Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Yoo Hoo!

10:09 AM

When Elner woke up from her nap, the room was pitch black and she had no idea what time it was, but she knew she was still in the hospital, because she could hear those beeping sounds and people walking around outside the door. She figured she must be all right, though, because she was not in pain and she could move all her fingers and toes. No broken bones, that was good. She lay there for a few more minutes and wondered where Norma and Macky were. “Oh, well,” she thought. Norma might have had another one of her fainting spells and that had waylaid them getting to the hospital. They would be here pretty soon, she guessed, but in the meantime, she hoped those people in the green smocks had not stuck her in some room and forgotten where she was. “I hope they didn’t lose me.” It would be pretty hard to lose a big fat old woman like herself, but if by any chance they had lost her, she knew Norma would be fit to be tied.

Poor little Norma had inherited her good looks and bad nerves from her mother. Elner had always been a pleasant-looking woman but never a beauty like her youngest sister, Ida. She had never been a nervous or high-strung person either, and pretty much took things as they came, but Ida had been a nervous child growing up and so had Norma. Although Elner loved Norma like her own child, she could be hard to deal with at times. Norma, for example, was a clean freak. Macky used to say that he was scared to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom because by the time he got back, she would have made the bed. He said she must have come out of the womb with a can of Lysol in one hand and a rag in the other. But with all of her little quirks, Norma had a heart of gold. Her biggest problem was that she cared too much about people and wanted to take care of the whole world. If there was anything in town that needed to be done, Norma did it. There wasn’t a single old person that didn’t have a hot meal or a visit from someone once a day, thanks to Norma. So with all of her little faults and her nervous fits, underneath she was one of the most loving people around.

After about another half hour went by, and nobody came to get her, Elner suddenly thought of something. Maybe Norma didn’t even know she was here. Maybe the green-smock people didn’t know who she was or who to contact. That had to be it, or else they would have been there by now, so Elner figured she better get up and go try and get somebody to call Norma to come get her and take her home. She sure did not want to stay overnight. Elner sat up and slowly and carefully got out of bed. “That’s all I need, to slip and break my neck after I survived the first fall.” But after she stood up, she was surprised at how easy it had been, and how light she felt. She figured she must have lost a little weight while she was waiting. “Norma will be glad of that.” Norma was always worried about the fact that Elner was a little on the heavy side, and Norma ran over to her house every day to take her blood pressure. Norma had even cut off Elner’s bacon, to no more than two pieces at breakfast, and none at night. Of course, when she had gone over to Merle and Verbena’s for dinner the other night, and had had liver and bacon, she had not mentioned it. No use to get Norma upset.

Elner was now standing by the bed, but the room was so dark that she could not see a thing and had to feel her way around the room. She headed in the direction of the voices, and located the door, groped around, found the handle, opened it, and walked out into the bright light of the hall. She looked up and down, but she didn’t see a single person anywhere.

She walked down the corridor past a lot of empty rooms. “Yoo hoo!” she called out, but not too loudly because she didn’t want to disturb any sick people trying to sleep. She had wandered all the way down to one end and then down to the other end when she saw the elevator. There wasn’t a soul on this floor, as far as she could tell, so she guessed she’d better go to another one and try to find somebody. She pushed the button, and after a moment the elevator stopped with a jerk and the doors opened. She stepped inside and turned around, but before she could push another button, the doors closed, and up she went.