Nurse Bucket (Draft 3)

She glided around the Rose Room like a fish in water. The brown glittering lipstick coincided with her nail polish and her starched nurse’s uniform fit like a straight jacket. There was never a tear in her hoes, or the slightest displacement of curls in her perfectly molded bun. This physical perfection of Nurse Bucket was as tantalizing as the ever-distant opportunity of freedom from the Villas nursing home, my current habitat.

The first day I arrived at the Villas I was greeted and escorted to my room by Nurse Bucket herself. I was overwhelmed by what seemed like an uncanny aura of kindness. A year later I hobbled around on crutches from a fall down the stairs, I began to dislike, even dread her flawless tights her sparkling lipstick. And a year after that not even my wheelchair could veer me wide of Nurse Bucket.

Everywhere I went she was too: always watching my sugar intake, bed time, medicine and eventually even social life. Nurse Bucket seemed to have forgotten the simple need and want of adults controlling their own lives. I was not alone in these thoughts; meals were spent in corners all over the Rose Room whispering over Nurse Bucket’s newest manipulation. Comparisons of life with Nurse Bucket to that of a hospital bed and life support filled our every thought and a minute without her presence was a blessed one.

One October day I woke up feeling surprisingly free. As I slowly made my way to the Rose Room small groups of inmates were gossiping in corners. I went up to some of my acquaintances to find out that Nurse Bucket had been laid off. It seemed at long last that so many reports had been filed against Nurse Bucket she had actually been removed from the Villas. Sometimes redemption is sweet, but now I just felt like a selfish old hag, alone in the Rose Room without a guiding light.