Angel of Death

by Andrea Helaine

There was no hint of sunlight; just a blinding red light glaring at me. Rolling back and forth, I tried to cover the clock. Beep! Beep! Beep. No, no, no! How can it be time to get up? I haven’t even fallen asleep!Leaning over the side of the bed, I squinted at the now clear 5:30, picked up the small black box in the palm of my hand and thud; it crashed against the wall and then the hard wood floor. The plastic front shattered, the backup batteries rolled under the bed. The annoying beep, beep, beep had stopped. I lay on my back, staring into the darkness and smiled before feeling myself drifting off, drifting slowly. No sunlight. No noise. This is how life is supposed to be.

A half an hour later, I jolted awake. “Crap, I’m gonna be late. Why did I take first shift? Why, why?” I pleaded with myself to go back to sleep, hiding my head beneath my pillow. I began to panic about losing my job before I could pay tuition in six months. It was one of the few jobs where hand tremors wouldn’t be judged. I put my glasses on, avoiding the first light beaming in the window and jumped up from the bed. I stepped over the broken pieces of the clock, put on my uniform and stared at the reflection in the mirror, smoothing out the wrinkles on my shirt as my hands trembled.

“I can do this,” I assured myself in a whisper, closely examining my baggy eyes. I ran my fingers through my thick, curly black hair and pulled it back in a bun to avoid anyone pulling it out. Why wouldn’t somebody want to help the elderly? I convinced myself that I could help them or at least give them dignity in their last days. . I quickly walked out the front door of our white bungalow, half-running through the grassy park, my socks and shoes soaked with dew by the time I reached the six month old building still covered with scaffolding.

I opened the heavy wooden door, scanning my badge as I entered, pressing “in” on the time clock. When I entered, I looked around at the residents of the assisted living facility. I wondered how their families could leave them behind and vowed I could hear music playing faintly from the breakfast room that I remembered. It took me a moment to remember where it was from, but when I looked at those graying tigers. My grandpa played this song on his wooden brown radio in the barn when I was four years old. I stepped on his size 14 boots and looked up, trying to find his blue eyes several feet above me. He leaned over slightly and I could see his cracked lips as he grinned.

I watched a grey haired man reach out his hand. The man was hunched over, the outline of his back visible through his brown corduroy pants and bright red suspenders. He stood beside a table, covered with pancakes and eggs that missed his mouth. He stretched his hand out to the woman who sat beside him, her curly purple hair clashing with her leopard shirt.. Her forehead perspired and glistened in the barely lit room. He nodded to her and pressed herself against him as they danced across the dining room. “Shoot me now,” I muttered, attempting to ignore my childhood memories as I passed by the old style jukebox and entered the elevator, hitting the button for the third floor, the Alzhiemers floor. The door opened in front of the manager’s office and I hesitated before getting off the elevator. She looked up at me from her pile of paperwork and nodded through the window overlooking the entrance “Ok, God, please go easy on me. My first day can’t be that bad and I entered to meet ‘my’ residents.

My pep talk didn’t last that long as my manager appeared from her paper fortress to greet me, her large chest hanging over the top of her shirt. Biting the inside of my cheek, I wondered how families could possibly take her seriously in her outfit. She motioned to me, chest jiggling in her tight black shirt and I wondered if JELLO was hiding inside. I considered the endless possibilities for assisted living commercialsorJELLO. I thought of the job advertisement for a care manager: Do you love working with seniors and caring for others? Do you enjoy being in a home like environment? You will be part of a dynamic team of professionals dedicated to the highest standards of excellence and quality of care.” What kind of care does she provide?

“Walk with me,” she stated bluntly in her high pitched voice as though she purposely tried to replicate Minnie Mouse.

I bit my lip, trying not to show my distaste for her interrupting my thoughts of becoming the next JELLO advertising prodigy. “I’m coming.” I followed closely behind her, through the dining room and down the narrow hallway. The putrid smell of urine and bleach hit my face and I breathed in, my throat started to burn. I quickly wrote down information on my notepad, listing the patient names and room numbers, my illegible scribbles making it obvious that I barely passed penmanship. Each time the manager spoke, I imagined my seventh grade science teacher scratching the chalkboard when anyone started to doze off.

I began with him, the one who shouldn’t even be in this facility because of his psychiatric issues. I knocked and then opened his door, extending him every courtesy, even though he wouldn’t remember I was even there in five minutes. “Hi, I’m Andrea. I am your new care manager. How are you today?”

His grey, uncombed hair was sticking up and it looked like devil horns sticking out from his head and I began to think that they just might be real. His glasses fell down on his nose as he peered over his glasses and slammed his fist down on his night stand. “Don’t you dare interrupt me!” I backed towards the door, but he then started speaking in a soft voice. “There’s a mess in there. He did it,” he said, pointing to his roommate, who was innocently sprawled across his bed, with a widening wet patch just below his mouth on his pillow. I nodded silently, walked over to the bathroom door, and pulled it open. I surveyed the ‘mess’ and ran from the room, my throat trying to force out my non-existent breakfast. Hunched over, I closed my eyes and the hallway began to spin as I breathed in deeply.

“This has to be the worst first day. This has to be. I need a raise. This is supposed to be assisted living, not a psych ward.”

A few minutes later, I covered my nostrils and mouth with a mask, pressing the metal clip over my nose. Gloves on, bucket in hand, I walked into the bathroom, trying not to puke in my mask. I imagined all the stupid things I had done in my life, but nothing, nothing compared to this job. Must have had fun in here for hours, I thought. His feces covered the once sterile bathroom, the white floor, white walls, shower stall and toilet as though he was a toddler discovering an uncovered can of paint. As I scrubbed, the man laughed, and left his room. I could hear him yelling, “It is my paintbrush; now leave me alone!” I ventured back into the bedroom and pulled back the curtain as the jiggling manager tried to pull him away from the dryer. He had his pants down and was attempting to urinate inside, yelling “It’s my paintbrush, now leave me alone.”

One of my residents was missing and as I tried to hunt her down, I found her in the fetal position, hiding in the corner. I approached her, trying to remain calm and looked at her matted hair. It was obvious that she had not taken a bath in days. I coaxed her into the bathroom and as I ran the water, she clenched her teeth around my arm. Two seconds later, she spoke calmly asking what I wanted. “I want you to take a bath,” and she looked back at me, her creased face relaxed and her frown broke into a smile. “Well, honey, why didn’t you just ask?”She quickly got in and I stood in the middle of the bathroom, looking at this woman who underwent a transformation before me.

Will I be like this? Will I be able to remember my family in my last years? Will I be left alone, cared for by someone else? Will I be naked before a complete stranger? I looked around the room, frightened by the sterile white room, the locking tub, and the loss of self that this woman endured, now trapped in a body without memories.

As I came to the last resident in my rounds, my feet ached and blisters covered my heels. I could no longer hide within my own thoughts or memories of my grandfather. Life and death was staring me in the eyes and I wanted someone to put me out of my misery. I knew their basic histories, but I wanted to have more. I wanted to know what they were like in clear moments, days that they might relapse and remember. Just one more, one more resident, I thought. I can do this. Glancing down at my notepad, I saw a word. A word I knew, but hesitated to find out what it would mean for me. Hospice.

A coworker stopped for a moment. Her Jamaican accent echoed through the hall. “Lucky you,” she said. “You get the escape artist. That woman, she’ll run you ragged in a couple of days. She tries to get out of her damn bed every five minutes. Poor thing doesn’t know where she is anymore. Make sure you get her oxygen on right and that her bed alarm is always reset.” The middle-aged woman chuckled out loud as she left and looked back at me, half smiling “Glad you get her now.” I looked down at that word again. I equated hospice with dying, death, with tears and lost family.

My thoughts urged me to run, run as far away as possible, but instead I peered in the doorway of the room lit by a small crack between the curtains. My grandfather always told me that my curiosity was with me since I was a young child, when I would run away from their farm and wander through the woods alone. With 20 children running around, my being missing would go unnoticed for hours. He always insisted that this desire was ingrained in my Romani blood. “You are a gypsy,” he would say and blame that on my being curious as I was always caught daydreaming and wandering. I wanted to challenge myself to overcome my fears.

There was a figure lying on the bed, barely moving. I could see her chest rising and falling. “Pray for me, pray for me,” whispered the old woman. I walked towards her, curious about the woman beckoning me for help. She whispered the same words my grandpa did, the same words my grandpa did years before.

Closing my eyes, I remembered sitting at my grandpa’s bedside as he came out from under anesthesia. It was his fourth quadruple bypass surgery and my young mind tricked itself into thinking that a broken heart could always be fixed. I held his cold hand in my own, avoiding his taped i.v. as he came out from under anesthesia.

“You aren’t like the rest of them, you have it together, and you know what you want.” He struggled to continue, looked into my eyes and just said “Go on, go pray for me.” He squeezed my hand and told me he needed to rest. As my family sat in the waiting room, I went to the hospital chapel to pray then went back upstairs, passing by rooms of men in the overcrowded veteran’s hospital. As I entered the hall, I heard sobbing and shouting in the waiting room. I recognized those cries. I walked to his room, the blue privacy curtain drawn back. The doctors surrounded his limp body. His lips turned blue as they stopped trying to shock his heart back to life.

Glancing at the petite woman in front of me, I noticed the oxygen machine and the IV bags that towered over her as she tried to stand. Too weak to stand, she fell into me and I lifted her 80 lbs like it was a small child. She smelled like my great grandmother, like cheap perfume, Cover Girl makeup, and a hint of mothballs. I tried to pray for her, but no prayer would come. Maybe if I didn’t pray, she would recover. Instead of praying, I held her and looked down at a woman who did not know who I was and felt pity and guilt. Pity for the woman in my arms and guilt for having left my grandfather to die under bright lights and in the hands of doctors rather than holding my hand. Guilt for praying. Guilt for saying goodbye.

An hour later, I still held her tightly as her breathing became raspy as she coughed, trying to speak. “You, you so nice to me all this time. Nobody else come visit me.” Her Italian accent muffled her words and I struggled to hear as she coughed blood on my sterile white shirt. Reaching up, she touched my rounded cheeks and squeezed them for a moment, like a grandmother would as she patted them before letting go.

“You, you such good girl. You make me at peace,” she said in a sweet tone. She smiled up at me, as though she needed my approval. She gasped again, mouthing those three words, “Pray for me” and her hand fell across her stomach. Her eyes were empty, her blank stare made me shiver. The woman’s body suddenly became too heavy for me to bear. I set my finger on her neck. No pulse. Ready to do CPR, I remembered the words…hospice, DNR and began to wonder if I was the “angel of death.” If I was the angel of death, I was in convincing human form. I thought back to those who had passed over the last several years. My best friend hit by a car, four hit by a drunk driver, and my high school sweetheart who contracted meningitis. One year and too many now dead. I had backed away from everyone, from friends and family and there was life and death, staring me right in the face.

I leaned her back onto her soaked bed, waited a moment to remove her oxygen from her wet nostrils and quietly turned the tank off at the bedside. Without thinking, my fingers slid over her heavy eyelids as her plump cat meowed, trying to nestle against the side of her lifeless body. I shoed the cat away, her belly gliding across the carpet as it scurried out of the room. I closed the door. I shut my eyes as I gently undressed her, washing her body with soapy water, holding my breath in hope of an awakening.

The next morning, I sat up in bed after a restless night and quietly dressed. Patting my red, swollen eyes with makeup, I took my badge and went to work, but I did not run or worry about being late for my second day. When I got off the elevator, I looked around at everyone, remembering their profiles and family pictures of days long since past.

A Navy boxer now wheelchair bound, whose wife visited him every day. A couple who thought every day was their wedding day, every day and wanted to stand up together to thank everyone and then danced around the room. The balding man, a prisoner of war in Vietnam who woke from his sleep shrieking, wanting to tell someone what he remembered before he forgot. The woman whose seventeen grandchildren visited her every Sunday after church. A man who tried to hit me with his belt because he thought I stole hisdog. A thirty -year-old woman with early Alzheimer’s whose family stopped visiting and who tucked a photo of her family into her front pocket every morning. She, she was alone just like Nina who died on my first day. No friends, no family to visit her. No one to pray for her.

There were lives broken and memories hidden away in the recesses of the mind. I smiled at them. It was not real. It was not fake. It was not for me. It was for Nina, who died in my arms.

-----------------------HELAINE

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