The Nursing Home

The Nursing Home (Short Story)

“Everyone ready?” asked Derek, the very polite clean-shaven orderly.

“Yep, I’m good.” David readied his washable dot marker. He was so close; he just needed one more. 

Dustbunny sat next to him, and with a sideways glance, David could see he only needed two.

Everyone else who sat around the table, all members of the Grancrest Nursing Home, nodded or muttered something inaudible in response.

“All right,” Derek said. He swallowed hard, and there was fear in his eyes. The cafeteria was unusually quiet. Even Mr. Smithy sat still in his wheelchair, focused and quiet. Derek began to turn the bingo cage, the little balls inside tumbling over one another.

They rolled down the ramp and stopped, one clicking into the other until all the numbers were there. Derek wiped the bead of sweat from his forehead and reached down for the first one.

“B fifteen,” he said.

There were utterances around the table. Eunice dotted her card with a sick toothless smile. Dustbunny shook his head in disappointment, and Mr. McGregor swore on his third wife. Derek grabbed the next ball.

“G . . . fifty-three.”

“Bingo!” David dotted his card and held it up.

Everyone turned to him, a resounding gasp echoing in the room, and he realized his mistake.

“Bingo?” asked Eunice, the .44-caliber revolver in her hand faster than a menthol. “Did mine old ears deceive me?”

“Because if you said bingo,” Miss Helen mused, “then that means you go home with the fruitcake.”

“Oh no.” David gave everyone a polite smile. “No, don’t worry, I’m not actually a fan of fruitcake. I just came to play the game and . . .”

He trailed off amid another resounding gasp. Even Dustbunny looked at him in shock.

“Doesn’t like the fruitcake?” Miss Helen glanced around, her head bobbing and shaking. She brandished the cleaver she’d been hiding beneath her robe, her eyes manic, each one looking a different direction. “Doesn’t like the fruitcake?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” David let out a nervous laugh. “I’m sure Mr. Derek here would be fine to maybe play another game, and whoever wins that one can win the cake. Sound good?”

“Please no.” Derek wept.

“I don’t think you understand, boy,” Eunice said. The revolver shook in her old frail hands. 

“Them’s not the rules. The rules is there is one game every Tuesday, and whoever wins takes home the fruitcake. But what you young’uns don’t understand is what that fruitcake means ’round here.”

“Whoever wins the fruitcake wins the hearts of the people,” Mr. McGregor explained. “It’s too big to eat by oneself, so we share. Slices of fruitcake are worth their weight in gold. You want to trade outside time with someone else? Two slices. Want extra apple sauce? One slice. Hard drugs? Three, sometimes four slices, depending on what you want.”

“An’ I got debts to pay.” Eunice scowled.

“All right.” David smiled politely. “I admit, I’m a little out of my depth here. Is there a way I—”

“You can’t just take it by force, Eunice,” McGregor said, and there was the sound of him racking a shell into the chamber of his sawed-off shotgun underneath the table.

“I’m not afraid to die!” Sammy yelled as he pulled the pin on his grenade with his dentures. He waved it around, and poor Derek screamed.

David and Dustbunny looked at each other as each of the nursing home residents pulled out some ridiculous weapon.

“Time to go,” David said.

“Yep,” Dustbunny agreed. “Wait, wait, the fruitcake.”

“Yep.” David snatched it off the table. “Not leaving that here.”

They ran.

And that is the story of how the Grancrest Nursing Home banned bingo for two weeks.