Harriet had never felt old until the man younger than her died in the room next to Betty’s. She was young at heart. She dyed her hair, kept up with the changing times, and knew how to reset the WiFi. She was hip and had never broken a hip.

Then Betty was put in the hospice home. It was a nice place, Harriet supposed. Quiet and sterile during visiting hours, except for when another patient had an episode or someone’s grandkids came to visit. Harriet was fine watching Clint Eastwood movies on the common area TV, fondly recalling watching those as a young girl.

“How’ve you been, Betty?” Harriet sat down beside her friend. She was always laid up in her bed these days, smelling stale but smiling brightly.

“Oh, I’ve been all right,” Betty said, and Harriet wondered if she left it at that because there was nothing else to be any more. Nothing happened here. Sometimes the TV fritzed out and other times her kids brought her a new book to read. Sometimes she even played Bingo, or maybe dominoes. Pinochle if her hands weren’t bothering her too much.

“But Chuck died the other day. He was there one minute, and then he wasn’t… I wonder when they’re going to put someone in his room.”

Harriet blinked, heart pounding in her ears. Charles ‘Chuck’ Hemingford was a sweet old man with crows feet and crazy white hair, and he was younger than Harriet by three and a half years. He rolled around in his wheelchair, gummy smile greeting everyone. And he was dead.

Harriet sat there for a moment, thinking, ‘oh, that poor old man.’ Then she remembered those three and a half years, and she wondered why she was seventy-six years young while Chuck had been seventy-three years old.

She wondered why she wasn’t holed up in this place that reeked of death and Betty was.

Betty had been a pretty girl. Prettier than Harriet, certainly, and kinder. She’d been the cheerleader archetype minus the bullying. She’d been perfect, and she was lying in a bed in a hospice, because she was going to die before long. Her body was failing her, slowly but surely, and would fall apart, collapsing inward. She’d be dead. Betty was going to die.

“Thank you for coming to visit me, Harry,” Betty said, smiling as if she could read Harriet’s mind. Her hair was gray and fanned out across her pillows, pushed up awkwardly in the back since she’d adjusted her position. Harriet had to remind herself that her own hair was white, too, even if the red dye made her forget.

“Always,” Harriet said quietly, voice strange and croaky in a way she hadn’t heard come from her since her own parents had died (eighty-two and ninety-three).

And she meant it. Even though she knew she was going to live longer than Betty, she would visit her until the end and beyond the end. She would visit her friend until her own body began to give out, however far down the line that may be.

She would look at her friend’s headstone, feeling strangely young in spite of the decades of her life, and she would remember Betty, in all her glory, the best of her days spent lying in a hospice, the glories of her past dressed in a cheerleader’s skirt.

Harriet would be there, even when Betty wasn’t. And when Harriet wasn’t there anymore, well… that was life.