"You live alone,"
the social worker unfolded a small brochure and held it out for her to see. "If you fall and no one knows, that's a real danger. Best to have one of these hanging around your neck — it won't get in the way. What do you think?"
That was several years ago now.
Mai Mingle still remembered the illustration on the brochure. The product name was blunt and to the point: "Life Alert."
In the picture, a white-haired woman lay on the floor, with two lines of small print beneath her: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"
Her older cousin had shattered her pelvis in her eighties and never got out of bed again. Once a person became bedridden, their days were numbered.
What year had she passed? Mai Mingle couldn't remember anymore.
The legs that had once carried her leaping onto rooftops, running wild and carefree — in the blink of an eye, now she had to be wary of them betraying her just getting out of bed.
The body that had been with her her whole life was slowly becoming a stranger to her. She was like a rusted wheel turning slower and slower with each revolution, powerless to stop it.
"The emergency response system runs twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year," the social worker explained, afraid she might not be able to read the small print. "No matter the emergency, you press it and someone will come — let me see here — oh, they guarantee a response within thirty minutes at most, and there are participating hospitals nearby."
Mai Mingle took the brochure and studied the pictures for a moment.
She had scraped and saved every penny her whole life, but now, money had suddenly lost its weight. Prices were just squiggly symbols on a page.
"I'll take this one then," she said, pointing to the third model. "This one's the prettiest. It looks like a pendant necklace."
The social worker let out a little laugh. "Alright, I'm sure it'll look lovely on you."
Though it was nothing like a real necklace, she wore it as one anyway. She'd worn it that way for years — until the night a burglar walked into her living room to make a phone call, and she pressed the Life Alert for the very first time.
The burglar probably hadn't expected the "pendant" on her chest to be an alarm. The young and the old lived in two worlds that were nearly sealed off from each other. Without any regular need to deal with elderly people, few knew what their daily lives looked like — let alone the things they kept close and relied on.
From the moment she'd sent the burglar off to find a poem… she'd stalled for everything she was worth. More than ten minutes had passed.
Still no one had come, and she was running out of steam.
For some reason, the cold metal tube defied gravity, standing perfectly upright against her chest without anyone holding it. The machine hummed steadily, the sound of the recited poem drifting further and further away, and she sank into wave after wave of dizzy darkness, deeper and deeper.
From somewhere deep within that darkness, fragments rose up — scattered and dreamlike, like hallucinations.
Strange. They say that when a person is dying, they see their whole life flash before their eyes. But what Mai Mingle saw was another version of herself, a tube connected to her chest just the same, walking step by step toward the television, then suddenly lunging forward and crashing into the screen.
She was startled by her own actions in the vision, and heard a dull, wet thud somewhere deep in her chest.
Her eyes half-open and half-closed, hallucination and reality blurred together. In the vision, she slammed herself against the old television in the corner of the room again and again, the screen splintering into spider-web cracks each time.
The hallucination was finally shattered by a sharp shout — a deep, rough voice demanding: "What are you doing? Who are you?"
Mai Mingle jolted, and her eyes eased open a little.
Through her blurred vision, she saw an ink-black tube standing upright on her chest, seeming almost more alive than she was, pressing her heavily into the mattress.
Then, in an instant, it vanished.
The burglar had grabbed the tube and shoved it behind his back. Caught off guard but quick-thinking, he spun around to face the two people who had just burst into the bedroom and turned the question back on them: "Who are you? Why are you barging into my grandmother's house?"
Two people strode in through the doorway, snapping on the overhead light. Night was driven away, and the room blazed white and stark — a bedroom soaked in decay, the smell of medicine, cracks running down the walls, and the steady wheeze of an oxygen machine.
They were both in blue-and-white uniforms. Nurses.
"Your grandmother?"
The male nurse looked at Mai Mingle, then shot a skeptical glance at the burglar. "Her? She's your grandmother?"
"I'm mixed, a couple of generations back — it doesn't show much." The burglar seemed to notice the obvious difference in their complexions and ethnicities, but he recovered quickly. "See, I've got dark hair. Now — who are you two?"
"We're emergency response nurses," the other voice — a woman — explained. "We received an alert signal and came right away, thinking she was in distress. According to our records, she lives alone."
The burglar had fully composed himself by now.
"That's right," he said, giving Mai Mingle's arm a gentle, reassuring pat, then turning to the nurses. "You responded quickly — thank you for coming so fast. But there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm in Blackmoor City on business and I'm staying here with my grandmother while I'm in town. She's getting on in years, and her mind isn't always clear. She must have forgotten I was coming and mistook me for a stranger. That's why she triggered the alarm. She's fine."
The female nurse stepped closer to the bed, peeled back Mai Mingle's eyelids, checked her over, and asked quietly, "Are you alright, dear?"
Mai Mingle opened her mouth, trying to say something, but only the thinnest thread of breath slipped out from between her lips. The nurse had seen this many times before and wasn't surprised that she couldn't speak. She began listening to her heartbeat.
"Would you mind showing me some ID?" the male nurse asked the burglar, still looking a little uncertain.
"Of course," said the burglar. And right in front of the nurses, cool as anything, he kicked the black device with the tube attached to it under Mai Mingle's bed, muttering, "Why is the vacuum hose sitting here of all places… Hang on, let me grab my wallet from the other room. My driver's license is in there."
The bed she was lying on was a medical care bed fitted with four wheels, open underneath — the perfect space to stash something out of sight.
"Oh — the phone," the burglar said, pausing after only a couple of steps and turning back. He flashed a smile at the female nurse, who was still attending to Mai Mingle. "Almost forgot. My grandmother sometimes gets frightened for no reason. I put on some poetry and music for her — it's the only thing that settles her down."
The female nurse's gaze drifted across Mai Mingle to the phone screen, and something in her expression softened slightly.
Mai Mingle thought: a burglar who breaks in and kills the homeowner, then plays poetry for them. Who would ever believe that? It looked far more like something a devoted grandchild would do.
Since she wasn't dead yet, that meant the burglar hadn't managed to take whatever it was he'd been after from inside her, right?
Right. Otherwise, he wouldn't still be here playing the dutiful grandson.
Though if the nurses had arrived a few minutes later, he would have succeeded.
No one knew that death had just been sitting beside her, leaning in close, watching her. She had never come this near to dying before, and this was the first time she had ever experienced a near-death hallucination…
Wait. The television.
Even Mai Mingle herself hadn't seen it coming — the moment she thought of the hallucination, a sudden, inexplicable urge seized her. She wanted to roll herself out of bed and go touch that television.
She had to get there. She had to get there now…
Driven by that relentless, crashing wave of urgency, Mai Mingle was so desperate she nearly cried out.
The black television screen had become the only thing in the world that felt real, heavy and unavoidable in her field of vision, pulling her toward it. The room, the nurses, the burglar — they all seemed paper-thin, as if they might lift off the floor and float away at any moment.
Mai Mingle raised her hand toward the television with all the strength she had left.
"What is it, dear? What do you need?" The female nurse followed the line of her outstretched arm, turned to look, and asked, "Do you want to watch TV?"
The door to the storage room next door opened and then closed again, as though the burglar had genuinely gone in to retrieve something. He came back just as the nurse finished speaking and handed his documents to the male nurse. The male nurse examined them and, when he spoke again, his tone and posture had both relaxed.
Mai Mingle made a small, nasal sound — a no — but kept her hand pointing at the television.
"I'll turn it on for you," the female nurse said, kind-hearted enough not to wait for a proper answer, and she switched the television on.
It was replaying a daytime news commentary program. The host was going on at length about the sudden death of Blackmoor City magnate Westley, recounting his business achievements and philanthropic work.
"No… no." Mai Mingle managed to make herself heard at last, which came as a quiet relief — her voice was back. Her strength was returning.
The burglar gave her a quick, sharp look.
He turned back to the male nurse just as swiftly, picking up where he'd left off. "…My grandmother's getting older. The more her mind fades, the more stubborn she gets. She has no family in Blackmoor City to look after her…"
Such a young face, spouting one lie after another without missing a beat.
Even if she told the nurses this boy was no grandson of hers, it probably wouldn't do much good. A normal burglar wouldn't stick around to negotiate with the people who showed up. From the nurses' perspective, she was far more likely to be the delusional one — a confused old woman with dementia.
Fine. The television was more important right now, and more urgent.
"Help me… help me over there." Mai Mingle pointed at the television and murmured to the female nurse, "Please. I'm asking you."
The burglar glanced at her again, then looked over at the television set.
Before he could say anything, the male nurse pulled his attention away: "When we came in, you were leaning over her with that tube. What were you doing?"
"You don't have to go all the way over there, you know. You can see the TV just fine from here," the female nurse said, sounding a little reluctant.
The burglar was already answering: "Grandmother woke up calling out in the middle of the night. I got up and came to check on her, and found the vacuum hose had fallen onto the bed."
"Please," Mai Mingle gripped the female nurse's hand and looked straight into her brown eyes. "Help me over there. Please. I just… I want to sit over there for a bit."
She was playing the part of a muddled old woman perfectly.
"Alright, alright, I'll help you." The female nurse gave in. "Can you sit up?"
"Yes. Yes, I can."
The burglar shot another glance at Mai Mingle, affecting concern, and stepped in to support her as well — conveniently escaping the male nurse's line of questioning in the process. "Grandma, what do you want to go over there for? Just a quick look, and then you're coming back to sleep, alright?"
Mai Mingle ignored him. He was a perfectly good-looking boy. What a waste, the things he got up to.
With the two of them holding her up, she shuffled over to the television, her dim, ghostly half-reflection floating on the screen — until the image cut to the Westley Family Manor and swallowed it whole.
Now she understood.
So there was a reason for the hallucination after all, Mai Mingle thought. Of course there was.
No wonder she had felt such desperate urgency to come over here. Well. She should have thought of it sooner — at her age, her mind just wasn't what it used to be.
"I'll go grab you a chair," the female nurse said, letting go of Mai Mingle.
That left only the burglar holding her. His grip on her thin, withered arm was light and loose, as though he was afraid of squeezing too hard.
"If everything's alright here, we'll head off then." The male nurse stood in the doorway, addressing the burglar. "Can you help her back to bed on your own in a bit?"
The burglar exhaled with relief. He nodded repeatedly. "Of course, sorry for the trouble — you came all this way for nothing…"
While he was talking, Mai Mingle suddenly pulled her arm free, leaned backward, and let herself fall toward the television screen.
She should have thought of it sooner. The hallucination had been telling her exactly how to save herself.
If she fell against the television right in front of the nurses, they would have no choice but to take her to the hospital — no matter what the burglar claimed to be. And once she was at the hospital, surrounded by people, she would be safe.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the burglar's head snap toward her, but he was a beat too slow. Too late. Mai Mingle heard the dull, heavy crack of her skull hitting the television, and then the room erupted with cries and the thud of rushing footsteps.
The female nurse seemed to call out something from very far away, but Mai Mingle couldn't make out the words —
"Where did she go?"