“Ah, my sweet Kister, come to visit.” Kister nudged his cheek against the old woman’s face. “I’ve missed you around the house.” He said sweetly, and sat gently by her side.

Agatha lifted an old, tired hand and Kister lowered his head so she could reach it. She tenderly stoked his brow, ran her fingers through his hair, and sighed.

“Oh Kister… what am I do to?”

“What’s wrong?” Kister repositioned his arthritic body closer to her and looked concernedly into the old woman’s face. Agatha didn’t look at him as she spoke, she only gazed across the room, looking to the stained blue wallpaper as though through a window. Kister wondered through a window to what? But he remained silent as she wheezingly caught her breath.

“They say there isn’t much time,” she gasped. “they say there isn’t much they can do.” Kister looked longingly into her face. In his age the whiskers on his chin had grown white, and she stroked them lovingly.

“Don’t look at me that way, Kister.” She held his chin firmly but gently in place between her thumb and her fingers so she could look at him. “Don’t.”

“But Aggie, what shall I do without you?” Kister moved a stiff joint over to calm her resting hand. “The house is so empty…”

“I know you’re lonely…” Agatha sighed.

For a long while the two sat in silence. Agatha rubbed Kister’s sore, arthritic joints; she knew how they pained him.

A bird flitted at the small window of the hospital room, but Kister paid no mind to it. His ears were more concerned with the stable though unsteady rhythm of the woman’s aching heart. Each beat resounded piercingly in Kister’s still sensitive ears, or was it his lonely heart that suddenly livened his senses?

A young nurse dressed in blue scrubs strode cheerfully into the room, her long brown ponytail flapped back and forth behind her and she smiled defiantly over the gloomy essence of the place. She was carrying a silver tray with another cardboard tray on top of it. A small white bowl of green Jell-o wiggled and wobbled sickeningly next to a small paper cup of tap water and a larger plastic cup filled nearly to the brim with pills of all shapes and sizes.

“Well hello there Mrs. Farlow!” She spoke in a loud, high-pitched voice, assuming the woman was going deaf. “How are we today?”

“We are doing just fine.” Said Kister scornfully.

“Oh well looky here!” The nurse said. “You’ve got a visitor!”

For the first time in a long while Agatha smiled. Even though Kister knew it was only out of politeness, he was glad to see some trace of happiness cross her thin face. “Yes,” she said, stroking Kister’s cheek. “this is Kister.”

“Well hello Kisser!” She said just as loudly. Neither Agatha nor Kister had the strength or will to correct her, so they let it slide with a sigh. “It looks like you two are having a nice visit, but I’m afraid I’ll have to interrupt.”

“You just love coming in here with your big fake smile, interrupting good conversation for a reminder of why we’re here, don’t you?” Kister hissed angrily at her.

“Kister!” Agatha whispered harshly. But the nurse didn’t pay attention anyway.

“Here you are then,” she said sweetly, and handed Agatha the large cup of pills and the small cup of water. She took them from the cheery woman and looked at them despairingly. “Now, now,” the nurse said, as though to a small child. “eat up! I can’t leave until you’ve taken each and every one.”

Agatha sighed and tossed all the pills into her mouth, then followed with the small amount of water allowed her. Something tasted like fluoride and carbon, was it the water? Or the pills? She couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

With a loud gulp all eleven pills were pulled and shoved down. She gave the cups back to the nurse who inspected each one with a smile and said, “Now open for me!”

The elder woman rolled her eyes as she opened her mouth, waited a moment, then lifted her tongue.

The nurse looked carefully in and said, “Alrighty then, good girl!” Then she patted Kister on the head, “Y’all take care now! I’ll be back later, nice meeting you Kisser!”

“Oh! Nurse!” Agatha called. The nurse stopped and turned to face her. “Yes?” “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could I please have another blanket? It’s rather cold.” The nurse nodded and smiled. “Sure thing!” Then she swung her hips cheerfully out the door and down the hall.

For a few moments the two elders were silent again. The bird outside the window sang to the beat of the heart monitor. It was Kister who was the first to speak.

“I don’t like that woman…” he said. Agatha sighed, “She’s a nice girl… just a little high strung and ignorant…”

Kister looked at her longingly, wishing things could go back to the way they were, but he knew they’d never be the same. “I don’t even really know what all those pills are for. It’s all, ‘take this, take that,’ they never really tell me anything.” Kister looked, frustrated, at her, “You shouldn’t take something if you don’t even know what it is.”

But Agatha wasn’t particularly listening, she ran her fingers through his hair again and smiled a little, for real this time.

Kister remained silent, wondering if he wanted the question floating around in his head answered.

A high-pitched drone startled them both and they both looked immediately at Agatha’s heart monitor, which was still bleating regularly. In the room across the hall, a younger man was convulsing on his bed. No one was in the room, but suddenly there was an artless, hurried shuffle about the entrance of his door as doctors and nurses alike rushed in to see what was wrong.

From so far away, the nurses in their blue scrubs faded into the wallpaper and only two doctors stood out as they rushed in. One of the doctors called out unintelligibly and two of the nurses hurried off down the hall in their white tennis shoes.

Kister and Agatha looked on silently as several important-looking procedures were carried out in order, it seemed, to save the man’s life. All of these procedures failed, and finally they all gave up. The man had stopped convulsing and looked as though he were sleeping, though the echo of his heart rate could no longer be heard.

Kister nudged Agatha’s hand sympathetically and let out a deep breath he had been holding. He licked his lips nervously and asked, “Aggie, how- that is… how long?”

Agatha sighed. “They haven’t told me directly, though I’ve heard the doctors and nurses talking about it, and they say I haven’t got long. Maybe a week, maybe less.” Kister turned his head and looked down at the bed spread, hoping it would keep him from tearing up. “Don’t be sad Kister,” she said comfortingly. She lifted his head with a kind knuckle and turned it to face her. “everything will be alright.”

She smiled shakily at him, but he wasn’t convinced. She lovingly rubbed the back of his neck, and despite his physical and emotional pain, Kister smiled.

Suddenly Kister’s face contorted and he coughed harshly over the side of the bed. Agatha rubbed his chest concernedly and looked upon him sympathetically as he shivered from tailbone to clavicle.

Agatha took her shawl from about her shoulders and placed it over those of Kister. He tried to object, but was too weak, and finally he accepted it. Agatha sat back in the bed and rubbed her hands together to keep them warm.

Finally Kister got up the strength and moved out from under the shawl and sat near her chest. She could hear him wheezing and knew that he was in pain, but he did his best to hide it from his face, and so she did not say anything. Kister leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek. She smelled of medication and lightly of bleached jell-o, but he didn’t care.

Outside the daylight was fading and the sun was setting on the both of them. The evening sun cast orange and pink shadows across the wise old crone’s face and she looked, so Kister thought, the best she had in many years.

They spent the next hour or so remembering each other’s lives and all the time they had spent together.

“The first time I saw you,” Agatha said, “I knew you were trouble.” She chuckled to herself weakly. “But it wasn’t a week later that you found your way into my heart.” Kister smiled and she chuckled again, but as she laughed she began to cough. She convulsed so that Kister wasn’t sure if he should do something, whatever that something could possibly be, but soon enough Agatha spat out a thick yellow substance onto the tray the nurse had brought earlier. She sighed and took a few deep raspy breaths.

Kister waited for her chest to calm and then spoke, “When I first met you,” he recalled, “I was really down on my luck.” He wheezed tiredly, “You saved me.”

Kister calmly closed his eyes as Agatha gently ran her thumbs over the lids. She smiled, “I took you in, and now look at us.” Her eyes began to brim with tears and she sighed, still smiling. “My sweet Kister…” Two warm plump tears sprouted from the forked corners of her eyes and rolled gracefully over her cheek bones. Kister kissed her hand, then the tears from her face.

The dim light coming in through the streaky window turned the wetness on her face a joyful purple and suddenly it seemed the icy January draft was a warm spring breeze. They could smell sweet Easter around the corner and felt a loving spring sun on their faces. The bird whom had earlier entertained the window pane had gone, flown home to accompany his own lover.

Agatha shakily spread her cheeks with the arthritic fingers of her right hand to relieve the pressure of her sinuses and then poised a cautiously loose fist by her lips, as though she were thinking, or about to cough again. Kister smiled lovingly at her as she gathered the strength to lean forward and kiss him on the forehead.

Then she sighed, “You’re all I have Kister.” And she rubbed his head once more before letting the bed fall gently back to its regular position, laying back, and closing her eyes to sleep.

Kister sat still for a moment, pining for more time. He saw that Agatha had begun to shiver softly, and he glanced over his shoulder at the shawl which had been left farther down the bed. Kister softly rose and picked the shawl up in his teeth. It was heavier than he remembered, but he managed to walk it over to her.

As best he could, he pulled it over her shoulder. When she felt it there, she took it up herself and draped it over the two of them. “Thank you Kister.”

Kister curled up beside the old woman and laid his head to rest on her breast. Agatha gently rubbed behind his ears as he curled his tail and rested it between them.

All through the night Agatha slept and Kister listened to her heart and the soft sort of crackling sounds her tired lungs emitted. He closed his eyes and imagined the two of them back home.

The great blue easy chair that slumbered before the sputtering fireplace was plenty big enough for the thin old woman and her beloved pet to have separate seats, but they sat closely anyhow; keeping each other in warm company. Kister took a deep breath and sighed contentedly, Agatha did the same. It almost seemed as though the restful moment could never end, but the two finally fell asleep, and eventually the fire dwindled down, and extinguished.