Expiration
“We have an assignment for you at a small nursing home just across the river on Park Drive,” the scheduler for the nursing assistant pool said.
“What are the hours? How long is job?” I asked.
“This one goes from 7:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Lasts for two weeks,” the scheduler replied.
“When would I start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll take it.”
I hung up the phone mildly appreciating the fact that I would be getting some money to make ends meet. I’d been unemployed for a bit and decided to join a nurse’s aid pool in the hope of picking up an assignment here and there. All that was required was a minimum of six months prior experience as a nurse’s aide and I had that. In my younger days, I worked as an orderly on a locked adult unit in a psychiatric hospital. My first assignment was to work a week stint in a psychiatric hospital, third shift, so I was already in familiar ground. I had never worked in a nursing home. I was about to be rudely awakened.
Mornings are about wake-ups and bathroom routines. Laxatives are distributed in plastic med cups by efficient LPNs like shots of whiskey during last call before closing at a local tavern. Timing is everything. Nurses’ aides have to scurry and work with deft quickness in order to beat the rapid, impending effects of the laxative chasers. Being late had obvious consequences for both the resident and the attending nurses aids. Fortunately, I had missed my deadline to nature’s call only once during those two weeks. The clean-up was unpleasant for both parties.
It was Friday. My last day. I was growing accustomed to the ever-present odor of urine in the air. Some things, I could barely fathom. One of those things was bedsores. I really didn’t understand what they were until I saw one that was so large that I figured a medium-sized baked potato cut in half the long way could have fit in the hollowed-out flesh. This poor soul had a staph infection there as well. It seemed that the raw, reddened skin and muscle was being eaten away by some invisible monster.
“How on earth does this happen? Man, it hurts to even look at this,” I whispered to the nurse’s aid next to me.
Both of us were suited up in bright, yellow gowns and had masks on due to the staph infection while we were giving this delicate, fragile woman a sponge bath. We took great care around the oozing soars. You could see the slight grimace in the woman’s face; feel slight tensing in the muscles.
“Probably because she doesn’t get turned enough,” the aid replied. There was a distance in her voice at that moment which quickly shifted to a more urgent tone. “We have to work quickly. We have the whole floor to get done before lunch.”
Morning progressed into lunchtime and it was time to make my rounds. My first “feedings” were to two women that I had started to grow fond of. Sometimes, they talked about the old days, and I would listen while I worked. I walked into their room and glanced at the first elderly woman.
She was lying on her back, mouth agape and unusually wide-open, frozen in a terrified, silent scream. It was almost as if she was shocked by something.
“She just expired,” a voice from behind me matter-of-factly stated. She drew the curtain around the dead woman and left the room. The strangeness of how a human being could be compared to a driver’s license that was out of date crossed my mind; even mildly enraged me, and acutely saddened me, simultaneously, at that moment. I was left with her roommate. Alone.
The other woman sat in her chair; staring into space, seemingly empty. Had the kind of glazed, faraway eyes that had no hint of hope existing within. I began to feed her, attempting to ignore the body lying in the adjacent bed, encouraging her to open her mouth and chew her food. Some food did get beyond her lips; some did not. The excess dribbled down her chin.
“C’mon, Dearie,” I quietly pleaded, “I know this is hard, but you have eat. Try to eat something.”
A slight glimmer appeared in her eyes. She reached over and lightly put her hand on my leg.
“You’re a nice man,” she murmured.
I could only cry. Not the kind of uncontrollable crying that is noticeably audible and demonstrative. It was barely perceptible sobbing with rivulets of tears streaming down my cheeks; my beard absorbing and hiding them. My throat hurt due to the attempt at holding the torrent of emotions back. Maybe, she didn’t see. I looked into her eyes. Noticed a slight, gentle smile.
~
I numbly walked home after eating a cheeseburger and drinking a couple beers at a local bar. The sun appeared unusually large and magnified as it set behind the cityscape of low income housing. The slightly distant, run-down homes with undraped, bare windows seemed like naked skulls with skeleton’s eyes peering through me. Nearly life-like, yet not alive.
The current of the Menominee River flowed under my feet as I strolled over it on the Locust Street Bridge. The murmuring, soothing river sounded an odd, surrealistic harmony against the backdrop of the cacophony of the city as my mind was struck with a searing, stark thought about the idea of human dignity, and how so many of us live without it.
Dale Lidicker
“We have an assignment for you at a small nursing home just across the river on Park Drive,” the scheduler for the nursing assistant pool said.
“What are the hours? How long is job?” I asked.
“This one goes from 7:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Lasts for two weeks,” the scheduler replied.
“When would I start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll take it.”
I hung up the phone mildly appreciating the fact that I would be getting some money to make ends meet. I’d been unemployed for a bit and decided to join a nurse’s aid pool in the hope of picking up an assignment here and there. All that was required was a minimum of six months prior experience as a nurse’s aide and I had that. In my younger days, I worked as an orderly on a locked adult unit in a psychiatric hospital. My first assignment was to work a week stint in a psychiatric hospital, third shift, so I was already in familiar ground. I had never worked in a nursing home. I was about to be rudely awakened.
Mornings are about wake-ups and bathroom routines. Laxatives are distributed in plastic med cups by efficient LPNs like shots of whiskey during last call before closing at a local tavern. Timing is everything. Nurses’ aides have to scurry and work with deft quickness in order to beat the rapid, impending effects of the laxative chasers. Being late had obvious consequences for both the resident and the attending nurses aids. Fortunately, I had missed my deadline to nature’s call only once during those two weeks. The clean-up was unpleasant for both parties.
It was Friday. My last day. I was growing accustomed to the ever-present odor of urine in the air. Some things, I could barely fathom. One of those things was bedsores. I really didn’t understand what they were until I saw one that was so large that I figured a medium-sized baked potato cut in half the long way could have fit in the hollowed-out flesh. This poor soul had a staph infection there as well. It seemed that the raw, reddened skin and muscle was being eaten away by some invisible monster.
“How on earth does this happen? Man, it hurts to even look at this,” I whispered to the nurse’s aid next to me.
Both of us were suited up in bright, yellow gowns and had masks on due to the staph infection while we were giving this delicate, fragile woman a sponge bath. We took great care around the oozing soars. You could see the slight grimace in the woman’s face; feel slight tensing in the muscles.
“Probably because she doesn’t get turned enough,” the aid replied. There was a distance in her voice at that moment which quickly shifted to a more urgent tone. “We have to work quickly. We have the whole floor to get done before lunch.”
Morning progressed into lunchtime and it was time to make my rounds. My first “feedings” were to two women that I had started to grow fond of. Sometimes, they talked about the old days, and I would listen while I worked. I walked into their room and glanced at the first elderly woman.
She was lying on her back, mouth agape and unusually wide-open, frozen in a terrified, silent scream. It was almost as if she was shocked by something.
“She just expired,” a voice from behind me matter-of-factly stated. She drew the curtain around the dead woman and left the room. The strangeness of how a human being could be compared to a driver’s license that was out of date crossed my mind; even mildly enraged me, and acutely saddened me, simultaneously, at that moment. I was left with her roommate. Alone.
The other woman sat in her chair; staring into space, seemingly empty. Had the kind of glazed, faraway eyes that had no hint of hope existing within. I began to feed her, attempting to ignore the body lying in the adjacent bed, encouraging her to open her mouth and chew her food. Some food did get beyond her lips; some did not. The excess dribbled down her chin.
“C’mon, Dearie,” I quietly pleaded, “I know this is hard, but you have eat. Try to eat something.”
A slight glimmer appeared in her eyes. She reached over and lightly put her hand on my leg.
“You’re a nice man,” she murmured.
I could only cry. Not the kind of uncontrollable crying that is noticeably audible and demonstrative. It was barely perceptible sobbing with rivulets of tears streaming down my cheeks; my beard absorbing and hiding them. My throat hurt due to the attempt at holding the torrent of emotions back. Maybe, she didn’t see. I looked into her eyes. Noticed a slight, gentle smile.
~
I numbly walked home after eating a cheeseburger and drinking a couple beers at a local bar. The sun appeared unusually large and magnified as it set behind the cityscape of low income housing. The slightly distant, run-down homes with undraped, bare windows seemed like naked skulls with skeleton’s eyes peering through me. Nearly life-like, yet not alive.
The current of the Menominee River flowed under my feet as I strolled over it on the Locust Street Bridge. The murmuring, soothing river sounded an odd, surrealistic harmony against the backdrop of the cacophony of the city as my mind was struck with a searing, stark thought about the idea of human dignity, and how so many of us live without it.
Dale Lidicker