So everyone who keeps up with my writing life knows I made round 2 of the NYC Short Story Challenge. They give you a prompt of genre, character, and subject, and if you go within a specific word count.

This time, in 2000 words or less, it’s mystery, a crossing guard, and hide and seek.

I drafted two story ideas. This is the one I’m not sending, still in fairly raw form. Enjoy.

“Ms. Burkhart, not that way. Too much traffic.”

Mahalia took the elderly woman’s wizened hand in hers and turned her with the gentle grace of a dancer toward the patio at the back of Regency Eldercare Center.

Ms. Burkhart shook with sobs and could hardly walk. “I lost my bracelet,” she said—over and over. The crying made her short of breath.

Mahalia sighed. Well, this wasn’t going to be an easy shift. Being a crossing guard at Regency wasn’t supposed to include comforting patients.

“Let’s sit a minute in the garden.” Mahalia used her sturdy frame to support Ms. Burkhart’s frail one, but also block the path back toward the busy street that ran in front of the downtown Manhattan care center. “You need to catch your breath.”

Steering Mrs. Burkhart toward the back, Mahalia phoned inside to let the front desk know she would be off the door for a few minutes.

Mahalia got Ms. Burkhart seated on a concrete bench. She breathed shallowly but evenly now, still giving little gulping sobs and coughing.

“All right, Ms. B?” Mahalia made her voice cheerful. Nine times out of ten, if you could get their mind back from wherever it had gone to, they’d go back inside.

“I lost my bracelet,” Ms. B said again. “My mother gave it to me. On my wedding day. She made the beads herself.” Gasping sobs stopped her forming further words.

Still holding Ms. B’s tiny hand in hers, Mahalia patted it and suppressed another sigh.

No good deed goes unpunished, she thought. Ever since that first day on the job—had it already been six months—when she located the late Mrs. Eversham’s gold-tipped walking cane, “Mahalia can find it” had become part of Regency life. An unpaid part.

“Mahalia is good at finding things. Mahalia has a direct line to St. Anthony. Ask Detective Mahalia. Go up to the room and help her look, Mahalia; we’ll watch the door until you get back.” Sometimes Mahalia thought the CNAs hid things just to watch her track them down.

Maybe the bracelet existed, maybe it didn’t. Time to do her famous seek-and-ye-shall-find routine.

“Okay, take a deep breath for me, Ms. B. We’ll find it but you gotta stay calm. Right now, Detective Mahalia Matthews is at your service.” She produced the fake badge a nurse had given her, pinning it on as she tipped an imaginary fedora. Usually that made the residents giggle, but Ms. B shrank back. Mahalia whipped off the badge.

“When did you last see the bracelet?” Mahalia’s voice took on the timbre of a Law and Order detective.

Ms. B’s hand circled her wrist, rubbing. “She put it on me, on my wedding day.”

“That’s so sweet. How about here at Regency? When was the last time you wore it?”

Her hand still rubbing the circle, Ms. B said, “It was rainy season. The road was closed.”

It hadn’t rained for days.

“Ms. B, maybe that bracelet might be something you remember from before you moved here? We all get our pasts and presents confused sometimes, y’know?”

The handbook said not to “force reality on a situation,” but the handbook writers didn’t have a job to do besides sitting in a garden trying to calm a patient because you knew the nurses would just medicate her if you took her back inside in this state. Mahalia needed this job but she didn’t hold with a lot of what she saw in the hallways. Elders should be treated with dignity, not benzodiazepines.

Ms. Burkhart looked at Mahalia; her face crinkled as tears flowed again. “We came here to start over. My jewelry box is gone.”

Mahalia couldn’t hide her frown now. She liked most of the CNAs, but there was no denying some of them had sticky fingers. The last time she helped track down a stolen wallet, the CNA who took it got fired. And knew it was because of Mahalia.

She came out the front door to where Mahalia stood and said, “Some day when you least expect it, I’ll be here to push you into that everlasting traffic.” She was gone before Mahalia could think of a retort.

“Is the box gone, or just the bracelet?”

“Gone,” Ms. B said, her voice almost dream-like.

This was going nowhere. Heaving her bulk off the bench, Mahalia reached out a hand. “OK, Ms. B, let’s go up to your room and have a look, shall we?”

Shaking her head, Ms. B looked at her gnarled hands, opening and closing like bird claws against her knees. “We must not go back inside. Not safe.”

“Why not, honey?”

“They are waiting.”

This was getting complicated. Maybe a jewelry box had been stolen; maybe it hadn’t. Same for the bracelet. Maybe neither one had ever existed. Time to get Ms. B back inside so she could find out—and then get back to her real job.

“I promise it’s safe. Up you get.”

Ms. B squinted. “Sunny.”

Mahalia hoped this meant she was coming back from her fog of memory.

“Where can we hide?” Ms. B stood with such energy, Mahalia took a step back. Before she could reach for her, Ms. B was limping toward the back of the property.

“Ms. B! Wait up. Honey, we need to look in your room, not out here.”

“We have to hide!” Ms. B was all but screaming now, and Mahalia reached for her phone to call inside for help, but the woman stumbled and she caught her instead.

“Let go of me, don’t hurt me!” Now she was screaming; she struck Mahalia across the face. Startled, Mahalia let go and Ms. B fell backward, hard, onto the ground.

“Crap!” Mahalia reached down and hauled her up. Ms. B weighed next to nothing and rose in her arms like air. But she was hysterical now, loud enough that two CNAs exploded out the back door.

“What happened?” asked Lilly, the one in front. Mahalia knew Lilly was one of the staff who actually cared—as witnessed by her race to rescue Ms. B, who was flailing against Mahalia now, screaming “Let me go, I’m Hutu, not Tutsi! I have my card!”

The other CNA sucked in breath. “Not this again. Ms. Burkhart, Ms. Burkhart! Listen now! You’re safe, hun. This is New York. That’s long over. Remember? You came to America and you’re safe now.”

Relieved of her burden, Mahalia followed behind as the two half-supported, half-carried the sobbing Ms. B toward the door. Ms. B’s bony hand clutched the aide’s shoulder. “It’s over?”

“Long over, long time gone. You’re safe and well here with us. We’re gonna take you back to your room and give you a nice cool drink, and you can rest. All that’s over with.”

Over one shoulder, Lilly spoke to Mahalia. “Rwandan genocide. Lost her husband and kids and her parents, and like most of her family.”

“It’s April,” said the other aide, as if this explained everything.

“I don’t get it,” Mahalia said.

“The genocide was in April. It’s always a bad time for Ms. Burkhart.” As she spoke, Lilly reached up a hand and pushed the button to close the back door behind them, leaving Mahalia outside.

Mahalia walked around the building and took up her post again. The usual devoted daughters arrived to take their mothers to lunch in town. Mahalia stopped traffic and walked people across: solo women, women with grandchildren scrubbed to perfection, women dragging reluctant spouses glued to their cell phones.

The afternoon outing emerged, seven elders shuffling with walkers or zipping with scooters toward the park a block away. Lilly was working the afternoon trip. She smiled at Mahalia as she passed.

“Ms. B had a long nap and now she’s getting a late lunch. She’ll be all right in a day or two. Hard on her, this time of year. Memories aren’t always our friend.”

“Did she really have a bracelet?” Mahalia asked, and Lilly threw her a surprised glance.

“Is it lost again?” She started to say something else, but a man struck his walker against the curb and she was at his side like lighting.

Mahalia ushered in the round of after-work quick-visit adult children. Saw the outing group safely back across the street as the afternoon sun lost strength. Welcomed the Tuesday night visiting choir, and then her workday was finally over.

At home, a can of chicken noodle soup and some saltines on her supper tray, she fired up her laptop.

Rwandan genocide proved a popular search term. She went down the rabbit hole and didn’t emerge until well after midnight, too depressed to sleep.

The next morning, Mahalia stopped at a kiosk and bought a red and grey clay beaded bracelet, child-sized.

Arriving early at Regency, she asked the nurse on duty, “Ms. Burkhart up yet?”

“Dunno. Room 1112,” the nurse said without looking up from a chart.

Ms. Burkhart sat in an armchair with her face toward the window. Her roommate still slept.

“Morning Ms. B! How we feeling today?” Mahalia kept her voice cheerful but low.

Ms. B turned, and Mahalia saw tear streaks in the morning light.

“They are all dead.”

“Well, uh, I found your bracelet.” She held up the beaded circle and delivered her rehearsed lie. “Mighta sustained some color damage, being in the ground overnight.”

Ms. B’s face lit up so suddenly, Mahalia held back tears. “You found it? You darling angel! Let me see.”

Holding her breath, Mahalia started to slip it over Ms. B’s wrist, but the elderly woman took it and held it to the window light.

Mahalia held her breath.

“She was a wonderful mother. They hacked her to bits. We saw them coming; the others ran. I hid behind the well. I heard them die. I came to New York. I worked in a hotel. I married Josiah. We started everything over. This is the only thing left from then.”

Exhaling, Mahalia said, “I’m glad I found it. You want it back in your jewelry box?”

“Please.”

“Her jewelry box disappeared yesterday.” Lilly’s voice from the hall was so soft Ms. B couldn’t hear it, but Mahalia jumped. “Damn new aide won’t last long. Put it in her top drawer.” Lilly shrugged. “Every morning the world is new again, and every day brings the same old shit.”

Mahalia hesitated, then said, “Mrs. B, today being a special day, why not wear it?”

“Is today special?” Ms. B’s face broke into a bright smile. “Every day is special. Today is a good day to be alive.”

“Absolutely.” Mahalia slipped the bracelet onto the thin wrist. It fit perfectly.

In the hall, Lilly waited. “Good move.”

Mahalia smiled and they walked toward the nurses station together.

“I bought her a bracelet last year,” Lilly said. “It was in the jewelry box. Best talk to that new aide, Detective Matthews.”

Shaking her head, Mahalia said, “I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”

Lilly laughed. “You want paid for dealing with shit, be a CNA, not a crossing guard.”

It was Mahalia’s turn to laugh. “I couldn’t do what you do. But nobody who’s been through that kinda hell deserves to have her last memory stolen.”

Crossing her arms, Lilly stopped walking. “Getting her memory stolen might be the best thing that could happen to that sweet lady. And yeah, you could. It’s what we’re put on Earth for, to take care of each other. That’s why you’re gonna find the bad apple in our cozy little barrel. And that’s why Ms. B has her bracelet back. Her full circle in the circle of life.”

Rolling her eyes, Mahalia said, “Don’t you wax philosophical and soft on me. Tell me you aren’t about to break out singing that stupid song.”

Flashing a wicked grin, Lilly turned left down a hallway with a parting shot of “Hakuna matata, my friend.”