Rusty’s Story E-Book

Carol Gino

• Herausgeber: aaha! Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 606

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

“Why do they keep locking me up?”
Rusty’s Story is Carol Gino’s account of the extraordinary life of the woman she undertook to help – the woman who ended up teaching her an invaluable lesson about the will to live, the strength of hope…
Rusty used to wonder if she would make it through the day, seeing danger in everyday living. Rusty has epilepsy.
She was twenty when Carol Gino met her and learned of her past ordeals: the stigma of mental illness, the drugs that took away her self-control, the treatments that only worsened her symptoms.
Carol and Rusty set out to prove that illness can be overcome, and that there is no substitute for love and care.
From Library Journal
While many advancements have been made in understanding and treating epilepsy, the disease is still surrounded by an aura of dread. Rusty was a teenager when she was stricken with epilepsy. Misdiagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, for years she suffered more from inappropriate medical treatment than from her condition. The reader is mesmerized as Gino passionately relates Rusty’s plight. Despite repeated incarcerations in a frightful state mental institution and the toxic effects of drugs, she never lost her sense of humanity or her strong desire to help others. Gino’s deep distrust of the medical establishment, her fervent attachment to nursing, and her conviction that the patient knows best are themes that are interwoven into the emotional story of Rusty’s fight for a normal life. – Carol R. Glatt, Helene Fuld Medical Center Lib., Trenton, N.J

Leseprobe

Also by Carol Gino

The Nurse’s Story

Then an Angel Came

There’s an Angel in My Computer

The Yardsale of Life: The 8 Coats of Meaning

Where Dreams Come True

The Family by Mario Puzo (completed by Carol Gino)

Me & Mario: Love, Power & Writing with Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather

Rusty’s Story

Carol Gino

Published by aaha! Books

New York and Texas

www.carolgino.com

www.aahabooks.com

Copyright © 1997, 2019 by Carol Gino

Bantam edition, 1986, aah-ha! Books Inc. edition, 1997, aaha! Books LLC edition, 2019

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design: Aldren Gamalo

ISBN 13-PB 978-1-936530-11-3

ISBN 13-ePUB 978-1-936530-04-5

ISBN 13-Kindle 978-1-936530-08-3

Library of Congress Number: 96-095309

Printed in the United States of America

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Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is extended for permission to reprint the following:

Extract from “The Cocktail Party” from COLLECTED POEMS,

1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright 1963,

1964 by T.S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. in the United

States and the Philippines. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Publishers in Canada.

Extract from THE EPILEPSY FACT BOOK, “Psychomotor Seizures” and

“Partial Seizures with Complex Symptoms”,© 1977 by Harry Sands and Frances Minters. FA.

Davis Company. Reprinted by permission.

Line from THE MAN OF LA MANCHA,©1968 Andrew Scott Inc. and Helena Music Corp.

Music by Mitch Leigh and words by Joe Dation. Reprinted by permission.

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

The Doctor’s Note

Update on Rusty

Epilepsy Resources

About the Author

For Rusty

and the phoenix bird in all of us

Prologue

THE WORDS KEPT POURING OUT-UNTIL FINALLY CAROL COULDN’T BEAR TO HEAR ANY MORE.

It was dawn when I stopped Rusty from finishing her story. Through the window, the world outside the nursing home was in a rosy gray haze. I was crying.

“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled between sniffles.

“For what?” Rusty asked.

As a nurse, one of the oaths I had sworn, one of the things I had promised was to do no harm. I was a true believer in Medicine. We could bring dead men back to life by pumping on their chests; we could relieve pain with a shot or a pill; we could make the blind see again, with cataract surgery and corneal transplants. And now as I listened to Rusty’s story, I felt like some medieval nun who had joined the Church because of her belief in good and God and had just heard about the Inquisition. My faith had been challenged.

Chapter 1

I didn’t always love being a woman.

“Rites of Passage” used to make me think of animal skins hanging on tepee walls, hot rocks burning red in the center of a small circle of painted Indians, and a lot of chanting. But that’s not how it was for me.

My first spark of womanhood came as I was standing on the hood of Jim’s black Camaro in the middle of the Japanese tea garden in San Francisco, screaming hysterically, “I wouldn’t marry you if my life depended on it.”

It was a gorgeous day. Jim was tall, blond and handsome and we had just spent a month together deciding to get married-and, suddenly, I knew I just couldn’t do it. I liked him too much to marry him.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had always needed men not particularly to love, care and share with, but to jump off into Life. They were a safe haven-a solid shore from which to begin the big swim.

The beginning of the Rite of Passage.

I wanted to be a woman, a real woman. I wanted to give and live as a woman-not off a man.

And the most valuable thing about a Rite of Passage is that it does test your endurance, it does take you beyond yourself, but it doesn’t do it without taking a searing iron to the center of your heart.

Still, I had an edge. The hidden talisman I held was nursing.

Salvation Nursing Home. The last place in the world I expected to begin any kind of initiation-or to be run down by a stretcher. But that’s exactly what was happening. I heard the frantic voices and the fast spinning grind of wheels behind me as I walked the long white corridor and I instinctively jumped back against the wall. Still, the stretcher flew past so fast and so close that it almost knocked me over. On it was something that looked like a heap of dirty old rags and sounded like an old woman. “Oh God! Oh God! Help me ...” she screamed in a shrill hoarse voice. The sweet acrid smell of stale urine, dried feces and alcohol left on the wind immediately helped me understand this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill old lady.

Up ahead, the two young ambulance techs stopped the stretcher in front of the nurses’ station. I saw a woman dressed in white, obviously the nurse in charge, step toward them. “Rusty!” she hollered as soon as she saw what they had, and then, even louder, “Rusty! Stop what you’re doing and come now.”

A girl dressed in a green nursing assistant’s uniform stepped out from one of the rooms in front of me. Something in her stance let me know she was the one the nurse had been calling. Rusty. She was attractive with blond short hair which fell in place perfectly. I figured she was about twenty. Her uniform was immaculate, obviously pressed carefully, and her white shoes were not only polished but buffed to a high shine. She was thin, her arms muscular, not in the way a man’s are, but as though she had worked hard. She wore her watch low on her wrist on a thick leather band, the face turned in. She began to walk quickly toward what was now a real commotion.

The ambulance techs were trying with all their strength to hold the old woman down on the stretcher. Like Houdini, she had managed to loosen the straps that had held her. “Let me out of here, you crappers!” the old woman screamed. Rusty and I now ran toward them. Up close, the old woman was a terrifying sight. Her tangled mass of knotted gray hair stood straight out from her scalp and you could barely distinguish her features because of the caked and cracking dirt all over her face. Her arms and hands swung fast and hard as though she held a machete and anyone who came near was certain to be slashed by the yellowed nails that had grown so long they’d curled around her fingers and turned into bone. The nurse stood far back in the nurses’ station. Very unpleasant looking. The name on her badge was “Mrs. Frick” and she was the head nurse on the unit. “Rusty!” she shouted again, though the girl was now standing next to me at the foot of the stretcher. “Calm Mama down. We have to get her admitted.” Her dreary brown hair was severely pulled back. Her skin was a drab olive and she wore no lipstick to try to change the downward half-moon of her thin-lipped mouth. She stared icily at me and then impatiently waved me away.

The old woman looked at Mrs. Frick and her withered face contorted. “I’m not your mama, you witch! I’m Marta Sprite, a grown woman who has just been kidnapped.” With that she began cursing and scratching while trying to hoist herself up. She looked as though she was getting ready to jump off the stretcher and bolt.

“Move away from her,” Rusty said to all of us, and voice was soft but firm. Both techs, still trying to grab for the old woman’s arms, looked up questioningly. Mrs. Frick nodded and they moved away. Marta, caught off guard stopped for just a moment, and Rusty walked up to her, hands at her side. But as soon as she got close, the old woman’s hand shot out. One of her long claws ripped at Rusty’s cheek. Rusty didn’t move.

“What’s wrong with you, Mama?” Mrs. Frick asked, exasperated, from behind the desk. She had to shout to get through the din of the old woman’s screaming and thrashing. Marta was still hitting out hard.

Rusty had slowly and carefully raised her arm and held it up in front of her, a lion tamer now, as the old woman slashed again. “Don’t call her Mama,” Rusty said softly to Mrs. Frick. Her eyes stayed riveted on the old woman. “Her name’s Marta and she told you she’s been brought here against her will.” Marta was watching Rusty suspiciously but she stopped struggling and slashing. Rusty’s cheek was bleeding and there were several long scratches on her arm.

“The old bitch is crazy as a coot,” one of the white-coated techs whispered loud enough for all of us to hear. “She’s a damn old bag-lady whose house looks like a filthy pig sty.”

Mrs. Frick looked as though she finally understood, but Rusty looked angry. “You know nothing about her,” she said, “or about her life.” She turned to Mrs. Frick, and added, “I think they can go now. We can manage with Marta.” Marta was lying quietly on the stretcher for the moment but I didn’t know how Rusty could be so sure that the old woman wouldn’t immediately erupt again. “Can you walk, Marta?” Rusty asked.

The other tech shook his head. “The old fool almost broke her leg. Been laying in shit, pardon me, on the floor of her place for days until one of the neighbors called. She won’t let us take her to a hospital emergency room for X-rays. Best we could do is wrap it tight.”

As though it was a challenge, Marta immediately sat up and threw her legs over the side. Mrs. Frick looked ready to call in the troops again. Rusty quickly moved forward to steady Marta. One of her legs was in an Ace bandage, the foot at the end of it crusted with dirt and the same thick yellow nails as on her fingers, again grown so long that they had curled around her toes.

“I’m getting down and walking,” Marta announced. “Any of you jerks try to stop me and I’ll let you have it again.”

“Let me help you,” Rusty said softly to the old woman. “Put your arm around my shoulders and don’t lean on your bad leg. Frick, can you get us a walker?” Rusty asked. “And tell me which room is Mrs. Sprite’s... if she decides to stay?” Then as Marta reached for Rusty, she added, “The guys can go. We’re okay.”

To my surprise Mrs. Frick, though she didn’t look pleased, dismissed them. She immediately called for one of the other aides to get her a walker, and handed it to Rusty. Back on her feet, Marta looked no less grubby but much less angry. I was left standing at the nurses’ station when Mrs. Frick followed them down the hall. I watched them go and plunked down on one of the small metal chairs. Then I hesitantly took a deep breath through my wrinkled nose and tried to absorb some of the atmosphere.

From the time I was a little kid, I’d always had a lot of curiosity and a great imagination. Like an actress, I could study a role, a person, and actually feel what it was like to be them. That’s why I was here now. I was going to practice being an old lady.

I had decided not to remarry. I had given up the happily forever after with the prince again; the chance to grow old in bliss and comfort, to sit together on matching rocking chairs on the front porch of a big house. And I had chosen instead a life alone which held only treacherous territory and desperate loneliness, especially for a woman like me who was arrogant enough to think she could get through life unattached. That was the gospel according to my mom, who I swear believes that of all the evils to befall woman, being unmarried is the worst. Especially when you get older. So I was certain that without the porch and the man, there was only the nursing home.

The big trouble with confronting old ladyhood was that I really hated the idea that so many old people, like old cars, were discarded and were placed in junk-yards, separate from the rest of life. So I hated nursing homes. I was afraid of them. But I always ran toward things I was afraid of because I had been taught never to run away. For the six years I’d been divorced and been a nurse I had worked in medical surgical hospitals doing blood-and-guts nursing. Running toward and battling sickness and death-until I was no longer afraid in the same way. Now it was time to face old age head-on; to feel my own tomorrow’s wrinkles and touch my own gray hair. To come to terms with the alternative I’d chosen. The fact that I was twenty-eight didn’t deter me. I knew it was only a matter of time.

I waited at the nurses’ station for about five minutes. When neither Mrs. Frick nor Rusty came back to the desk, I scanned the standing rack of metal charts, trying to find a clue to my patient, Mr. Gragone. The only thing I knew about him was what Mrs. Brian from the nurses’ registry had told me when she had called the night before. He was seventy years old; had diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Penny was his night nurse and I knew she’d be waiting impatiently for me to relieve her. She and I had been roommates for a while and had graduated from nursing school together, we were good friends. When I found Mr. Gragone’s room number on the meal-order list, I decided to wander around in search of him.

Now, the rubber soles of my white shoes squeaked as I passed the small semi-private rooms jutting outward from the bright white hallway. Inside these rooms, I could see nursing assistants dressed in pale green nylon uniforms pushing and pulling frail white-haired patients into their day clothes. Occasionally one of the old people moaned or cried out. There was no other sound.

When I came to the end of the hallway, from inside a room I could hear a gentle voice I recognized as Rusty’s saying, “C’mon, Louisa, let’s fix your hair like the picture.” Certain she would still be with Marta, I was surprised.

At the doorway, I looked in. Sure enough it was Rusty. Sitting upright on the bed in front of her was a skinny old woman with long wavy white hair. Rusty was combing it carefully.

I watched as the woman frowned and squinted her dark eyes. Then, without warning, she lifted her hand and with bony fingers dug deeply into Rusty’s side.

“Louisa,” Rusty said, quickly holding tight to the old woman’s hand, “you know I’d never hit an old lady wearing glasses. You’re not playing fair.”

“I ain’t wearing glasses,” Louisa snapped.

“All the more reason not to do that again,” Rusty teased her.

I laughed. Who ever thought of nursing homes as combat zones? Not me-but my first day was proof I was wrong. Yet, it didn’t seem to upset Rusty at all. She bent down in front of the old woman and asked quietly, “What’s wrong, Louisa? Did I hurt you?”

The old woman gritted her yellowed teeth, a pale old cat, and snarled, “I hate it in here.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a picnic for me when you take hunks of my body to show your unhappiness,” Rusty explained. “Let’s both make the best of it, okay? Now, what can I do to help you?” she asked patiently, still holding the old woman’s hand. Louisa refused to answer and promptly began to kick her heels frantically against the lowered side rails, making a terrible racket.

Dear Lord, I prayed, if I survive life long enough to be a withered old lady who hasn’t yet learned to be charming or even nice, could you please plant a flower like this young girl in whatever abominable weed garden I wind up?

“Can I help you?” I finally asked Rusty, smiling. She looked up quickly but she shook her head “No” and warned with her eyes to stay away. By this time the woman was pointing again and again to an antique framed picture, which was perched on her bedside table. Rusty nodded as though she understood the old woman, and then handed her the picture. Louisa, quiet now, stared at it while the young aide began slowly to braid her long hair.

“Who are you looking for?” Rusty asked me.

“I’m Mr. Gragone’s private-duty nurse,” I told her. “And Mrs. Frick never got back to the station.”

“She’s probably in with Marta,” Rusty explained. And when, at that moment, both of us heard Marta start shouting and cursing again, Rusty said, with a deadpan expression, “Yes, that’s where she is.” The way she said it made me laugh. Then she added, “If you can wait a minute until I can get Louisa into her wheelchair, we’ll ask her to move over and I’ll give you a lift down to his room.

She was pretty funny. I nodded.

“This is a new nurse, Louisa,” Rusty said as she introduced us.

“My name’s Carol,” I said. I smiled at them.

Louisa was lost in her picture.

“Mine’s Barbara Russell, but everyone calls me Rusty.” She had almost finished braiding Louisa’s hair.

I was touched by the way the girl treated Louisa-she had an obvious affection for her-and I was impressed by how she had handled Marta. She seemed genuinely to care for them. It was only then I realized that few of the other aides I had worked with in the years before really talked to old people. They had washed them and dressed them like dolls, as though they were things, not people. They hadn’t yelled or treated them badly, but somehow the feeling that they were real human beings was missing. Now, as I watched Rusty, I made up my mind that I would try never to take care of a person whose consciousness had been altered by senility or coma without remembering to really listen and speak to them.

Rusty helped Louisa into a geri-chair, a high-back blue vinyl chair with a white plastic tray across the front, and wheeled her toward the dining room.

At the end of the hall, Rusty pointed. “Mr. Gragone’s room is down that way. It’s the one with the white Cadillac parked in front of it.”

“I think you’re a nut,” I said, laughing again. She had my cheek muscles sore from smiling and I hadn’t even known her for an hour. At the end of the far hall, I opened the white-painted wooden door by its creaky gold handle and quietly let myself in. Penny was slumped in the vinyl high-back chair dozing behind a book. And Mr. Gragone was asleep. So I sat in the far corner of the room and waited. Penny’s shiny brown hair was a mess and her usually bright complexion seemed pale and washed out. She had chewed the lipstick off her full bottom lip and for the first time I noticed the many small lines around her closed eyes. Two weeks before, her ninety-year-old father had gotten very sick with uremia, and rather than put him in the hospital, she had been caring for him at home and working as well. It was taking its toll on her.

When Penny’s book dropped, startling her, I teased, “How was your night?”

She smiled, a guilty self-conscious smile, as she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Then, as she spoke, she tried to smooth the wrinkles out of her uniform. “Fine,” she whispered, “except that every time I got close enough to the poor thing to make his bed or wash him, he woke up, grabbed my breasts and pinched me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings but it sure was making me uncomfortable.”

“I probably would have given him a left hook,” I said, laughing. “How has his urine sugar been running?” I asked.

She handed me the urine fractional board, a record we kept after we tested his urine, and I looked at it carefully. Penny gave me report as she slowly collected her books and knitting to put in the large green mesh shopping bag she carried. I noticed her shoulders were stooped as she walked out the door. I felt bad for her.

After she left, I stood at the side of the bed and looked at Mr. Gragone. His thick white hair, smooth dark skin and full face made him look younger than seventy. He was still broad and muscular. When I saw his eyelashes flicker, I knew he was awake. “Hey, Dominic,” I whispered. “Good morning.” When he didn’t react, I shook his shoulder gently. He kept his eyes closed. I looked at my watch. It was only eight-forty-five. I could let him rest awhile longer. Penny had washed him and changed his sheets so there was nothing left for me to do but wait until it was time to feed him breakfast. In the meantime, I would get his chart.

As I walked back toward the nurses’ station, I could see a row of at least ten old people parked in geri-chairs along the wall. Some had their heads down on the trays, some had their ears covered, some had their eyes closed. They reminded me of white marble monkeys. See no evil. . .hear no evil. . .speak no evil.

Suddenly, with the sound of the breakfast cart arriving on the floor, as though a spell had broken, the white marble monkeys came to life. They began to rock, mumble and wail. Mrs. Frick shouted, “Rusty!” and instantly the young aide appeared.

Rusty, like a practiced mother of ten, walked along the row of patients placing bibs under each chin. She fixed and replaced bows on the old women’s hair and pushed the fallen glasses back up on the old men’s noses so they could see again. All the time, she teased and soothed. When the breakfast cart reached the nurses’ station, she handed out the silver. The patients banged their forks and spoons on plastic trays. The noise was deafening so early in the morning, but Rusty moved from one to another, handing out breakfast trays, and never looked annoyed. She cut up bacon, picked shells off watery eggs, poured milk from containers onto cold cereal.

“Careful, Howie,” she said as she mixed some S anka in one old man’s cup, “don’t burn yourself. It’s hot.” And those who were too weak or senile to remember to eat, she fed. “Hey, Anna,” she said, “here’s some oatmeal. Your favorite cereal.” She spooned the thin dripping cereal into the old woman’s toothless mouth with her left hand, while she wiped Howie’s chin with her right. Anna spit out the oatmeal and Howie and Joe choked on their bacon. And Rusty fed and wiped, soothed and smoothed.

I stood admiring. There’s a certain kind of talent, or maybe it’s art, when someone does something so well, that there’s no mistaking it. I’ve seen it with dancers who had something special; the way they moved with the music made them seem a part of it. I’ve heard it in singers; a voice that reaches for and captures notes that the rest of us can only dream about. I saw it in a carpenter once, his hammer wielded with such precision it seemed attached to his arm. And I watched it now in Rusty.

Mr. Gragone was still asleep when I got back into his room with the chart so I sat again, reading and thinking. There was something about Rusty that nagged at me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was more than just the way she cared for the patients, even though I was always on the lookout for people who did nursing the way I thought it should be done. It was more like the constant humming of a tune for which the title remains just out of reach-a quality about her that affected me, and left me feeling that I knew her, or had met her before.

Mr. Gragone woke up. He began to squirm and move around. So I rolled the top of his bed up. Like a rag doll, he slid over toward the side. I tried to straighten him out but he was listless and heavy to move. And each time I tried, I could feel his deliberate resistance. Crap! I thought, this man may drive me mad. Finally I managed to prop him up with a pillow under each arm and pull up the side rails before I left to get his breakfast tray.

By the time I came back, he seemed to be fast asleep again. I shook him by the shoulders and his heavy-lidded eyes opened halfway and then slammed shut instantly. He was obviously not pleased that I was there and had no intention of co-operating with me. Then I saw his eyes flicker and knew he was pretending. Something about that tickled me. He was being a brat, a fresh kid. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Hey, Mr. Gragone,” I said, “Dominic, I know you’re kidding. You can keep your eyes closed if you want, but you have to open your mouth and swallow. You’ve had insulin this morning and if you don’t eat something, you’ll pass out.”

His eyes flickered a few more times but he kept his lips tightly shut. “Dominic,” I said softly, “if you don’t eat, they’ll have to put in an IV so you get your nourishment from a bottle.” My worn threat didn’t move him. Eyes flickering, mouth zippered, he resisted. I spoke to him for another half-hour, trying to convince him. Several times I tried shoveling in some applesauce, with no success. He just let it slide out. Finally I gave up trying to reason with him.

Convinced at the time that the end justified the means, I said, “Okay, Dominic, that’s it. Open season.” I grabbed his nose and held the nostrils shut tight between my fingers. When he gasped for air, I fed him applesauce. He spit it at me. When I grabbed his nose again, he grabbed my breast and twisted. I jumped back.

As I stood and stared at him, I began to wonder just why I wanted to help him-why was I so determined to help him? But then, that’s just how I am. Once I start something, it’s just too hard for me to give up. I needed a new approach. “Okay, Dominic,” I said. “Truce. If you want to get well, it’s up to you and I’m willing to help you. If you don’t, that’s also up to you.”

I sat down in the chair and wiped the applesauce off my face, hair and uniform with a towel. Nothing in nursing school had prepared me for a situation like this. On hospital wards, it was all trial and error. In school, you have a perfect patient who’s dying to help you help him get well. I took a deep breath. Thank God I had children of my own and had learned some fancy footwork or I’d be lost, I thought.

After several minutes, I leaned my head back against the chair. Mr. Gragone, his eyes still closed, looked sad. And now I felt very guilty about holding his nose. And very defeated. I usually didn’t have to stoop to that kind of tactic. How the hell am I going to get him to eat? I wondered.

As a last resort, I tried some simple human kindness and Dominic weakened. “Would you like me to call the kitchen and order a scrambled-egg sandwich? You really should eat something so you can get out of this place and get home.” He nodded and I left to order another breakfast for him.

When I returned, Dominic was trying to reach his glasses, which were on top of the bedside table. As he did, he knocked over the water pitcher. With a shaking hand he picked up the paper cups on the table and threw them at the wall across from me. “Dammit ... dammit!” he shouted, as he held one hand with the other to keep it from shaking. His tremors got much worse when he was upset.

I dried his glasses and put them on him. “Dominic,” I said, “the doctor just ordered a new medicine that should help to stop the shaking from your Parkinson’s. It’s called L-dopa.” But whenever I spoke, he just got angrier.

We managed the next few hours only because by some stroke of luck the diet kitchen had noodles for lunch. Dominic gobbled them down, mumbling in Italian the whole time, but eating at least.

Then I left for lunch. But as I walked the hall toward the cafeteria, I could hear Marta screaming still. And when I passed her room, dishes and towels and plastic flatware flew through the doorway. “I dare any of you wardens to come in here,” she screamed. “I’ll kill any of you who try.” Then I heard the clank of the steel bedpan as it hit the tile bathroom floor. Finally Mrs. Frick came running out.

“She’s a madwoman,” Mrs. Frick said. Several of the aides were standing outside Malta’s room now. “Where’s Rusty?” the nurse asked them.

Lana, another young aide, answered, “She’s down with Howie. He’s crying again because he thinks his wife is cheating on him.”

“Jesus,” Mrs. Frick said, annoyed. “Go get her and tell her to stop wasting her time. This woman needs to be cleaned up before she infests the entire patient population with the stuff that’s growing in her hair and on her body.”

I waited to see if I could help, but before I could ask, Rusty was walking toward the desk and Mrs. Frick was reprimanding her. “Rusty,” she said, “that man’s wife is eighty years old. Why are you indulging him in his craziness when there’s work to be done?”

Rusty frowned, but when she answered, her voice was even. “Frick, he doesn’t see his wife as an old woman. He sees her as she was when they were young. So he’s jealous. And it’s painful for him. And that pain’s as real as if they were young. He only needs to be reassured, and I don’t think that’s a waste of my time.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to humor him the way you do,” Mrs. Frick insisted. “Half the time he forgets she exists, he’s so senile.”

“But the other half, when he remembers she does, he’s jealous and it causes him pain,” Rusty countered. When Mrs. Frick huffed with annoyance, Rusty added, “We should all be as lucky as she is, to be loved that much-even half the time.”

“I want that woman scrubbed,” Mrs. Frick said as she pointed toward the door of Marta’s room, “before you go home tonight.”

Rusty hesitated for only a minute before she said, “Okay. Let me finish with Anna and Joe. If I can’t get her done during the shift, I’ll stay later.” When she turned toward me, she winked. “The money’s too good to pass up.”

Again, I wondered about her. Mrs. Frick obviously depended on her and seemed to respect her, yet Rusty had taken an extra heavy load and even offered to stay late if she had to when Mrs. Frick muscled her. As she started down the hall, I stopped her. “Rusty,” I said, “do you want me to help you with Marta?”

She smiled. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that if you can stay a few minutes when you’re finished with Dominic. We can do her fast after Frick goes home.”

I listened to Marta shout and watched as a roll of toilet paper flew out her door into the hall. Then I laughed and asked, “Fast? How do you figure that?”

Rusty said, “I have an idea. Stay, if you want, and see.”

After lunch I went back to Mr. Gragone. Even through his closed door, I could hear Marta screaming all afternoon. And Dominic wasn’t too much better. We had another cup-throwing scene when he tried to hold his coffee and spilled it because he started shaking again. “Dammit... dammit!” he kept shouting in frustrated Italian-accented English. By the end of the shift, I was wearing a uniform covered in applesauce, tea, S anka and orange juice. I vowed that by the following day I would learn to duck more effectively. I was thrilled to see Penny when she arrived early to relieve me.

I had almost forgotten my offer to help until I walked past Maria’s room and heard Rusty’s voice. The door was partly open so I peeked in. Rusty was standing against a far wall and as I watched, Marta took a greedy drink from a metal camper’s flask. When Rusty saw me, she waved me inside and told me to close the door.

Marta was drunk. I mean hopelessly, obviously drunk.

“What’s going on?” I asked Rusty as I walked up next to her.

“Malta’s getting drunk,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get killed-or at least fired?” I asked.

Rusty shrugged. “Couldn’t do much about it.”

“Where did she get it?” I asked.

“She had the flask hidden in her underpants,” Rusty said, eyes twinkling. “Would you have gone after it?”

I laughed. But then Rusty looked at me seriously, and added, “That poor woman still has to be bathed and her clothes are glued to her by the scabs from the sores on her body. From tomorrow on she’s going to be forced to stay stone-cold sober, and for a woman like her, in a place like this, it’ll be hell. Standing guard for her while she ties one on for the last time seemed to be the kindest thing to do.”

Just then someone began to push open the door and both Rusty and I threw our backs against it. “Can’t come in just yet,” Rusty called in a forced professional voice. I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Suddenly Marta started to sing.

“What’s going on?” the voice from behind the door asked.

“Don’t worry about it, Sanchez,” Rusty answered. “I’m just trying to bathe the new admission.” Rusty whispered to me, “She’s the evening nurse. She’s really okay. But there’s no sense getting anyone else involved, in case there’s trouble.” I nodded.

Marta started to curse again. And the door handle began to wiggle as Sanchez asked again, “Need help, Rusty?”

“No, we’re fine, really,” Rusty said.

“Okay,” the nurse said, and we could hear her footsteps as she began to walk away. “Just call if you need anything.”

“Sure will,” Rusty answered back.

“What now?” I asked Rusty as I walked closer to the bed and looked at Marta. In the middle of her last curse, she had just stopped short and passed out.

“I’ll get the basin and you can get some towels from under her night table,” Rusty said. “Together, we’ll get her done in half the time.”

After we got everything ready, Rusty stood on one side of the bed and I stood on the other. Then together we both lowered the sheet. “Breathe through your mouth, so you can’t smell as well,” Rusty urged. But she hadn’t needed to tell me that. I had been breathing through my mouth, except when I laughed, since I’d come into the room.

Marta was a mess. Up close, I could see that she was wearing two cotton dresses and a sweater. “Cashmere?” I said to Rusty, surprised as I touched Marta’s sleeve.

‘The flask is silver,” Rusty said, as though that explained it.

The dresses and the sweater were just for starters. Several pairs of nylon stockings covered the top of Maria’s leg which was wrapped in the Ace bandage, and several more were in various stages of deterioration on her other leg. Rusty and I working together tried peeling her stocking off. But skin had grown over the parts of the nylon which had eaten its way into her skin. In other places on her heavy thighs, blisters broke and bled.

Rusty said, “We’ll never get her slips or her dresses off this way.”

“Let’s rip them or cut them off,” I said. But when Rusty tried, we both could see that wouldn’t work. So much liquid had spilled on the cloth, both from inside and outside, that it felt like cardboard and was strong as steel.

God! she really smelled awful. “Do you smell gangrene?” I asked Rusty.

She closed her mouth for a minute and took a quick sniff through her nose. “Bet she’s got maggots,” Rusty said. “The only person I knew who smelled like this had maggots.”

“Yuck,” I said, and then immediately felt guilty in case Marta had heard and I had hurt her feelings. “Who had maggots?” I asked Rusty. “I mean, where were you working then?”

Rusty didn’t answer and something in her expression and her quick hand movements as she tried to remove Maria’s sweater warned me not to pursue it. After a couple of minutes of uncomfortable silence, with the sound of Maria’s snoring making it even more obvious, I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Rusty looked up then and smiled at me. “It’s okay. It’s my problem, not yours. I’d just rather not talk about it now.”

“Sure,” I said, “I understand.” But I didn’t really because there had been nothing in my life I thought important enough to keep secret.

“Marta should have a bath,” Rusty said thoughtfully.

“She’ll never walk in her condition,” I answered.

“We’ll have to use a Hoyer lift, to get her out of bed” Rusty explained, looking down at Marta, “and put her in a bathtub. We’ll have to soak her clothes off and try to get her clean. Are you in a rush to get home?” she asked.

“I need to be home by five,” I told her. “In time for my son Jeremy to be dropped off from kindergarten.”

Rusty asked, “Do you have any other kids?”

“Yep,” I said. “A girl. Lynn, eight.”

“You don’t look that old,” she said as she walked toward the door. Then she added, “I’ll go get the lift.”

The Hoyer lift always reminded me of an elephant hammock. It’s a big chrome dolly with a plastic sling hanging from large steel chains.

The whole room almost rattled when Rusty wheeled it in, but Marta never woke up. “You sure she’ll be all right?” I asked, assuming that Rusty would know.

“She must have been drinking for years at home, to carry a flask in her underwear,” Rusty said. “And if she survived there, it’s likely she’ll come out of it here.”

I’m seldom squeamish, but I was really careful not to lean Marta against me when I turned her on her side as Rusty slid the plastic hammock under her. When we turned her toward Rusty, I pulled the plastic smooth, then we let her roll onto her back. Once the plastic hammock was hooked, top and bottom, by the heavy chains, Rusty stomped on the pedal of the hydraulic lift and the plastic rose off the bed. Rusty held the chrome bar of the lift while I swung the hammock off the bed. Hanging there, Marta looked like a dead mackerel waiting to be weighed.

Chapter 2

After supper I took my kids for a walk. Jeremy ran and jumped along the street while Lynn walked slowly next to me, hands folded behind her back. It had been a beautiful day and now the night was warm but humid.

“How come no birds are singing?” Lynn asked.

“Maybe they all flew south,” I teased.

She gave me her tolerant look. “Mom,” she said, “I was being serious. You know birds fly south in the winter, not in the beginning of summer.”

I reached over and tousled her long dark hair. I smiled at her seriousness. “Forgive me, my child.” I said. “It was my attempt at humor. The real reason the birds aren’t singing is ... I honestly don’t know.” Then I noticed that everything seemed very still. Not a leaf moved. “Maybe it’s going to storm,” I added.

Lynn seemed satisfied but Jeremy turned around and started a heavy-footed march toward us, his small hands held up against his head. He was making faces like a monster. “They’re probably hiding,” he growled with mock menace.

“Get out of here, you little creep,” Lynn said, and swatted him.

A small black-and-white colt lived around the corner from our house, and often in the evenings we went to visit him and brought some sugar cubes or carrots.

Tonight, as we walked up to the fence and held out our hands, the young horse seemed skittish. He licked the sugar cube from Lynn’s hand but ignored Jeremy’s waving carrot and quickly trotted into his shed. Jeremy was crushed.

“Don’t worry,” Lynn reassured him with big-sister wisdom, “he still likes you. Maybe he just hates carrots today.”

Jeremy flung his carrot between the bars of the wooden fence onto the ground as we turned to go. “Will you sleep in my room tonight, Lynn,” he asked in his squeaky plaintive voice, “and tell me a story?”

Lynn’s shoulders sagged under the burden of her younger brother’s need, but when I looked at her face, I could see she was pleased to be so important to him. “Okay,” she said, putting her arm around his shoulders, “but after this you’ll have to get used to sleeping alone.”

That night after the kids were in bed, the storm broke, with lightning and thunder so loud that the house literally shook. I tried to listen to music but the static interfered and I couldn’t watch TV because the sound kept crackling and I was afraid the set would blow up.

Finally I grabbed a book and went upstairs to bed.

As the sky rumbled and rolled like some primitive god’s hungry belly and lightning sliced through the black night, I felt scared as a child and very alone. There were certainly benefits to being a single independent woman, but lying in a cold bed by myself on a stormy night wasn’t one of them. I looked at my watch. Midnight. And suddenly, outside my window, I heard a crack so loud and close that I instinctively covered my head.

The sky, in short shocks of bright white, pushed its way through my thin voile curtains and the rain hammered ferociously on the window panes. I sat up in bed and grabbed for the phone. My hands were shaking as I dialed.

After a few rings, Creede picked up. Creede was a friend of mine from England and different from me in every way. She was tall with reddish hair, while I was short with dark hair. Her whole presentation was cool and logical, while mine was hot and emotional. And so we got along.

“Creede,” I said with panicky voice into the phone, “the willow tree outside is going to fall on the house.”

“It’s a lovely night out, isn’t it?” she answered, ignoring my terror. “We’ve needed this rain for the plants and grass.”

“Creede, didn’t you hear me?” I asked. “The willow tree-”

“Is not,” she said in a cool measured tone, “going to fall onto your house.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“How can you be so sure it will?” she asked. “Think about it, Carol,” she continued. “That tree is at least a hundred years old. In that hundred years, there must have been thousands of storms, with lightning. If in all that time it didn’t fall, why tonight?”

“So then, you’re sure?” I repeated. As I looked outside, I could see the tree’s huge branches swaying in a wild and frantic dance. “It’s a very big tree,” I added.

“Well, in that case,” Creede said quietly, “if it does fall on the house, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t be funny,” I said, but I laughed.

“I’m not,” she said. “There are some things you’ll have to trust to fate, or you’ll be in a panic all the time.”

When Creede came over from England as a domestic, she had no idea what the future would bring. But she said she always trusted fate and her life had worked out well. That was ten years before, and now Creede worked at night as an aide in a rehabilitation hospital. She was tough but wonderful with her patients and they responded well. She had been saving her money to open a flower shop. That had always been her dream. And she knew she would have it someday. In the meantime, she thought of herself as an artist who was taking time out to help people. I thought of her as a good friend.

“Creede,” I asked then, “do you really like living alone?”

“Love it,” she answered simply. “No one else to consider, to have to bother with, no one to account to, and plenty of time to paint, write poetry and run on the beach.”

“I’ve decided I hate it,” I told her. “I feel as though I live in a void.”

Though I had been divorced for almost six years at the time, I had never before been in this position. I had either lived at home with my parents, gone to school, had Penny as a roommate for a few years and filled up much of the remaining three years with Jim. And even when a relationship doesn’t feed your heart, it does take up time and fill in space. But now Jim was gone and even Penny was spending so much time with her dad, I hardly even got to see her.

“What about the kids,” Creede asked, “and work?”

“Hmm. Not enough,” I said quietly, “even though it should be. Maybe I’ll go back to school.”

“Sounds fine,” Creede said, “but how will that solve your need not to Uve alone? Maybe you should find yourself another man to share your life.”

With that, I almost choked. “Uh-uh. Absolutely not. You know that nice men, good guys, want to marry, and I don’t fit the job description.”

“What’s that?” she asked curiously.

“You know, Creede,” I said. “The kind of woman who can be a slave and love it. And not need recognition for her contributions.”

Creede cut in, “All marriages or relationships aren’t like that.”

“Well, anyway,” I added, “no ship can have two captains, and you know how competitive I am.”

“There are other kinds of men,” Creede reminded me. “The kind who’ll appreciate your intelligence, sense of humor and originality. And forgive or accept what you’re not.”

“Yes, I guess so,” I conceded. “The kind of man who’s exciting, independent and loves freedom. You mean that kind of man?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Well,” I admitted, “the only problem with that is, I’m afraid of them. I’m bored with the known but frightened by the unknown.”

“I can’t help you,” Creede said, “because you’re not being logical.”

She was right. But what did that have to do with anything?

Finally, after several minutes caught between the hammering of raindrops and Creede’s silence, I asked, “What about another roommate? Another female, I mean?”

Before Jim, I had enjoyed living with Penny. We had shared the responsibility of the house and the children. And it was fun to have an adult to talk to over dinner, to tell about the troubles or fun of the day.

“Who have you got in mind?” Creede asked cautiously.

“Not you,” I laughed. “I couldn’t stand your constant logic or your pathological need for privacy.”

She was obviously so relieved that she ignored my teasing and answered, “It’s something to think about. You could give it a whirl.”

The vibration from the sound of thunder knocked over the small crystal butterfly that I kept on my dresser, and when the lightning cracked this time, I thought it had split the house in two. Then I heard fire sirens.

“Creede,” I asked, panicky again, “promise this tree isn’t going to fall?”

“I promise,” she said, laughing. Then she hung up.

Still I couldn’t sleep. So I lay awake thinking. Why was I afraid? What was I afraid of?

One of the reasons I had always liked working at night in a hospital was that I didn’t like being alone at home. Here with the loud constant day noises silenced by the dark, each and every small noise became a threat. I usually spend a good part of the night sitting stiffly in bed waiting. I was afraid of being killed or attacked.

Of course, working at the hospital could never be considered safe-especially with the kinds of patients I took care of. I could have caught encephalitis, meningitis, hepatitis and a number of other insidious diseases. They could have sneaked right into my body while I wasn’t looking. They could have killed me. It occurred to me that when the threat became a real possibility, I wasn’t that scared. Besides, I never figured anything bad would happen. I’d never heard a story about Jesus healing the sick and catching anything they had. I had read about Father Damien coming down with leprosy, but then I just figured that was one illness I should try to steer clear of. I finally realized how irrational I was being so I pulled the covers up to my neck and tried to fall asleep. But my heart was still beating fast. In the back of my mind, my search for a roommate had already begun.

As I arrived at work the next morning I heard Marta even before I got onto the ward. “Goddamn idiots!” she screamed. “I’ll have you all fired.”

On my way to Dominic’s room, I bumped into Rusty.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“She’s relatively sober now,” Rusty said, laughing. “And she hates every minute of it.”

The afternoon before, when we had finally gotten Marta into the tub, she was so drunk she never woke up until Rusty began to wash her hair. We had to soak her clothes off; blisters had formed in some places, and in others, sores. She had flea and tick bites all over her body ... and scattered circles of ringworm and impetigo all over her chest and belly. There were also small round scars on both her thighs and hips. I suspected they were old needle marks from a former drug habit. Rusty agreed. After Rusty washed her hair and still couldn’t get some of the junk and goo out of the matted mess, we found lice, so Rusty had to cut Malta’s hair. Marta hit at us constantly after that, and though I was ready to strangle her, Rusty said she understood how Marta felt.

“I think she’s a little bit crazy,” I had said.

Rusty disagreed. “I think she’s acting okay for the situation,” she said.

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, think of being in a strange place with someone you don’t know bathing you, touching your most intimate parts, and then cutting off your hair without your consent,” Rusty said. “Being without clothes makes you feel very vulnerable and defenseless. Why should she trust us? She says she doesn’t even want to be here.”

“Well, how did she get here?” I asked. “I mean with nursing-home beds in such demand, how come they accepted her?”

“Her family insisted,” Rusty said. “And it’s their nursing home.”

I was puzzled. “You mean they own it?”

Rusty nodded. “And from now on Maria’s supposed to be treated as a VIP,” she said. When I raised my eyebrows Rusty explained, “She’s a doctor.”

I whistled. “What the hell happened to her?”

“Nobody really knows,” Rusty said, “and she isn’t volunteering any information.”

Change of shift was the only time I got to see Penny, and getting report from her on Mr. Gragone was becoming the high point of my day. In the morning after she left, I tried to match wits with Dominic and give him a reason to eat. But right before my eyes he was becoming more and more resistant and depressed. He was in Salvation because his family couldn’t convince him to eat, which would shoot his diabetes out of control and spin him into a coma. Then he’d have to be rushed to an emergency room of a local general hospital for a glucose infusion. Finally, his doctor placed him in a nursing home until his blood sugar could be regulated. When he had complained constantly that he’d been ignored by the staff, his family called a private-duty registry and hired me. They felt so guilty about not keeping him home that they would do anything to keep him happy. And fighting with me, though it didn’t keep him happy, did keep him busy. Still, it seemed to me that the more I was willing to do for him, the less he was willing to do for himself. After three days, he even refused to turn over in bed by himself and he kept his eyes shut most of the time.

It took me until the following week to get used to Salvation’s setup and routine. Mrs. Frick, from what I could see, was basically sadistic. Anytime an old person complained, she seemed to take it as a personal insult. She’d yell at them, then roughly give them what they wanted. The other two aides on the floor, Lana and Sherry, seemed slow but conscientious. Rusty always did most of the work. While each of the other aides dressed four patients, Rusty dressed eight. And whenever one of the patients called “Nurse,” Rusty dropped whatever she was doing and ran to help before Mrs. Frick could get there.

Marta let no one near her except Rusty, and the rest of the staff was more than willing to avoid her because of her behavior and because they were afraid of crossing her and her family. I stopped by to see her a few times, but as soon as she saw the door opening she got furious and irrational. Once or twice, there was no noise and I peeked in to see her out cold with her back toward me.

At this time, the carousel of my life was spinning slowly as I kept jumping on and off different ponies. Mother, friend, lover, nurse. But no matter how hard I tried, I could never quite reach the gold ring of contentment.

Jim had spent so much time with us in the last years that we had practically been living together. I had gotten used to his being able to watch the kids at night if I had to work, I had begun to depend on his doing the grocery shopping. Though we couldn’t agree on some of the most important life moves each of us wanted to make, he was a very good person. And though our relationship wasn’t really satisfying, we were tied together pretty tightly. That’s why he had decided to move three thousand miles away. So each of us could begin again. But it was difficult.

He called a few times from California, and each time it was the same. He wanted me to reconsider getting married. “I can’t, Jim,” I’d say. “I don’t know exactly what I want, except maybe to try being a free woman for a while.”

“You call having to bust your tail to make a living for you and the kids being free?” he scoffed. “That’s pure illusion.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I agreed.

But of one thing I was certain. I didn’t want to ride the marriage pony again. Not after I’d been thrown. Even though it had been many years since then, I could still feel the bruises. And though “lover” was a pretty, gentle pony at the beginning, he had grown into a slow and plodding animal whose pace was different from mine. So I dropped the reins and held my breath as I jumped off.

“Find yourself someone who really wants to share your life, Jim,” I said softly. “You have a lot to offer. It’s just that I can’t accept it.”

The only constant in my life for all the years was nursing. No matter how harrowing and painful my regular life was, as soon as I walked onto a hospital floor dressed in a white uniform, I felt like Cinderella at the ball. It was the one place I could be totally me. The place I could be as smart, as kind, as giving, and as real as I was capable of being. My patients and I had an understanding past words; we needed each other; we healed each other; and neither of us judged the other. There was no mask, no pretense, we were just human beings who because of circumstance had to learn to trust each other and so were allowed to really touch each other. And I had gotten used to that kind of closeness. Regular relationships compared to those special ones were like trying to talk to someone through a glass barrier or trying to touch through a wire-mesh divider.

But that kind of special contact had its disadvantages. I had resigned from one of the large teaching hospitals just a few months before. I had to stop nursing in the burn unit because it caused me just too much pain. Every time I had to hurt someone to help him, I suffered too.

Now I was reconsidering which area of nursing I wanted to pursue; whenever I did that, I took care of patients as a private-duty nurse, in order to feel with my hands again, instead of machines, and have the time to remember why I had gone into nursing to begin with. But nothing can be all things to anyone-even nursing.

Each night I came home and tried to fill time with my kids and other productive endeavors. I read, watched TV, listened to classical music, took the kids out to eat, to the movies, to an amusement park. I did everything everyone else seemed to enjoy and it didn’t help. It just felt as though I was marking time, marching in place. I wanted a blueprint. Like the Connect the Dots cards that little kid’s used. From 1 you draw a straight line to 2, from there you advance to 3. When you’ve followed the instructions, you’ve got a complete picture. I was waiting for fate to hand me an invitation on a Live by Number card. At least that way I’d know what I was supposed to do next.

One morning while I was trying to change Dominic’s bed, he was being especially uncooperative. He pushed himself onto his back each time I turned him on his side to change his sheet. I had visions of tying him to the side rail of the bed with a gauze lasso. I was about to let him win, and forget about fixing his bed, when Rusty appeared in the doorway and asked, “Want some help holding him over?”

Gratitude forced my mouth into a wide smile. “I’d love some, if you have a minute,” I told her.

“I have fifteen,” she said, walking toward the side of Mr. Gragone’s bed. “I’m on my break.”

I was about to protest but by that time Rusty had already pulled Dominic over on his side and was holding him tight against the side rail with two strong arms wrapped around him.

I quickly washed his back and buttocks, and as I was beginning to remove the bottom sheet, I saw Dominic put his right arm between the bars, reach around and grab hard onto Rusty’s behind.

Without a change of expression, Rusty reached back removed Dominic’s hand and said softly, “Congratulations, I’m glad to see you’re still alive.”