It’s raining. It’s always raining when I drive to the nursing home. 

The gutters in this town are full of pine needles, cigarette butts, Diet Coke cans, and sometimes shoes. When it doesn’t rain, townies float the river with Coors and sunburns. Everything knows how to float. 

In the corner of the lobby, a woman sits in a wheelchair hunched over a baby doll. She is cooing to it and stroking its plastic head lovingly. 

Other patients are slowly scooting themselves down the hallways using their socked-feet to move them along. Three nurses stand huddled at their station. One nurse is one folding stained white rags. The other two are whispering loudly about co-workers and patient medication. 

The receptionist strolls by me and I smile. She looks down at my sweatpants. They have USC, University of Southern California, written on them.

She points her red-nailed finger at my thighs.

“Jeans tomorrow,” she says disapprovingly, “and stop lying to yourself.”

I am standing just inside the locked door. You need a code to open it.

It is my first day back at the nursing home. I wasted all but one of my sick days to drive my little sister to college. 

After we carried all of the huge cardboard boxes into her new room she cried and asked me to stay. The way she looked at me haunted me the entire drive back.

The Christmas decorations, little paper reindeer above the doorways, are still up, even though Christmas was four days ago. We couldn’t have a tree because the patients might hurt themselves if they yanked on it or broke ornaments.

“Wow, you look terrible! Couldn’t handle the big city?” Roger’s teasing voice causes me to jump. 

His thinning ginger hair and janitor uniform come into the corner of my vision. I whirl around.

“I’ve only been gone a week,” I reply. "And you still look like Yosemite Sam.” 

His red hair and mustache have always reminded me of the cartoon character. At least, I like to tell him that.

He sticks out his tongue.

Roger says he hated me when we first met two years ago. But I know that our friendship thrives now, here at the nursing home.

He stops mopping and walks over to whisper in my ear. “You know you look good, right?” 

I roll my eyes and walk down the dingy, almost-dirty, beige hallway towards my boss’s office. 

I’m listening to the sounds of the nursing home. It always seemed to have a heartbeat, but now the bum-bum bum-bum echoes.

Maybe it is just the rolling wheels of a hospital bed or the slamming of a cabinet door in the kitchen. Whatever it is, it haunts me.

I watch my shoes as I walk. They squeak against Roger’s waxed floor.

I wonder if the nurses are right to stare at Roger and me. They gossip about the friendship growing between the balding janitor and the 19-year-old activity director. Sometimes, even I wonder what his intentions are.

As I walk, I glance into every room. Two years, and I still haven’t been able to train myself not to be curious.

In one room, a woman coughs violently into a Styrofoam cup. A nurse stands over her, rubbing her back. She slams the door when she sees me staring. The nurses think I am nosy.