’ve never seen one in person.”
He held up the smiling bear in question. “Not even this one?”
She put her finger to her chin. The artificiality of it gave me pause and I could almost see the detective’s detecting antenna rise. “That does look familiar.”
She answered the rest of his questions calmly. No, she didn’t know Ms. Willis’s son was a judge. No, she had no idea why someone would want to hurt her. No, she would never do such a thing herself. Me, the ultimate lie detector test, detected nothing to indicate she was lying.
Whew!
I phased out, enjoying her innocence and her peculiar scent of lavender and vanilla, today mixed in with antibiotics to combat the infection. Then I sensed something deep underneath her surface calm. I dipped in and in a manner of speaking lifted my finger to the wind of her deepest emotions.
Anger. Burning hot, raging anger.
Interesting.
The detective finished, warning Idalia not to leave town, like a sheriff from an old movie. As soon as she got outside the hospice, she whipped her phone out of her pocket and I saw what she was upset about. Roger had stopped answering her texts. He hadn’t responded to a whole page of them.
She got in her car, hit the phone icon and hit redial. The “Roger Office” phone number had a twenty-two beside it. She’d called him at work twenty-two times? A woman answered with a long name of the law firm.
Law firm?
Then the nice lady told my poor Idalia that Roger no longer worked at the company.
What trickery was this?
Idalia, ever polite, thanked the woman and hung up. Then she pounded the steering wheel with the heel of her hands over and over. Finally, breathless, she stopped. She shook out her hands and started the car.
She drove calmly toward Cincinnati, pulling off the highway when office buildings started popping up. She parked outside a four story building and waited. Her eyes stayed on the front door.
A young man came out of the building and she gasped. This must be Roger. He was not at all what I expected, certainly not the insanely handsome suitor this gorgeous creature deserved. He was slight of frame and stature, bespectacled, with short brown hair trimmed meticulously above his tiny ears.
She was after Roger in a flash, catching him in the parking lot before he reached his car.
“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” Idalia demanded, her normally delightful tones now an objectionable screech.
Roger put up his hands as if avoiding a slap. “I told you we have to lay low.” He looked around wildly. “We can’t be seen together, especially here.”
She moved in close, pointing her finger close to his face. “You’re dumping me? After what you made me do?”
What? I had to admit that she looked positively murderous.
Roger’s eyes widened.
“Don’t even think about getting rid of me.” Her voice had dropped an octave.
“You got plenty of money to do it.” His voice shook.
Such an amateur.
“I did it because I loved you,” she said. “You slept with me. You used me!”
“I didn’t.” He stuttered. Clearly he did and regretted only that she was confronting him.
My soul, such as it is, filled with abject disappointment. My darling was clearly the murderer of Angela Willis, even it if was at the behest of her lover. Whatever was I to do?
Idalia stalked back to her car. Her pulse went back to normal. I dove deep and could find no hint of remorse or guilt.
My crush was a stone cold killer.
****

It took me several days to clean up the mess. Detective Duke had a sudden sneezing fit, drawing his attention to a news article highlighting a lawsuit being brought by Roger’s law firm. He checked his files and made the connection that Roger was Idalia’s boyfriend.
The detective brought Roger in for questioning and he folded like a cheap suit, implicating Idalia and his law partner who wanted to ensure that this particular lawsuit would be heard by a more sympathetic judge. Not fully trusting Roger’s efforts, he’d also hired Mabel, Harold and Wally to do the same thing. He was right not to trust Roger – Idalia had jumped the gun and killed Angela a few days too early. By the time they filed the lawsuit, Judge Willis was back at work.
When Idalia heard that Roger was arrested, she emptied her bank account and hopped a bus to Los Angeles, eluding her own arrest.
Unfortunately for her, I’m not known for my forgiveness and came along for the ride.
Soon enough, I’d exact my own form of justice.

END