Read Cold Summer Nights for Free Online

sick, you're going to have to get on up out of here."
    Rusty gazed at him through glassy eyes. "You didn’t...”
    Nick arched an eyebrow and swallowed the bite of yellow cupcake. “Didn’t what?”
    Rusty shook his head and got up.
    Nick watched him stumble to the front door without looking back. “I thought we were going to play Madden .”
    The door shut behind Rusty and Nick stared at it, slack-jawed.
    “So are we still on for tonight?” he yelled.
     
    The stench of urine and old people was overpowering. Nick nodded at the heavy set nurse sitting behind the large front desk as he walked down the hall to his grandmother’s room. He dreaded this but it was Sunday and he wanted to stop by before they served up her IV drip dinner at five-thirty. It would give him an excuse to leave early, not that she would even know he had been there.
    After her husband died in nineteen eighty-six, his grandma lived alone in that house until suffering a stroke four years ago. One Easter day after church, he, his brother and mom stopped over and his grandma kept calling Nick, Tommy, his uncle’s name. Nick’s mom worried the house would burn down when frying eggs were forgotten on the gas stove and was forced to move her into this worn out nursing home. It was all they could afford and his grandma had been none too happy about it either.
    A few days later, she went into a vegetative state. The last thing Nick ever heard her say was how she just wanted to go home. It broke his heart to see it come to this. All those years raising a family and enjoying a long healthy life, only to end up going out in a blaze of humiliation. He knew she would rather be with his grandpa and couldn’t understand what was making her hang on for so long.
    The white hall seemed to get longer with each step he took. An elderly man in a ragged nightgown approached, a colostomy bag hanging out his left side. He grinned at Nick, revealing holes where teeth had once lived. “You wanna know a secret?” the man whispered as Nick passed by.
    Nick looked away and kept plodding down the wide hallway, coated in years of sterile white paint and desolation.
    “I can turn into a dolphin!” the man yelled after him.
    Nick quickened his pace and the man began making - what he obviously considered to be - dolphin sounds. Although to Nick, it sounded more like squirrel chattering.
    “Take me to the ocean!” the man demanded. “I can prove it!”
    Nick turned into his grandma’s room and stopped just inside the doorway, the sight of his withered grandma making his gut wrench. Just like every time before. Unfortunately, Nick’s mom succumbed to breast cancer two years ago and it had pretty much been left up to him to make the weekly visit. His brother, Matt, always seemed to have swim lessons or soccer practice or another birthday party to whisk Madison off to.
    Nick took a deep breath and forced his legs into action. “Hey grandma,” he said, the smell of urine and feces slapping him even harder in the face as he traipsed closer to her bed.
    He bent over her emaciated body, trying to limit his breathing. “How are you doing?” he asked loudly. Her eyes remained just as closed as her wrinkled mouth. Her usual response to anything he said. He always wondered if she could hear him in there, trapped inside her own failing body, unable to respond in any way. Still alive. Still conscious. He hoped not and brushed stringy, white hair from her sagging face. She needed a haircut. And a bath. He sighed, wishing they could afford better.
    Her lips were sucked into her mouth and wrapped around her gums like a vacuum cleaner was turned on deep down inside her throat. She hadn’t worn her dentures for years and looked twice as old without them. He turned away and began his routine sweep of her things. The few things she had left anyway. It was staggering how much could disappear around here and how quickly. Nothing of real value, but her things just the same. It was hard to