Chapter Six: Gloria
Her name was Gloria Nakamura.
She arrived at my hospital room at 5:20 that evening, in a rain-soaked trench coat, carrying a laptop bag and an umbrella that had turned inside out. She was about sixty, tiny, with short gray hair and bright red reading glasses.
“Mrs. Davis,” she said, shaking my hand very gently, so as not to bump the IV. “Dr. Chen told me about your afternoon. I’m so sorry.”
“Are you expensive?” I asked.
She laughed. “Very. But Dr. Chen says that’s not your problem today.”
I looked at Malcolm, who was standing by the window.
“I’m not going to let you…”
“You’re not letting me do anything,” he said. “Gloria is my friend. She owes me a favor from about twenty years ago. I’m calling it in. That’s all.”
Gloria had done elder law in Seattle for thirty years. She’d seen it all, she said. Sons who drained accounts. Daughters who forged signatures. Nephews who moved Grandma into a nursing home and sold her house before the paint dried.
