I had to get Willie tested for dementia.
And believe me, you have not lived until you’ve told Willie you’ve discussed her memory problems with everyone but her, including her doctor, who now wants to see her pronto.
And that you’re going with her to the doctor.
If she hated me before, now she truly despises me.
But through dealing with the scam, my brother and I realized we each had pieces of a puzzle. A puzzle whose picture showed Willie might be in trouble.
So I took Willie to the doctor. And Willie – who couldn’t remember the title or plot of last night’s movie, thought that my brother was her Lyft driver, and had been passing around codeine cough syrup like bad advice – aced the test. I mean, didn’t even break a sweat.
But then turned around and told her doctor that she never gave the scammer her banking login. Which she did. And we talked about. Like, four thousand times.
But Willie passed the test, so no dementia. She’s mentally intact.
It’s just at my expense.
I hustled Willie home because Indy had a virtual appointment on the heels of Willie’s actual appointment.
Indy has sleep apnea, and therefore a sleep apnea doctor. He has a CPAP machine, which he’s supposed to wear while he sleeps.
Indy does not wear the CPAP machine while he sleeps.
He wore it twice, but it was noisy, and blew air everywhere, and was uncomfortable. So Indy bailed.
Now, the sleep apnea doctor gets readouts from Indy’s sleep apnea machine. So she knew Indy wasn’t doing as he’d been told.
You know, a tattle-tale CPAP machine for Indy and Willie’s lives may not be such a bad thing. If someone could point me in the direction of such a thing, I’ll put it to good use.
So Indy and I did his telehealth appointment, with his doctor showing him how to put his CPAP mask on properly. It was his inadequate placement that caused the noise and blowing air.
I had to pull out Indy’s CPAP mask so the doctor could walk us through the correct placement. He keeps his mask and the attached hoses in a shoebox. The shoebox sits next to Indy’s side of the bed, on a weird black wicker thing that’s almost as tall as me.
In addition to his mask and hoses, Indy’s shoebox also held his old CPAP mask and hoses, three black extension cords, and a large metal file.
I asked Indy what the file was for. He just took it from me and shoved it in his back pocket.
I think he’s planning on breaking someone out of jail.
We spent ten minutes practicing the proper placement of the mask. Certain Indy should be far more successful when using his CPAP machine during sleep, the doctor ended the appointment, urging us to call with any problems.
I guess she doesn’t read anything I write because she’d know that Indy always has problems.
Even though the appointment was done, my work wasn’t. I hauled the shoebox back to the black wicker thing. I needed to hook it to the sleep apnea machine.
Which appeared to be missing.
It wasn’t on the black wicker thing, or Indy’s dresser, or Willie’s bureau. I looked under the bed, but I should have known the sleep apnea machine wouldn’t be there because of course Indy keeps his drill under the bed.
“Why does he have a DRILL under the bed?” Willie asked. “We have maintenance people!”
I swallowed the joke battering my teeth, pleading to be heard. Drill. Bed. It practically created itself.
Willie went to search the closet while I questioned Indy. I had run out of all the places I thought Indy would stow a sleep apnea machine. It was time to defer to the expert.
“It’s in the trunk of Mom’s car,” Indy shrugged.
Why would Indy’s sleep apnea machine be in the trunk of Willie’s car? I could understand putting Willie in the trunk of Willie’s car. But a sleep apnea machine? Something that’s actually helpful?
I sighed, put on my coat, grabbed Willie’s keys, and headed for her car.
The apnea machine was, indeed, in the trunk of the car. So was a fishing net, a garden stake, a broom, and my aunt and uncle’s ashes.
Yes. My aunt and uncle’s ashes. Willie has been driving around with dead people in her trunk.
What’s even more bizarre is that, while my uncle has only been dead a year, my aunt never saw this millennium. Her death even pre-dates Willie’s car. And, Willie didn’t like my aunt and uncle. Nor did Indy. So, why?
Willie, aggrieved, explained the dead people in her trunk.
My aunt was cremated when she died. Her ashes lived with her husband – my uncle. When he died last year, he was cremated too. The funeral home mixed his ashes with my aunt’s, which I guess is romantic of you didn’t know them.
I knew them. It’s not romantic.
The funeral home, thinking Willie was distraught at my uncle’s death, saved some of his ashes – and my aunt’s – for Willie to hold onto.
Now Willie doesn’t know what to do with the ashes of two dead people who caused her more grief with their lives than they ever did with their deaths.
So she keeps them in the trunk of her car.
I can say with all confidence I am not fixing that problem. Willie is on her own.
I plugged the hoses into Indy’s sleep apnea machine, setting everything up on the black wicker thing. I wanted to get rid of the old mask, hoses, and shoebox. I know Indy. He’ll tinker with the new equipment. He’ll tinker with the old equipment. Then he’ll pull out his duct tape and meld the whole works together into one unusable structure that I’ll have to fix.
Indy wouldn’t let me get rid of the shoebox. Not even the old hose and mask.
The next battle was plugging in the sleep apnea machine. It definitely had an outlet for a cord, but no cord.
And I was really hoping the cord wasn’t in the trunk of Willie’s car. I didn’t visit my aunt and uncle when they were alive. I really didn’t need to visit them twice in one day now that they’re dead.
I recalled the black cords in the shoebox, but none of them fit into the apnea machine’s outlet.
Time to think like Indy again.
There’s an outlet next to Indy’s dresser. I had used it to plug in the charger for his Apple Watch. Indy never met an outlet he couldn’t plug seventeen things into. When he and Willie still lived in their house, Willie used to decorate the front windows each Christmas with her Dickens Village houses. She could get about nine houses on one window.
Each house held a tiny light. So nine cords dangled from the window, plugged into one outlet. The Christmas tree was also plugged into that outlet. It was like Indy saw the outlet in A Christmas Story and decided to best The Old Man.
So when I checked the outlet next to Indy’s dresser, the Apple Watch charger was still there. But now it was plugged into a green extension cord, coiled on the floor under the radiator, which I’m sure is safe.
A second green extension cord was plugged in there as well, with a black cord plugged into that.
The sleep apnea machine cord.
“Hey kid, you’re pretty good!” Indy grinned, clapping me on the back. “How did you know it would be there?”
Well, probably because anyone who keeps a drill under their bed and dead people in their trunk is maybe doing funky things with their outlets.
I set up the machine, and told Indy if he needed help, I could come over at bedtime to set up the machine. All he had to do was call.
That was three days ago. Today, Indy called me to say the apnea machine still made a lot of noise. Last night, Willie had smothered it with a pillow. Indy thinks she killed it because now it doesn’t work.
Which brings us back to the dementia.
Because dead things go in your trunk after you kill them, not before.
I’m not helping Willie with that either.