I was twenty-nine that winter.
I want you to understand where I was in my life, so you understand what “always fine” meant.
I was working three jobs to get through nursing school at Southwestern Community College in
Creston.
Nights as an aide at the care center. Ten p.m. to six a.m., four nights a week. Seventeen dollars an hour, turning residents, changing briefs, sitting with the ones who couldn’t sleep.
Saturdays at the Corner Café on Main Street. Six in the morning to two in the afternoon. Biscuits and gravy and refills for farmers who tipped in quarters.
Sunday mornings, cleaning the Iowa State Bank in town. Vacuuming, emptying wastebaskets, wiping
fingerprints off the glass doors. Two hours, forty dollars, cash.
I was going to class in between. I was sleeping maybe five hours a night. I had a 2009 Chevy Malibu with two hundred and eleven thousand miles on it and a heater that only worked on high.
