While I waited for potential buyers to arrive, I received a phone call that no living human being could be prepared for. Then I sold my car.
The woman finally took a second to breath.
I said “oh… well, maybe -”
“Mr. Larson, that wasn’t the worst of it. I wouldn’t have called if it was just this.”
Oh, the flammable grandma is no cause for alarm? I pondered this, as the bizarre reality continued to unfold.
“Mr. Larson, I went into her bathroom and… and she had covered her walls with her feces.”
For half a second, I thought someone was pulling a joke on me. But there was no lie in this woman’s voice. She was horrified. I could feel the pure disgusting shock in her voice. I didn’t say anything. I had no idea what to say.
“It wasn’t just the walls, it was behind the toilet and inside all the cupboards. There was some kind of design on the mirror. WITH HER POOP MR. LARSON.”
The phone line was silent for too long. Again, I was speechless.
“Mr. Larson, I think you need to call Dana and get Miss Spelman out.”
I replied, “You are right, I’ll call her right away.” It sounded natural, I thought, but at this point I wasn’t thinking. I just replied with words I thought she wanted to hear.
“I’ll call. Are you going back to Miss Spelman’s?”
“Unh uh. No way. That bat is beyond house care and I’m not cleaning that shit up.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up the phone. I sat, thinking about this brutal glimpse I just had with the health care system. There was an old lady, probably on fire, drawing pictures on her walls with a fist full of her own poop. Right now at this second. The lady who called me wasn’t going to deal with it, she just left.
And called ME.
“Oh my god. What am I going to do.”
She didn’t call ME, she called Mr. Larson! Mr. Larson was supposed to deal with this! Who could I call? How could I deal with this? Her teeth were missing, she was walking around with a dozen feral cats, with tea in one hand and her own poop in the other. I did the only thing I could do. I went back outside and sold my Jetta to two German exchange students attending the local college. They paid in cash, and I never thought about Miss Spelmen again.
Sorry.
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