Read Online Anna in the Afterlife by Merrill Joan Gerber - Free Book Online

Anna’s neck and accused her of having a “love bite.”
    â€œI think it was the Prozac that made me to do it,” she said. “My doctor told me to take it when he couldn’t help my pains, which he thought were all in my head. No one could help me. Doctors, they know nothing.”
    Wrong answer again. “Prozac is supposed to help you,” the psychiatrist said.
    â€œI read it brings on homicide,” she countered. “I blame Prozac.”
    The doctor was out of patience. (When Anna—on the other hand—had been examined by a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, he had dictated a twenty-page paean to her charms, intelligence, and beauty.) Obviously, Gert was not charming this doctor. He was totally disgusted with her and did not conceal it.
    â€œI want to get out of here,” Gert said. “The woman in my room gets up at night, walks over to my bed, and pees on the floor.”
    â€œYou’ll go home when I discharge you, not before, and you’re not ready to go home yet.” Gert looked around as if she might try to escape. At both ends of the hall were locked doors with glass windows in them. No one could go in or out till a series of bells and whistles were heard, and only when a nurse, locked behind glass herself, pushed the button.
    â€œYou’re not very nice,” Gert accused the doctor. “You’re not kind at all to me, after what I’ve been through.”
    â€œThis isn’t a place you come to for ‘nice.’ You’re here because you did a very bad thing. I’m trying to ascertain that you won’t try to do it again. Then, and only then, I’ll let you out of here. Otherwise you’ll stay as long as I think is necessary.”
    â€œMedicare is paying you and you know it,” Gert said. “You think I’m a cash cow, that’s why you won’t let me out.”
    The doctor tucked his papers back in his briefcase, gave Gert a dirty look, signaled the nurse to buzz him out, and left.
    To Anna’s annoyance, her daughters decided to move Gert out of Beverly Hills and closer to where they lived. Not only closer to them, but in the very next building to Anna’s nursing home, a retirement home that was more like a holding pen for dying animals. When they got sick enough, they’d be funneled over to the slaughter house (the place where Anna lived). She could understand the necessity for this—after Gert had ruined the rugs and bed in her room, the Beverly Hills place definitely didn’t want her back to give the other residents any ideas, especially with the scars on her wrists and in the crook of her elbow.
    First Anna’s girls toured the facility. There was the usual: the lounge with a big TV, a crafts room, a dining room, and the individual cells where the prisoners served their time. At least these failing creatures, unlike those in the nursing home, could still walk on their own two feet.
    Anna’s daughters conferred. They agreed that they wanted to take the room for Gert for the convenience of being able to visit Anna and Gert in the same trip. But they still had to tell the truth about Gert’s wrist slashing to the retirement home director. They waited for her in the front office as legions of the ancient creaked and ratcheted by on their walkers and pulled their oxygen machines on wheels after them.
    They talked business: the girls inquired about room rates and services. Then they confessed: “Our aunt recently tried to take her own life.”
    â€œOh, don’t worry about it,” the director said. “They all want to do it. One resident here jumped off the second floor balcony of her apartment.”
    â€œSo that’s not a problem?”
    â€œNot at all. They’re all depressed. It’s the rule, not the exception. So let me know when we can send our truck for your aunt’s things and move them here.”
    What troubled Anna the most was that now the