Today when I arrived at the Birch Street Nursing Home, I saw that there was only one item on my list of chores: "Find Mrs. Patterson!" The first place I looked was the most obvious place, her room. When I saw she wasn't there, or in the bathroom, I began to conduct a serious search of the building, from top to bottom. I looked in all the closets and the pantry, and even in my laboratory in the basement. But she was nowhere to be found. So I knew then she had made it outside and I was going to have to search the grounds. But first I left out food and medicine for the other patients, creating a nice buffet in the activities room for them. Once outside, I walked around the edge of the building, then widened the circle from there, even climbing trees to see if she might be up one of them. I found a pair of binoculars in one tree, but no Mrs. Patterson. So I widened the search more to the areas across the street, including the Birch Street Cemetery. I eventually found her on Mrs. Shimshack's grave, digging through the dirt with her hands. Her gown was filthy, and her fingernails were broken, but she had managed to dig a hole deep enough to reach the coffin. "That woman stole my property," Mrs. Patterson told me when I found her. "I'm just getting back what's mine."
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