“Do you have anything you want to say, Uncle Frank?” Felice bent over the old man’s bed, talking in the direction of his head propped on a pillow. The lighting was dim. “Any last words?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Huh?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He can’t hear well,” explained the nurse in attendance. Only a few of Frank’s remaining relatives were there in his bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“ANY LAST WORDS?” shouted Felice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not only was he fading fast, but he also had poor hearing for years. The nurse fumbled in his bedside table for his hearing aids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Damn.” She couldn’t find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What?” Frank still had a few questions left in his final minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘I SAID, DAMN,” explained Cheryl, the nurse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I can’t hear.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“WE’RE TRYING TO LOCATE YOUR HEARING AIDS.” That was Frank’s niece Fredda, who could shout as loudly as Felice, her cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Is that you, Felice?” The old man’s eyesight was going fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Can you get his glasses?” Otto asked the nurse who’d given up on the hearing aids, now searching for Ativan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“YOUR GLASSES, UNCLE FRANK. WE’LL TRY TO GET THEM.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Who’s that?” The old man almost sat up. He had no more sit-ups in him, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“THAT WAS OTTO. HE TOOK A PLANE ALL THE WAY FROM CLEVELAND TO SEE YOU.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Otto?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“YES, OTTO,” chimed in Fredda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“First Fredda? And now Otto?” questioned the dying man who was down to his last few words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“RIGHT. FREDDA, AND OTTO, AND\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uncle Frank sank into his pillow. “Forget about the glasses\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Do you have anything you want to say, Uncle Frank?” Felice bent over the old man’s bed, talking in the direction of his head propped on a pillow. The lighting was dim. “Any last words?” “Huh?” “He can’t hear well,” explained the nurse in attendance. Only a few of Frank’s remaining relatives were there in … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-Wq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3624,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}