3At last the sun came out.
It seemed she had been waiting for hours and that was probably the truth, she hadn't slept that well last night. She couldn't remember when she last had a good night's sleep- she couldn't even remember the night before. It was all a foggy blur.
Footsteps came and went in the hallway outside. No one came in to check on her. She vaguely heard a couple of female voices outside and then they were gone.
There was a clock on the wall past the foot of her bed but she couldn't make out the numbers of the hands.
It was no use ringing for the nurse, no one answered in time anyway. The last time her shaking hand pushed the button, she had to wait and wait. She guessed it had been a half an hour (or longer) before a young man called to her from the hallway-
"What is it, hon?" He asked impatiently.
"I'm sorry to bother you," she rasped, as she fought to get the words out. Even talking took too much out of her, too much strength. "I have to be changed. I'm all wet."
"OK. I'll get someone." He was gone quickly and no one came back, even after she had passed the button again and again.
It wasn't until breakfast-time that someone came but only to give her her meal.
"Oh, you haven't been changed yet?" A young woman (she didn't know who it was) put the tray on a table and swung it over her lap in the hospital bed. It was oatmeal, milk and juice. She hated oatmeal. There was no toast. She grasped the spoon with her shaking hand and knew the oatmeal would be cold before it touched her lips. It was. The milk smelled funny and the OJ was too sour, tasting of concentrate instead of real juice.
"When will I be changed?" she asked again, almost whining now, she was so tired having had no sleep and her body ached constantly. Just lying in bed all day and night hurt her bones and her butt was terribly sore. It was as if she could feel the skin of her bum rotting with its sores. No one ever came to move her, much less answer the button she rang- or even to change her diaper.
"I'll call someone." The young woman left again, leaving her alone with the food she didn't eat.
She gazed out the window. At least it had a pretty garden with statues of St. Francis and bird feeders all around. She had asked that the window curtain be left open so she could look outside. She didn't watch T.V. and there was nothing on that interested her. She stopped caring about the outside world long ago- and the outside world stopped caring about her. She had no visitors.
Sometime later another woman came.
"Are you here to change me?" she asked again.
But the woman, an older Asian woman, shook her head and quietly took away the food tray.
She guessed the woman didn't know much English. Many of the workers came from Cambodia, Laos or the Philippines. The only job they had known in America was housecleaner, caretaker and cook. Possibly a few beauty college majors (the young ones mostly) but the older women had to take the low-paying jobs as best they could to survive in a country full of promises but no help. Some were bitter about it. She tried to be nice to all of them- but the rare few were cruel and there was nothing she could do about it.
Mostly, they drugged her. She had (on more than one occasion), taken what they gave her and dozed off only to wake six hours later, sopping wet in her diaper, to see the sun setting over the garden in the outside window.
When she first came to the "rest home" she had been more alert, talkative and even got to go out in the wheelchair to the garden outside. It hadn't been that long ago either... What was it now, three months?
Unable to care for herself after a bad fall, social services came in, assured her everything would be "all right" then proceeded to take over her life. First, she was taken out of her home (she lived alone), only able to bring a few possessions with her. From one place to the next they moved her, assisted living- which Medicare didn't cover, to board and care, only to find that they couldn't provide the 24-hour care she needed. Then this place.
She didn't know what happened to her things. Her lease was up at the end of the year- having signed her financial obligations over to a banker. She didn't even know how much money she had left. Everyone assured her it would be fine, that she would be taken care of. She learned they lied to her.
"Get me out of the way, that's what they did." She spoke aloud to no one in the room. "They took everything away from me, my home, my money and my freedom. Now, what do I have left?"
She watched a bird flutter down to the St. Francis bird feeder. She lost herself to watching the small sparrow flit about in the cement dish while the serene St. Francis watched in approval.
Finally, a caretaker came. But it was not who she wanted to see. It was the mean woman, some asian woman who smiled a lot but never meant what she said.
"You need to be changed?" She shrilly asked. She stood only five-foot-five. "You wet already? Why you so dirty? All the time, huh?"
The mean woman ripped the covers off and snapped on her gloves, flapping open the new diaper (almost ripping it) before she threw it on the bed.
Her diaper wasn't just wet, it was soaked through and the whole bed was wet, had been for hours.
"Now the bed all dirty! Look what you did!" The cranky woman with the false smile roughly put her hands under her-
"Ow, that hurts!" She couldn't stand the pain. Her hip ached and the skin was raw from the urine soaking it. She couldn't remember when she had been washed. She tried to reach the bar above her to pull herself away from the mean woman's handling but the woman grabbed at her hand.
"You stay still, I have to change you!"
She cried out again but was ignored. It was no use. She was like dead meat to them. Humiliation on top of the pain made her want to cry but her eyes were too dry and it ached to even try. She could only gasp with pain through her soar throat. She wanted water, her mouth was grimy and she could barely swallow.
The woman twisted her over and then she felt a sharp pain- right where her rib was.
"Oh God! I felt something break!" she screamed.
"Oh, you cry baby! I barely touch you. Your diaper is on but now your bed is wet. I have to get someone to help me lift you." The woman threw the diaper carelessly into the full trash bin and it hung precariously before it fell to the ground. She never noticed and left the room.
The pain was spreading. It was clawing at her lungs. This was torture.
She never thought she would be in this situation, so helpless to do anything.
"I won't let that happen to me," she had vowed while still in good health. But all of a sudden, a fall, and that was all it took- the final blow before she lost everything. Her body failed her and what little independence or dignity she had was stripped away.
"I should've killed myself when I had the chance." How many times had she thought this? But there was no way... the pills she had tried to hoard were not enough to do the job. She had no gun. There was no way to inject herself with anything- no doctor would help her. And now it was too late.
Day after day, she suffered.
The indignity of the aged, worse as any torture devised by man.
She had no choice of food, water, bathroom needs or getting out of bed.
They had changed managers at the care home and now there were less staff- along with cheaper meals and no heat.
She complained of the cold often. It was always cold now. The pain in her chest spread until it seemed her heat would give away to it- but no suck luck. She was doomed to live. Doomed to suffer, doomed to keep breathing through her broken rib (yes, she was sure it was broken). Now she couldn't even grasp the bar over her head, it hurt too much to lift her arm, either one.
She lie in the filthy bed covered in filthy urine, waiting for someone to come and move her.
Outside the window, clouds moved across the sunlight, making the room dark. The one fluorescent light on the ceiling was dingy and did nothing to brighten the room. She could just turn her head to look outside. A few more birds gathered on the cement feeder.
Finally, someone came to move her. It was now time for lunch.
"Uh oh," a Hispanic (or was he Latino?) man came to help. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to another young woman she didn't recognize and they both shook their heads at her. When he tried to move her, she screamed.
"I'll get the doctor." The young woman said in an accent. More and more waiting. The young man had switched on a game of baseball on the TV and was sitting in the visitor's chair when at last someone came in- but it wasn't the doctor.
"He's out right now..." the woman (was she the nurse?) answered when asked about the doctor. The woman examined her briefly, pulling back the covers to press softly on her chest as she yelled in pain again from the rib.
"Please," she begged, "I'm in so much pain!" She whimpered. It was pitiful but it was all she could do. Agony did not describe what she was feeling.
"I'll get you some morphine." The woman rushed off before she could tell her, no morphine; it made her mouth too dry to swallow and she was already in too much discomfort.
The man and woman orderlies spoke rapidly to each other for a moment before they both left.
She was still in the urine drenched bed. Some time later a different woman came back, roughly taking her arm.
"Don't touch me! My rib is broken and it hurts!" she begged.
The woman only nodded and quickly put an IV needle in her against her protests.
"What're you doing? Please no morphine! It makes my mouth too dry."
"It's OK, Mrs. Smith, the doctor, Mr. Randall said it'll help you sleep." The nurse said without looking her in the eye. She was done in less than a minute and she saw with dismay, a clear plastic bag hanging above her, dripping the morphine into her weak and pain wracked body.
No one had moved her out of the urine soaked bed.
She opened her eyes but instead of seeing the darkness through the outside window, there was only a wall.
"My window! My window!" she cried. She gasped through her mouth, her tongue was stuck and her throat too dry. "Water! Water!" She tried to scream. Finally, she pulled the IV bag stand to the bed and tried to pull the needle out.
"No, Mrs. Smith, you need to keep that in." An orderly came.
"Water..." she gasped.
"Hold on, I'll get it..."
"Don't leave me!" She couldn't stand anymore, but the person was gone.
She looked to her right and saw only charts above a wall filled with medical supplies. Her hand shook as she reached for the needle stuck in her arm but was too weak and trembling to get it out. She collapsed back, out of breath and moaning her distress.
"Here 'ya go, Mrs. Smith," a black woman orderly came in and held the straw to her lips as she weakly grasped it, shaking terribly. She almost choked as the water threatened to drown her lungs and she coughed non-stop.
The black woman patiently waited for her to stop then offered the water again.
"My window..." she said at last, still wanting to cough but fighting against it.
"You mean in your room? You'll be back there soon. The doctor just needs to X-ray you first. You're in the ICU, your blood pressure dropped a bit, so we're going to fix you up again, okay?"
"No," she shook her head. "Just get me back to my room. I want to go back." She coughed again and only barely heard the black woman speak.
"You'll be back there soon after the doctor sees you- " the woman got up then went to check the chart as someone else came in. "Is Mrs. Smith going back to #224?"
Another woman from the hallway answered, "No, she was moved. She has a room now with someone else, they needed that room for another patient, so we'll just put her in room #172."
She couldn't stop coughing. The pain tore through her lungs and her broken rib.
"Just get some rest." The black woman (her name tag said "Tanya" B.) gave her a pat then left.
She looked up and saw another plastic bag of morphine was hooked into her.
Her eyelids fell over her eyes.
When she woke up, it was dark except for a light coming through a drape around her bed.
She screamed.
Someone came in, a young woman not more than twenty-years-old. "Yes, Mrs. Smith? Why're you screaming?"
"Where am I?"
"You're in your room- "
"This isn't my room!"
"It is now, they moved you." She moved to pick up a chart hanging at the end of the bed.
"Where's my outside window?"
The girl pulled back the curtain. Outside was barbed wire and white fluorescent light shining through from the parking lot. There was no garden window anymore but a narrow slot, like a prison window.
Mrs. Smith looked away, staring at the clock at the foot of her bed. The second hand didn't move, there was no ticking sound and the hands were stuck at 3:23.