The Only One Left by Riley Sager EPUB & PDF– eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Riley Sager
- Language: English
- Genre: Horror Suspense
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The office is on Main Street, tucked between a beauty parlor and a
storefront that, in hindsight, feels prophetic. When I was here for my
initial job interview, it was a travel agency, with posters in the window
suggesting freedom, escape, sunny skies. On my last visit, when I was told I
was being suspended, it was vacant and dark. Now, six months later, it’s an
aerobics studio, and I have no idea what that might portend.
Inside the office, Mr. Gurlain waits for me behind a desk at the far end of
a space clearly meant for retail. Free of shelves, cash registers, and product
displays, the place is too vast and empty for an office staffed by only one
person. The sound of the door closing behind me echoes through the empty
space, unnaturally loud.
“Kit, hello,” Mr. Gurlain says, sounding far friendlier than he did during
my last visit. “So good to see you again.”
“Likewise,” I lie. I’ve never felt comfortable around Mr. Gurlain. Thin,
tall, and just a bit hawkish, he could very well pass for a funeral home
director. Fitting, seeing how that’s usually the next stop for most of those in
the agency’s care.
Gurlain Home Health Aides specializes in long-term, live-in care—one
of the only agencies in Maine to do so. The office walls bear posters of
smiling nurses, even though, like me, most of the agency’s staff can’t
legally claim the title of one.
“You’re a caregiver now,” Mr. Gurlain had told me during that fateful
first visit. “You don’t nurse. You care.”
The current roster of caregivers is listed on a bulletin board behind Mr.
Gurlain’s desk, showing who’s available and who’s currently with a patient.
My name was once among them, always unavailable, always taking care of
someone. I’d been proud of that. Whenever I was asked what I did for a
living, I summoned my best Mr. Gurlain impression and replied, “I’m a
caregiver.” It sounded noble. Worthy of admiration. People looked at me
with more respect after I said it, making me think I’d at last found a
purpose. Bright but no one’s idea of a good student, I’d eked my way
through high school and, after graduation, struggled with what to do with
my life.
“You’re good with people,” my mother said after I’d been fired from an
office typing pool. “Maybe nursing is something you could do.”
But being a nurse required more schooling.
So I became the next best thing.
Until I did the wrong thing.
Now I’m here, feeling anxious, prickly, and tired. So very tired.
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