Ted Jensen was the epitome of cop stereotypes. He was 56 years old, teetering on the edge of “I’m not as young as I once was” and “good and gone”. He got to work early, stayed late, drank lots of black coffee (accompanied by hot doughnuts, of course) and grew a mustache fit to shame any one of Mario’s relatives.
Ted was as normal and boring and lazy as any man could hope to become.
Except for one thing…
Ted wasn’t always able to see ghosts. Hadn’t even realized until recently that there was such a thing. In fact, he was sure that there hadn’t been any ghosts hanging around him until two months ago, when he started seeing strange things. He’d be walking down the sidewalk and all of a sudden the person in front of him would disappear. Or be walking to his car and bump into someone, only to realize his shoulder hadn’t bumped, rather gone straight through the other individual.
It was because of these strange events that Ted stood on the doorstep of the police department, a box full of random desk junk nestled in his arms. He’d talked to his boss a month before about finally retiring. Of course, it had taken his boss close to ten minutes to even remember that there was a Ted Jensen in the police department. Ted was just one of those guys you never remembered and who didn’t get offended at being forgotten.
It wasn’t long after his retirement request that he was officially released, free to do whatever he wanted with the short amount of life span he still had.
He already had a plan, though. It wasn’t the ideal plan, but it was a plan nonetheless.
He’d thought long and hard about the things which he could find no other word for then “ghosts” and had come to the conclusion that these were just figures from his imagination, brought to life in an impossible reality only by his failing old mind.
So Ted had checked himself into a nursing home.
It was a quiet little place, more of a long, wide house with white trim and pastel pink-painted outside. It was the kind of place with flowers everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, perched gracefully on desks and tables and in fragile little vases on the window sills.
The only people behind the front desk were women, three of them very young and one looking as if she were about ready to check into the home herself. They all wore flattering white dresses, and perfect white nurse caps, not the usual stiff outfits popular for nurses of the day, but Ted found he liked them even better.
One of the young women stood and smiled at Ted, who had just pushed through the front door with two bags in his hand, full of the only things he had, such as shirts and pants, and the usual necessities. She kept on smiling, a delicate, but sincere tilt of her lips upward.
“You must be Ted Jensen,” she said in an angels voice, full of kindness and good will.
Ted’s head, which had been hanging in embarrassment until that moment, snapped up and he grinned as wide as he’d ever grinned. For once in his life, he’d not been forgotten.
He nodded and said in a gruff voice that didn’t seem to belong in the picturesque atmosphere, “Yes ma’am, that’s me.”
“Right this way, Ted, we already have a room prepared for your stay.” She smiled once again and gestured for him to follow her down a side hallway.
Ted hesitated for a moment. “Don’t I have to sign somthin’ or other?”
The nurse just shook her head of beautiful golden curls. “All that is needed to be done in order to permit your stay here has already been done.”
They’d stopped at an open white door with a brass knob. The room was full of sunlight and the smell of clean clothes and sheets and yellow roses, the last of which sat in a glass vase on the oak dresser by Ted’s new bed. The walls all had different paintings on them, one a vast field full of beautiful summer flowers, another a dark green, golden-sunlight forest with elegant trees and swaying branches, and another with an ocean, so wide and blue it took Ted’s breath away.
“Do you like it?”
Ted had almost forgotten the nurse was still there. He swallowed twice and cleared his throat before finally turning to her with a dazed smile on his bright face and whispering, “It’s the most amazing thing I ever seen.”
She smiled, genuinely pleased that he was happy.
“Is it okay if I just walk out and grab some things from my car?” Ted asked, pointing back the way they’d come, still in awe of this beautiful place he would be calling home.
The nurse nodded and led the way back, letting him walk outside on his own to grab the bag of special coffee beans he’s left in his back seat.
As he was walking to his car and starting to unload the bag, a man approached him with a half cautious, half suspicious expression on his face. He seemed to have come from the house to the left of the nursing home, a bright blue two-story, with a nice white old-fashioned picket fence.
“Excuse me, sir?” The man asked loud enough for Ted to hear.
Ted looked up, surprised. “What?”
Though the man didn’t seem to know what to do. He was looking at Ted with a weird expression on his face, like he didn’t know what to expect from him.
After a while, the man plucked up an ounce of courage and stated, “You can’t be on that property, it’s private and no one’s allowed to live there.”
Ted looked at the man in astonishment. “Whadya mean I can’t live there, I’m a patient there!”
The man jumped back in surprise, a little bit of fear in his eyes. “Sir, you can’t be,” he whispered, nervous and shaky.
“Well, whadya mean?” Ted replied, angry that this man was threatening to take away something that meant so much to him.
The man gulped and said in one rush of breath, “Because the old nursing home burned down fifty years ago.”
Ted stared at the man, something starting to play in the back of his mind.
He turned slowly, everything blurring, hoping still to see that beautiful building still standing, still welcoming.
It was all old ashes, a huge wooden pile of ruin, no flourishing plants, smiling nurses and the smell of cleanness and home. Just a hollow emptiness where nothing was left, where just a second ago, Ted had walked among the remnant of memories.
Happy Review Day and go Team Tardis!
Points: 1204
Reviews: 128
Donate