Indy has spent the last few months living up to his cinematic namesake.
As in, he sure knows how to show a girl a good time.
The stress of Thanksgiving tanked Indy’s cognition. His speech was just a string of words, laced together in a nonsensical mess, the way a child strings together beads and macaroni to make a necklace.
He also couldn’t get himself from A to B without someone guiding and directing each step. It made sense, then, that when Willie took him to the emergency department, they sent him home.
He has Parkinson’s, they helpfully and with great acumen pointed out. That this wasn’t Indy’s usual home on the Parkinson’s spectrum didn’t matter. Bring him back when he gets something sexy was the essential implication.
Instead, I brought him back to the emergency department the next day. I’m about as sexy as you’re going to get if you’re dealing with Indy. I will just have to do.
Packing up Indy to hit the emergency department is never easy. First, I need to evade Willie. If Indy is Madonna, Willie is Sean Penn, knocking out anybody who tries to get close.

Willie always demands to know why she can’t take Indy to the emergency department. This discussion never changes. I ask Willie key Indy trivia – things she’ll need to know when the emergency department staff either ask questions or try to turn Indy’s examination into a stroke workup.
“I don’t remember that,” she always says. What she does remember is the pickup time for her grocery order at Sam’s Club.
More on that later.
Also – I hate to state the obvious, but Willie had taken Indy to the emergency department the day before. That hadn’t turned out so well, you know?

After I hurdle Sean Penn, I need Indy’s driver’s license and Medicare card. I don’t know what happened to Indy’s old wallet, or the new wallet I bought him.
He and Willie don’t know what happened to the wallets either. It’s amazing how many things they lose in a six hundred square foot apartment.
So Indy’s “wallet” is a rubber band holding together a series of membership cards but no driver’s license or Medicare card.
When I have to find something Indy has misplaced, I pull a Sherlock Holmes mind palace. I pause. I breathe deeply. I close my eyes. I press into Indy’s mind. Where would Indy put whatever is missing?
That day, I opened my eyes, my gaze falling on an Eagles pocket notebook sitting on the end table next to Indy’s chair.
The notebook was held closed by – what else? – a rubber band. I don’t know why rubber bands have become so important to Indy. But they secure everything valuable to him. I’m lucky I don’t have a rubber band around me.
The driver’s license and Medicare card were, logically, wedged in the notebook.
“How did you know they were there?!” Willie demanded.
I replied I know how Indy thinks. That, of course, landed me in an ocean of trouble with Willie. How dare I imply I know Indy better than she knows Indy? The fact that mine and Indy’s common DNA might give me a boost here never signifies.
With Willie and Medicare tackled, I loaded Indy into my car. I was set to take off when Indy waved his hand for me to stop.
He rapped his knuckles on the car window, so I rolled it down.
He signaled for Willie to come to the car.
“I love you,” he managed to get out.
Huh. I bet Willie has a rubber band on her somewhere.
“I love you, too,” Willie replied, which would have been very cute and romantic if Willie didn’t then tell Indy all the things she was going to get done because she didn’t have to take care of him.
Indy was admitted to the hospital. When my phone rang after one in the morning that night, I expected the worst.
I did not get the worst.
Indy, apparently, was determined to go home to Willie. So determined, in fact, he had repeatedly gotten out of bed.
Indy’s nurse wanted me to reorient Indy. He wanted me to reorient Indy now, or he was going to call – wait for it – security.
I’m a nurse. I never knew it was the family’s responsibility to reorient a patient, or that security was the key to controlling a 165-pound octogenarian. Do you know how much time I wasted guiding patients back to bed, explaining they were hospitalized and why? Where can I register a complaint to get those hours back?
Also, if I had been able to reorient Indy he wouldn’t – how do I say this? – need to be in the dirty birdy hospital.
I just rewatched Misery. My goal in life is to be that menacing without uttering a single curse word.
I had the dirty birdy nurse put Indy on the dirty birdy phone. Indy told me this was ridiculous as he had been there for hours and it was time to go home. I reminded Indy why he was in the hospital. I implored him to stay in bed.
“Do you promise to stay in bed?” I asked.
“No,” Indy said.
“Will you at least get in bed and think about staying there?” I suggested.
“No,” Indy said.
Yeah. They called security.
Had Indy known how close he was to the front doors of the hospital, his escape would have been successful. He would have been gone and, I’m sure, home before anyone noticed his absence.

The next day, Willie and I went to the hospital for a visit with Indy. Our visits were limited to one person at a time. We decided I would go first.
I peeked in on Indy, who told me to tell it walking because he just wanted to hang with Willie. “Tell her I want her to stay all day,” Indy directed.
I did as I was told, which brought on a very romantic grunt from Willie. “Like I have nothing else to do besides sit with him!” Willie complained.
I think we all dream of a love like that.
Now, I knew I shouldn’t have asked this next question. I knew I shouldn’t. But I did.
“What do you need to do? I can take care of it.”
First, Willie needed me to go to Sam’s Club to pick up her grocery order. Next, I needed to go back to the Temple of Doom to drop off the groceries.
But the groceries were not Willie’s.
Willie buys all the food sold in the Temple of Doom’s café. She orders it, pays for it, picks it up, delivers it, and submits a receipt for reimbursement. My job this day was to pick up the groceries at Sam’s Club and deliver them to the café.
Just a little aside here – Willie and the lady who runs the café – another Temple of Doom resident – don’t get along. I don’t know why. But she is Willie’s nemesis.
And yes. You’re recalling correctly that Willie already has a nemesis at the Temple of Doom. She is Willie’s neighbor, the deposed fire marshal of Hallway C, Second Floor.
And you’re also recalling correctly that Willie has a third enemy, who actually reported Indy and Willie to the Temple of Doom’s manager.
Willie loves a good enemy.
People who are not Willie’s enemy get pumpkin bread at Christmas. As long as I was dropping off groceries at the Temple of Doom, Willie said, I could go up to Willie’s apartment and wrap the pumpkin bread.
Twenty large and twenty small loaves of pumpkin bread needed to be wrapped. Forty loaves for the various people who are not Willie’s mortal enemies.
Forty.
I headed to Sam’s Club, then circled back over to the Temple of Doom and deposited the groceries on the café counter.
“These are from Willie,” I explained to the lady who runs the café.
“Who are you?” the café lady asked, her nose wrinkled like I was a peasant in her castle.
So now I don’t like the café lady either.
I also don’t like the deposed fire marshal of Hallway C, Second Floor. She’s bossy. And flirts with Indy.
“I’m Willie and Indy’s daughter,” I explained, although I think we all know that despite my best efforts I am thoroughly Willie’s daughter. “Willie is tied up. These are for you.”
“Willie usually gives me a receipt,” she huffed.
“Well Willie is visiting my father in the hospital today. So I guess we’ll just have to deal with that receipt later,” I said brightly.
I mean, they all live within 2000 square feet of each other. I’m sure Willie can bring the receipt when they all go to happy hour on Thursday. Or happy hour on Friday. Or happy hour on Saturday.
I spun on my heel and walked out. That pumpkin bread wasn’t going to wrap itself.
Indy did eventually make it home – proper and legal, not by escaping and hitching a ride with a long-haul trucker. But he was right back in the hospital a month later.
So you know what you’ll be reading about next.