A T
By: Matt Suwak
Tags: Flash Fiction, Death, Fiction, Love, Trees

Ricky picked up the phone and swiped in his pass code and looked at the image plastered on the home screen. It was of an acer griseum, known by most as a paperbark maple. Its bark peeled back like sharpened pencil shavings, a warm and rich coppery tone through and through.

Pretty tree, probably his favorite. Long time ago he first saw it at that nursing home off Memphis Pike, the one with the graying walls and the statue of Saint Joseph in the parking lot. It was where the nuns went when they’d done their service to God, a place to retire in something close to comfort.

He loved that tree because it was so different from every other he’d ever seen, a singular and unique specimen that brandished its uniqueness with a prideful stance. At least, that was how Ricky saw it.

Ricky felt his throat close up and he bit on his lower lip to stop the tears from coming. His hands were starting to shake and he pretended it was from age and abuse instead of the trembling heart at the core of his person.

A deep breath, and he entered a simple message. I miss you. I think about you every day, and it hurts so much knowing you’re never going to reply this. I wish you could.

He hit send and trembled, clicked the phone’s display off and put it back in his pocket.

“Cup of coffee,” he said to himself, “Yeah, that’ll be nice.”

Ricky stood up and walked towards the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. Time to get ready for work.

**********

Sixty-two miles away from Ricky’s kitchen was St. Joseph’s Home for Sisters. On the third floor in the room at the end of the hall Sister Emily McConnell laid in her bed on crisp bed sheets that smelled like industrial-grade fabric softener, starched so hard they might break her hip if she sat down hard enough.

She held a rosary in her hands and twiddled over the beads. Long ago she’d given up actually praying the rosary and moved from one bead to the next out of habit more than prayer, feeling each bead worn smooth from decades of repetition that hadn’t gotten her anywhere except an uncomfortable bed in a home waiting for death to come.

She’d had many scares in the last six years and had gone to the hospital at least a dozen times. Every time she felt an earth-shaking fear at the great unknown, that when she crossed the veil she’d feel a tremendous surge of pressure and pain, and that at the end of it there would be no light.

“The ambulance’ll be here soon, Sister,” the voice of the nurse broke Emily from her reverie. She saw it was Caroline, her favorite nurse in the whole damned place.

“You know, you’re my favorite nurse in this whole damned place,” Emily said without a touch of humor.

Caroline snapped her head towards Emily and tried on a shy smile. “Language, sister, virgin ears and all that.”

This made Emily huff a tired chuckle, “Whatever gets to sleep at night.”

And so their game of back-and-forth banter played like it always had. Caroline and Emily got along well. The both were sharp as tacks and didn’t like dancing around decorum and social niceties.

Caroline’s smiled didn’t waver but it didn’t grow; that was the rule.

She went to work packing the Sister’s overnight bag (a change of clothing, her hair brush, a photo with the Lord’s Prayer superimposed over a photo of a handsome Jesus, and the latest mystery novel by J.P. Cummings), and Caroline knew it was an overnight trip.

Sister Emily had gone off to the hospital at least four times in as many months and came back the very next day with the doctor’s reassurance that she’d be fine and dandy if she kept taking her meds and drank a little more water. Caroline was used to this revolving door with Emily.

Emily saw the bag being packed and huffed again, shaking her head. She was sitting upright in bed, hands crossed lazily over her lap. “Don’t need to be packing that thing, you know,” she said while looking out the window. The landscaping company was pulling in and they’d be hard at work mowing lawns and blowing leaves any minute now.

“Oh, this is it, huh?,” Caroline said, “Well, let’s pack it just in case.”

“Whatever gets you to sleep at night.”

Caroline paused while balling up an extra pair of socks (Emily’s feet got cold easily, poor circulation and all that). That was not a part of the game. Sister Emily had broken the rules with that.

Nurse Caroline zipped the back shut and placed it on the comfortable green chair with the green leather lining worn smooth from a million asses making it their own.

She turned to look at Sister Emily, but the Sister’s attention was outside. She watched the landscape crew unloading their equipment.

**********

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Evan barked at Klot. To make sure his point got across, Evan threw a clump of sod at his elderly coworker.

The Cambodian man laughed a broken and skittering chuckle in reply, and lifted his shoulder to block the clump of sod. “Ha ha ha,” he actually said ‘ha ha ha’, “My dick dead. I fuck nothing!”

Evan grinned and shook his head, “I bet you’re wife’s real sad about that. Who gives her the love now?”

Klot shrugged, “My wife? She not give me the honey if my dick work,” he said, “It tiny,” he held up his pinky and wiggled it like a worm, “Like this.”

This got a big laugh out of Evan. He unloaded the backpack blowers for clearing the leaves and grabbed a rake to reach the ones the got caught in the skeletal fingers of the tiny shrubs scattered around the landscape while Klot lit up a cigarette and smoked it.

“I blow,” Klot said to Evan. He fired up the backpack and put it on without waiting to see if it was okay and went to work. Klot was pretty damn good with the blower, and thorough too, but he was an expert at looking busy and running out the clock while smoking cigarettes and pissing in the hidden corners of the landscape where people (probably) wouldn’t see,

Evan shrugged. He couldn’t stop Klot if he wanted to. Evan’s phone buzzed and he took it out and shook his head in exasperation.

Klot looked at him with a question in his eyes, afraid that the boss was calling, but Evan shook his head and yelled, “Spam.” He’d just gotten a new phone and number and was still sifting through the debt collectors and other shit from whoever had the number last.

Klot nodded with relief; he didn’t know what ‘spam’ was, but he knew it wasn’t a word for ‘boss’ or ‘work’ or ‘fired’ so he didn’t really give a shit what it meant.

Life was easy when you were Klot. Every day was spent making a few bucks to pay your bills and have enough left over for some cigarettes and a couple beers at the end of every day. He was sixty-ish (nobody really knows how old Klot is, not even Klot), and he gave up the dream of retirement about thirty years ago. He’d work until he dropped dead, and he was okay with that.

Evan wasn’t like that. He wanted to make every dollar he could right now, today, yesterday, so he could retire when he thirty-five and spend the rest of his time on earth going fishing and working in his woodshop.

His phone buzzed again and reminded him of the message he received. Just another stupid spam, or somebody with the wrong number. He got a lot of those.

With a sigh of frustration he took out a ladder from the rear of the truck and a pair of pruners and went to the acer griseum at the center of the roundabout in the parking lot.

He paused to let an ambulance speed by and park in the emergency loading zone for the home.

**********

“Okay, Sister, easy does it,” the EMTs carefully helped the frail and elderly woman onto the stretcher.

“‘Easy does it’ my ass,” Emily said. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and, with shaking and a rush of dizziness, managed to take two steps towards the stretcher before collapsing to her knees.

The EMTs immediately jumped to action but she held up a hand in defiance, “No, fuck off,” she said.

Caroline’s eyes widened and she felt a shock crash through her system. Sister Emily was free with a few swears, but she’d never dropped the F bomb, at least not in front of Caroline.

The EMTs looked to Caroline with apprehension; Caroline was Emily’s regular caregiver and knew the patient better than the EMTs ever would. Caroline shook her head, “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

Emily managed to get her feet under herself and she stood up, leaning on the bed, “You know plenty, Caroline,” she said. Old age had stolen much from Emily but her ears were sharp as they ever were. “Don’t you cut yourself short.”

Sister Emily made it to the stretcher and said to the EMTs, “Okay, I’m ready now. I made it here but I can’t…” she couldn’t say more than that.

The EMTs moved over and carefully helped the elderly nun onto the stretcher. They made her comfortable and strapped her down gently so she wouldn’t slip and fall.

Caroline was scared and shocked. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

As the EMTs pushed the stretcher through the room, Emily reached a hand out (hard to do under the straps but she managed) and touched Caroline’s elbow.

Caroline looked down at her favorite patient and realized with a crystal clarity that she would never see Sister Emily again.

Emily’s eyes were clear, but her hand trembled where it held Caroline’s elbow.

“I’m sorry for your virgin ears, hearing me swear such an ugly word,” the shade of a smile passed over her withered features. “Don’t cut yourself short, dear,” her voice timbered with the depth of some great precipice. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

The EMTs pushed Sister Emily McConnell outside of her room and towards the elevators.

**********

Evan pruned the tree with one-part confidence, two-parts training, and three-parts Idon’tknowwhatthefuckI’mdoing. Pruning was an act of peace and careful precision for Evan. It was challenging and he had never felt truly comfortable doing it, and it became a task he had to focus entirely on to do well.

He was especially careful about this tree, because it was his favorite tree in the place, and he didn’t want to fuck it up. Something about the way the bark peeled back.

He didn’t have a lick of artistry in his entire being, and he hated reading. But, still, he had the ability to grasp beauty. A deeper meaning hidden beneath the weight of reality. That part of him thought the dozens of tender pieces of bark on the tree peeling back and exposed to the elements meant something.

What it was, he didn’t know.

He turned over his shoulder and saw two EMTs pushing a stretcher towards the ambulance.

Klot was blowing leaves with the blower on full power. It shot leaves, bits of debris, fragments of garbage through the air on a gasoline-powered jet stream of landscape maintenance. He wasn’t exactly blowing the leaves towards the ambulance and the stretcher, but he wasn’t avoiding it either.

“Klot!” Evan yelled, but it was worthless.

The ancient Cambodian man had never worn ear plugs in his entire life, so his hearing was shitty. Add the volume of a backpack leaf blower to the mix and temper it with Klot’s utter inability to truly give a shit about anything, and you had yourself one deaf landscaper.

Evan shook his head in exasperation.

**********

Emily relished the bright sunshine on her pale, withered flesh, and enjoyed the sound of that funny Asian man blowing leaves around the building. The cool air was a shock to her system that instilled a clear awareness to her fading faculties.

She looked to one side and saw him standing there, smoking a cigarette and aimlessly blowing leaves around the property. It made her chuckle but the sound of it was lost to the chaos of a leaf blower in operation.

Emily turned her head and saw that young man pruning her favorite tree. It was an ugly tree, all red and coppery and with far too many little branches shooting every which way. But it was proud to be ugly, practically defiant towards the vanities of beauty and appeal.

As the stretcher jostled into the ambulance she was glad the last thing she’d see was God’s perfect creation of an ugly tree that was somehow the center piece of a parking lot in a Catholic nursing home.

**********

In the front of the ambulance Ricky looked towards the tree at the center of the parking lot and he sighed.

The EMTs were loading Sister McConnell into the back and it gave Ricky a few moments to send another message.

**********

bzzz bzzz bzzz

Evan’s phone vibrated again and he took the phone out and practically threw the thing to the ground.

Some asshole had been texting his phone for at least three months, some guy who had been stood up by the girl of his dreams and was texting what he thought was her number. Poor sucker didn’t realize she ghosted him early on and gave him a random number.

A random number that just happened to be Evan’s.

**********

It’s been 112 days since you went home, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing you. You were the perfect green in an otherwise dead and barren woodland. I don’t think I’ll ever see the color again. I’ll never stop missing you and reaching for you in the night when I’m cold. I’ll still make a full pot of coffee every morning even if half of it goes into the drain by the end of the day, and I’ll never see a sunset the same way again without you by side. I miss you so much, and I love you you I love you I love you. I can’t wait until we meet again.

Ricky wiped a tear from his eye. One of his partners hopped into the passenger seat and got one look at Ricky and knew. The guy was impossibly torn up.

The EMT nodded to Ricky and silently apologized for breaking the stillness of the moment. Poor guy kept texting his dead wife without realizing they recycle phone numbers.

“Good to go,” he said to Ricky.

“Yep,” said Ricky.

He took one last look out the window and saw the young landscaper pruning the tree. Guy was looking at his phone silently. Ricky found some lightness in it; probably talking to some girl he was crushing on. He silently wished him good luck and drove Sister Emily to the hospital.

**********

Evan decided he didn’t need to block these messages or send an angry reply back to whoever had the wrong number. He could keep receiving them for awhile.

**********

Sister Emily died on the way to the hospital. Her last thoughts were how funny it was that the lights embedded in the roof of the ambulance somehow grew brighter and more pleasant all at once as she slipped away.

**********

Caroline finished her shift hours later and walked through the chilly fall air and wondered when that tree at the center of the parking lot would grow its leaves back. She always looked forward to that, every spring.

**********

Ricky went to sleep and reached for his wife and felt a little less pain when he didn’t find her curled up next to him.

**********

Klot went home and he drank a beer, he kissed his wife once and watched the game on TV before falling asleep on the couch again.

**********

The acer griseum leafed out again the following spring after an ugly and intense winter.