Where Every Man is an Island

I was barely 53 when a stroke zapped me. One of those type "A" guys, I worked too hard and too fast. "Serves you right," some clucked. Real friends mouthed "I told you so." My son Brad said "Lucky you didn't die." That's what I thought. But, it wasn't luck. Determination kept me alive. I wasn't ready to do the death thing.

Brad wanted me to stay with him to recuperate, but I'd listened to the hospital's social services person who made rehab at a facility sound like a breeze. "There'll be someone there helping you through everything. Plus three meals a day." Thoughts of Brad's vegetarian cooking helped make up my mind. So the choice, faulty or not, was mine.

My right side had a mind of its own. I could be lying perfectly still and suddenly notice the bed was being fumbled with. Nobody else there; my own parts were making embarrassing motions. Spasms, reflexes, the nurses called it. When assisted to stand, I'd watch my arm jerk like I was playing with myself. Shit. Definitely needed reprogramming.

I couldn't walk without help, at least not until I got a brace to stabilize my right leg. I'd get the wobblies and fall down. Even learning to sit up was tough, and dressing was a major feat. Becoming this freak one-handed guy was a pain. I had to start all over, even simple things like washing myself, not missing remote parts. So, Mr. Independent Me needed therapy, lessons in the basics. But therapists have to be "referred". Since this transfer to the convalescent center was on a Friday, I'd have to wait until Monday for any treatment.

The doc was late discharging me from the hospital and just as lunch was being served, the transport guy came to haul me to the nursing home.

"Grab some bread, Dad, and let's go. I got a schedule to keep." He picked a bun off my plate and held it in my face. I had heard you can't feel your blood pressure rise, but something was making me hot all over. I gave a good left to the bun, and it sailed onto the floor. "What-ever" he clipped.

The ride was nauseating. I realize now I should have thrown up. After he slammed my wheelchair out of the van, he zipped me into the lobby and parked me in front of an empty desk marked Receptionist. "I'll be back in a minute" he said, and disappeared, carrying a brown envelope, my hospital records I supposed, down a dark tunnel-looking hall. Brad was to come by later "when you're settled in" to make sure everything was to my satisfaction and bring my clothes. I wanted him now. The place was eerie. A sense of having made a terrible mistake overwhelmed me.

"See ya, pops." The driver popped me on the shoulder as he flew by on his way out. "They'll be here in a minute" his parting words.

The clock on the wall registered I'd sat thirty minutes. Not one to treasure waiting, I used my left hand to wheel myself around to look out the glass doors in front. Traffic - could have included the old me - whizzed by without a care for the lost souls in this place. "Stop," I thought. "I'm in here and I want to get out."

"Hello there." The voice was a squeak. "May I help you, sir?"

I wheeled to face the squeak. It belonged to a bone-faced blond peering down at me through bifocals. She must have been forty-something but looked like the third stage of death.

My words, not as plainly-spoken as I am accustomed, were slurred: "I, I, he." Something that approximated "therapy" popped out.

"Oh, you're the new admission." She yanked up the phone and over a loudspeaker I heard "I need a nurse in the lobby please. Nurse to the lobby." She leaned over the desk and shouted "They'll be here in a minute, sir." Pissed me off. I have no hearing loss.

The receptionist returned to her hiding place. I watched the long hand of the clock snake over three more numbers. Conjuring ways I could get her attention, I fantasized falling out of the chair even if it hurt. Anyway, I was having a hard enough time maintaining my balance. Just

as I decided to start yelling, an attractive woman emerged from the tunnel, walked over to me, patted my shoulder and asked "How are you today, sir?. What's your name? "

"Stern. Earnest Stern." Came out like Schern. Ernish Schern.

Without further words, she steered the wheelchair through what seemed an eternal gauntlet. Rolling along, I felt vulnerable. Several zombie types populated the hallway. Hunched over in wheelchairs, gnomes were connected to urine bags that had fallen on the floor. Corpse-like figures babbled endlessly in unknown tongues, creating a jungle-like cacophony. One creature's claws reached out for my face as we rocketed by, barely missing my eyes. A bathroomy odor, fresh poop in all flavors, wafted from different doorways. I had the fleeting thought that shit smell must be exclusive to its creator. Could I recognize so-and-so by how his shit smelled? Probably.

The nurses' station was a joke. The ones sitting at it were practiced in ignore, and those at medicine carts, hunched over or pouring out pills, stood encapsulated in self-insulated pods. Inmates, positioned against the wall across from the station, were in various stages of oblivion. Some automatons walked unfocused around the hall, cleaning furniture with imaginary cloths, conversing with themselves. There were a couple who seemed to have still intact minds, but they were exceptions.

The nurses were unobservant, cocooned in their protective shields. Once in a while someone would penetrate those shields, prompting an angry response. It was after one of these displays of anger that a nurse condescended to notice I'd been sitting there. She stared for a moment, never smiling, and signaled a young woman.

"Carla. This is a new admission. Take him to 340 B."

The aide, grumbling "I was gettin' ready to go home", transplanted me to a room with an empty bed next to a window. She handed me a urinal. "Here, use this if you gotta go. I'm outta here." Before I could ask her "What do I do with it when I'm done?" she was gone. On the bed and out of reach lay the designated means for summoning help: the infamous call bell.

The smell coming from the next bed was intolerable. On the way in I had seen a man flat on his back. When I entered the room he was vomiting. I couldn't see him now, but I could hear his loud gagging sounds. There were also interminable beeping noises coming from the machines surrounding him. Tubes everywhere, he was continuously in beep.

Finally a nurse arrived to fly me through what she called the admission process. She instructed a male attendant to put me in bed, but his version of that meant to hurl me there. It happened so fast I got dizzy. He jerked up both siderails and rushed out. Neither the nurse nor the attendant acknowledged the gagging man.

Admission consisted of a bird-woman's asking me questions she could have got from my hospital records. I attempted to respond when she interrupted. "Just answer 'yes' or 'no'." She took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, called to and waved at passers-by in the hall. Interfering with her social life, I asked about my pressure. "Huh? Oh, you don't need to know." I needed to know. Was it about to pop the device? She would not make eye contact. But suddenly, something about me mattered to her. "Turn over, Mr. Stern. I've got to check your skin, see if you have any scars or bedsores." She shoved me from side to side. When she pulled my cheeks apart, and probed my rectum, I protested. "Hey. Hey!"

"Just checking for hemorrhoids, sir. Don't get agitated." I could hear her on her way out. "Bed 'B' is gonna be a real pistol. And someone needs to check on A-bed. He's a mess. Puking everywhere."

Where was Brad? I needed liberation. I would learn how to kneel to get him to take me home, feed me anything -- asparagus, spinach, artichoke hearts.

Dinner finally came, after I'd had to ask for water several times, and some kind of promised snack I never got. My stomach was digesting itself. I could hear it rage. The fare, brought in on a scarred plastic tray, was passable, but meager. My ravenous appetite was curbed by the room's odor. I imagined the poor fellow in the next bed to be a victim of the home's diet, barfing his way into oblivion in a sad non-verbal statement of protest.

Brad finally got there, just before dark. "Oh, there you are. I had a helluva time finding your room. Sorry I couldn't get here any earlier, Dad."

I started to cry.

I could see his nose twitch at the smell, and a look of concern that replaced his smile. He dedicated the next few minutes to raising the head of my bed, lowering the side rail, helping me on with my pajamas, making sure I could use the urinal, and determining if I had further needs. His tight jaw told me he was more dissatisfied than I. "I'll go get a nurse or someone, Dad. We'll get you out of this room, at least for a while."

Abruptly, horrific choking sounds emerged from the next bed. Both Brad's eyes and mine widened, and he moved over to check the guy. "Good God," he yelled. He ran to the door, and hollered down the hall. "Help!" he yelled. "There's an emergency down here." No one answered.

"We need some help down here." Brad was shouting in his most demanding voice. He peeked in again at me, asked if I were all right, looked at my roommate and said "Jesus. I'll be right back, Dad." While he was gone, I could hear the man gasping for air in high-pitched wheezing noises.

"Call 911," someone screeched at the door. I heard running. "Are you all right? What's his name? Where's his name tag? Sir, are you all right? Call respiratory, stat." Breathless nurses scrambled into action, obviously panicked.

They didn't want to let Brad back into the room. "My Dad is in there" he shouted, "and you're not keeping me out."

"But we have a code situation here, sir. You're not allowed in." The nurse tried forcibly to prevent his entrance.

"Lady, where were you when I called for help for your code situation? I was here and you weren't, and you're not keeping me out now." He marched over to my bed, his face a deep pink.

Nursing home staff appeared as if from cracks in the wall. Up until that point the area had been near devoid of uniformed bodies. Curiosity lured them like roaches; they were crawling everywhere. Some stood staring, some laughed and talked in the hall, a few attended the dying man. EMS eventually arrived, but not before we heard "How do you do CPR? I forgot" or "Ooo, he's purple," or "is he dead yet?" "Did anyone check his pulse?" "Get me his chart."

They laughed around and over him. Some of them peered in at Brad and me, smiled or laughed as if we were supposed to find it funny. One surprised me: "Are you all right, sir." Then she turned to the others and said "You know, he shouldn't have to hear all this." But both Brad and I were hearing it all.

"What's his history?" the EMS man asked.

"Let's see. Here it is. Gastrectomy. Uh, he had surgery on the. . it doesn't say."

"How long has he been like this?"

"You mean in respiratory distress?"

"Is there anyone around here who knows?" His voice sharpened.

"Look. I'm just a part-timer. I come on here, get a piss-poor quickie report on 120 patients, and you expect me to know each one? Get real."

A century later, the man was wheeled out by EMS. The machines, their bags extracted, continued to beep. The crowd dwindled one by one.

Brad and I were alone. He'd held my hand throughout the fiasco. When he looked at me, I knew what he'd decided to do.

Cell phone in hand, he dialed. "Dr. Akins? Yes, this is Brad Stern. I'm taking my father home tonight." There was a long silence. "Yes. Home health care will be perfect. He can get his therapy there."

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