My shoes! You’re wearing my shoes!

Maisie Hapfer used terms like “thrice” and “literally” and “erstwhile” as often as possible. She felt a melancholy affinity for words that were dying out.

It didn’t matter that people still said some of them, cobbled to new, cheap definitions — new words, named for the old ones. They still bandied the sounds around, but the words themselves, their souls — they didn’t need them anymore. Soon they would die.

Maisie struggled to keep them alive.

The nurses at Golden Common Nursing Facility found it amusing. “Old fashioned,” Nurse Ruth called it with patronizing fondness.

Old ones go, it’s the way of the world, Maisie sometimes thought when she lay alone in her room, with only dying words buzzing weakly in her head for company. It’s futile to fight it. Yet Nurse Ruth’s condescension spurred her to keep using her words.

“How are you feeling today, Maisie dear?” Nurse Ruth trilled as she bustled in. Maisie just raised her eyebrows in response. Nurse Ruth never waited for replies anyway.

But as Ruth kept up a running patter while taking Maisie’s temperature, a sudden movement in the corner of Maisie’s eye caught her attention.

“Hey! Who let you in?”

Ruth spun around, bumping the med cart, and pressed a hand to her heart. “Oh!” she said. “You really mustn’t do that, Maisie dear, you could have given me a —”

“Who let him in?” Maisie demanded, feeling her heart beat harder than it had in weeks.

A man stood docilely in the corner of the room, half hidden by the door. With a ring of bristly hair round a bald pate, he reminded Maisie of a large, whitish thistle. He was wearing Maisie’s custom-made orthopedic shoes, which had been sitting on the floor in that corner, as if he had miraculously materialized in them.

“Let who in, Maisie dear?” Ruth asked, looking puzzled. The man didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder at their voices.

“That man wearing my shoes!”

But although Ruth looked at the shoes, her face remained puzzled. “You must have seen someone pass by in the corridor,” she said, laying what was probably intended to be a soothing hand on Maisie’s. “Your shoes aren’t—”

“Get out of my shoes!” Maisie threw her off and scrabbled on her bedside table without taking her eyes off the man. Coming up with a handkerchief, she snapped it briskly at the corner — once, twice, thrice. The man didn’t budge.

“Maisie dear, you mustn’t get worked up.” Ruth fluttered uncertainly next to the bedrail. “Goodness, you’ll get me fired yet—”

“Now, now,” came Matron’s voice from the hallway, as if she’d sniffed the word “fired.” “What’s all the hullabaloo?”

“Beg pardon, Matron,” Ruth said, spreading her hands. “It’s Maisie, see, she thinks someone’s in her shoes!”

“In her shoes?” Matron said, giving the offending footgear a glance as baffled as Ruth’s. “What’s this about, Nurse? I do hope you’ve minded my instructions and kept the doors closed. If there’s a nest of mice in there, we won’t know the end of it.”

“Not a mouse,” Ruth began. “A — a man —”

“Will one of you get — him — out!” Maisie bellowed, and Ruth and Matron jumped.

“Heavens!” Matron said. “Mrs. Hapfer, please! Residents are trying to rest. Now, what is the fuss about? Get who out?”

“The man wearing my shoes!”

Matron’s face softened and Maisie clenched her nails into her palm. “Mrs. Hapfer, why do you think there’s a man wearing your shoes?”

“He’s there,” Maisie said, finally tearing her eyes from the odd apparition. As her eyes met the two compassionate faces looking back at her, though, she glanced uncertainly at the corner.

There stood the man, as solid and definite as her own self, but seeming just as oblivious of the others in the room as Ruth and Matron were of him. In fact, he seemed to think himself somewhere else altogether, making odd motions as though he were paging through a book, sitting down — on thin air. Maisie closed her eyes, feeling sick.

“Put it on her chart,” Matron was saying, reaching for Maisie’s wrist and taking her pulse. “I’ll have Dr. Cloates come by this afternoon. He’ll likely want some tests run at Bookers’ Medical, see if you can’t get her an appointment for later today. We don’t want to end up having to go through the ER.” She nodded once as though confirming the practicality of her own plan and strode out, rubber soles squeaking.

“You’ll be all right, Maisie dear,” Ruth said, patting Maisie’s loose-gowned shoulder. “Don’t you worry, Dr. Cloates—”

“Will you stop giving me claptrap about the doctor and just show this fellow the door?” Maisie blazed.

“Oh, Maisie dear, I don’t—” Nurse began, and then, with a pitying smile, turned to the corner. “This way, please, sir,” she said. Picking up the shoes — the man floating absurdly up from them — she slipped them quickly into the cupboard, beside the other pairs lined up there. “There we go,” she said cheerfully. “All better!”

Maisie lay back down and stared at the ceiling.