She stopped me in the hallway

Said the man had passed away

I asked what happened

Cleo’s face flattened

Said he’d been in rehab

I pictured a nursing home, like one where I used to work as a nurse aide

A brick building that smelled like urine and that housed the infirm

A square slab with long hallways

It was something a little different, I’d learned

Just a few hours later our company website played the reel

That company founding father in some 20 photos, sprawled out in a video

35 years ago, he broke ground with a shovel of steel

And a head with brown hair

Then in front of the company sign

Then with others in suits and ties, all holding in their hands something nice

As the slideshow went on so did his waistline

Toward the end, a little bit of yellow in his eyes

Had anybody noticed the compromise

Trembling hands while holding an otoscope

An inability to sleep

His laxity even on a stressful morning

With all the pressure, he was still there in his white coat

His life energy along with a substance was pouring

The last picture showed a head of white

A large belly and bruises on his arms

Subtle signs but no cause for alarm

The last time I saw the guy he was driving away in a Tesla

His image is mostly on the corporate website

But maybe more so now etched in the minds of those nurse aides

The ones who helped him in the end

I wonder if he was afraid

Cleo then whispered, “You have heard, right? About that summer night

A few years ago on that back road

He’d been driving and ran over that girl who’d been walking alone

He paid off the witness

Who turns out to be the manager of that nursing facility where he was

She and the guy hadn’t spoken in years – the cash kept away any fear or fuss

But when the sickly man showed up in the nursing home, her words slipped up

One of those aides caught hold of it

The witness leaked to her subordinate : the nurse aid who happened to know the coordinates

The one whose daughter had been killed in an unsolved hit and run”

I imagine when she learned the news, that woman came undone

She herself became a witness

Charged to care for the man who killed her daughter

One night while he lay in bed, she pulled out his stitches

And she removed the pain meds at his bedside

He bled out and died

Cleo’s green eyes met mine

This is what I got for talking to the chatty Kathy

I wanted to rewind 5 minutes, to return to my ignorance where I was happy

Now two unsolved killings in the end

Even CEOs die – do operations suspend?

Because of cirrhosis or psychosis

CEOs and nursing homes

Aren’t we all connected?

At least the two of us know this