I. Confection
As the blood pooled on the pavement — the silver head of a stout, well-dressed man laying in it, his cane still waving midair like an Appalachian hoe — I first suspected I should have taken the waitressing gig instead. But here I was, on a breezy, wintry Saturday. Crouching next to an argumentative 97-year-old, trying to explain to him that he had to be patient while we waited for the ambulance.
“Who said?”
I looked around for signs of the nurse. She had promised she would be back with his papers ages ago. It was the weekend nurse, however. And I did not quite trust her.
Regardless, I smiled. “That’s the policy, Frank.”
“Who said that’s the policy?”
I fiddled with my walkie, making sure I was on the right channel.
“We’re on the back patio by the snowman Rose,” I announced into the little black box, eyeing the melting scoops of old ice stacked atop each other, the branches for arms frozen at uncanny angles. “What’s your location?”
The ex-marine was lying on his side, stiff and awkward like a turgid Russian Doll balancing on its hip. Otherwise casual, he chewed on some grains of rice that must have been stuck under his dentures — as was his charming post-lunch habit.
“I don’t know why you are not helping me get up,” he swallowed the morsel.
“You may have hurt yourself as you fell, and if I try to move you, it could cause more problems.”
My response seemed to assuage the injured man. I hugged myself, pulling my cardigan tighter. It was only October, but a chill was brewing with special intensity. Frank mirrored me, folding his arms across his chest, cane standing perpendicular to his body. His other thumb hooked through one of his suspenders, strapped and clipped tightly down his barrel belly. If it had not been for the ruby-red puddle congealing at his temple, the sight of him might have seemed mundane.
A door swung behind us from the dining room to the courtyard. I turned with relief, hoping to see the nervous part-time nurse. Alas, it was not.
Virginia Bruce — shivering less from the dropping temperature and more due to the symptoms of Parkinson’s — shuffled out. With tunnel vision full of mission, she scuttled straight toward us. Frank and I greeted her with hellos, and puffs of white breath spindled out of her mouth as she attempted to make her thoughts come to fruition.
“J — j-Frank’s w-w-walker is — is -” Sparse eyebrows squiggled and grey eyes — always panic-stricken — looked pained with the effort it took. “ He f-f-forgot it i-in -” She made motions with her hands in case we could not understand. And I felt a pinch in my gut watching the struggle it took for her tongue to work with her mind. She trembled, clutching her hands and adopting a subservient stance next to me.
“Thanks, Virginia… You aren’t cold?”
In response, she shook her head. Or her head shook. I could not tell.
“Do you have a comb?” Frank — a martyr to his vanity — asked the attentive woman. “Or some kind of confection?”
Virginia looked at me, obviously concerned. She pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her palms.
I wondered then if Frank would die.
I consoled myself that he was almost a century old. That he had a loving family who visited all the time; that he had spent his golden years at an idyllic memory-care facility perched off a marshy New England marina. If he did die, it would be fine.
“Can you help me up, please?” Frank cleared his throat. “I haven’t had my dessert yet.”
“Someone will be here soon, Frank.” I stroked his bicep gingerly. I am not intrinsically a touchy-feely person, but even a light pat can do wonders in dementia care.
Twenty minutes later, Virginia and I were in the warmth of the living room; the electric fireplace crackled to life. We watched through the french doors as they strapped Frank to a gurney. It took some expert coaxing from the paramedics to have him relinquish his cane, but they were persuasive.
“Happy Saturday, huh?” I said. The adrenaline of my first fall was only now wearing off.
Virginia was unresponsive, still zoned in perennial consternation on Frank being rolled into the back of the emergency rig like King Tut. A week into my job as a receptionist at the Senior Living community, I was hardly an expert. But the entire production seemed to be taking far longer than what I had observed on my repeat ER binges. Almost leisurely.
Frank was bantering with one of the paramedics, an unruffled woman with a hot pink undercut. She threw her head back and laughed at something the former marine said, hoisting the gurney up with her knee to leverage him into the van. She hopped in behind him and closed both the doors.
Just like that, the vehicle swerved around the fence and disappeared into the manicured columns of sprawling, aging birches that lined the marina — sans siren.
“Are you alright, Virginia?”
The woman was glued to the window — perspiration matting her forehead now — and because it always seemed like she was about to say something, I felt startled when she did.
“I-it can be -” she stuttered it out over several attempts, arms stiff now to her sides. “- dangerous t-t- forget y-yo-your walker.”
With a polite nod, I decided to head back to the front desk. Virginia must have stayed that way until rosary, hours later.
After that Saturday, I began to dread each one — we were always short. The experienced full-time staff from the week was off. Of course, this meant most falls, choking on dry rolls of bread, strokes, and bouts of sudden dehydration happened on that day. The maintenance staff was short, and we had leaks, floods, sparking refrigerators, countless clogged toilets, bursting toilets, overflowing toilets, and stuck windows. We had elopements and missing residents. We had emotional outbursts and food fights. We had — most of all, accidents of every gastrointestinal variety and smells I’ll not soon forget.
Frank would return the next day with a bandaid — sucking loudly on hard candy. Not dead, as I had imagined. It had been nothing to worry about, said his daughter — only a superficial gash brought on by a UTI-related loss of balance. Nothing a round of antibiotics could not fix.
The weekdays were also hectic, of course. But, I felt more secure about the chaos because we had the most hardworking nurse; I was in constant admiration of her stamina for compassion. The staff was veterans in elder care. And it felt as smooth as, in the words of the facility director — A circus without a tent — could be.
On most days that I worked, I was the youngest person in the building. I had just graduated from college, into a global pandemic. While I had once been certain of my career-path as a journalist, as the months passed in lockdown, and I, along with the world, stood at a standstill — makeshift masks across our faces, watching in surreal dread as a novel virus ravaged society as we knew it — I began to feel restless about the purpose of my life.
Luckily, the memory care facility was in a similar state of disarray — hit with hiring freezes, so much workforce fleeing the city and even more folks bolting any and all congregations of people over the ages of 60.
To get to work, I would take two trains and then walk a mile-and-half. I didn’t mind it most days, except the bitterly cold ones when the marina unleashed a vile gale. I had never been around so many older people before. And at once — stepping in — I felt stirred by my youth, and the general rush of activity which danced through the building — energy that felt alive with religion and urgency and most striking to me, with youthful wants.
II. R-R-R
The bagel was extremely sinewy, how it gets after it’s toasted and then left out to cool. But I pulled my mask down to my chin, and began my trek down the long, empty waterside road to the Senior Living facility — taking a small bite first, and then a massive, satisfying one.
By December, 2020, Massachusetts had entered its second, and deadliest wave of the pandemic. All frontline staff had to wear tight KN95 masks and a face-shield. Nitrile gloves that made your hands sweat. For the entire 8-hour-long shift except bathroom breaks.
Which brings me to my shitty Panera bagel. I had to finish it before I entered the building.
The cream-cheese smeared the back of my glove but I continued chewing. I didn’t dare expose my fingers to the weather — not on a morning like this. When my phone rang, I had reservations about answering it. But it was 7 a.m. and it could have only been one person.
“Kasa ahes?” I answered, my cell-phone wedged between my ear and shoulder. I balanced the bagel in one hand and the little cream-cheese pouch in another.
“Tu kuthes?” my dad asked in between sips of tea. “What’s that sound?
“Vara.” Wind, in Marathi.
“Hmm… kay khatiyes.”
I swallowed, wincing at the dry bread scratching my throat. “Bagel,” I answered.
“Nice,” he cleared his throat. “How’s the job search going?”
If he heard my jaw clench, he didn’t let on. I took a big bite, and pulled my sleeve up to check the time.
“Maybe you should stop what you’re doing now. Come home. You’ll be more focused.”
“I am focused,” I barked. “I like what I’m doing. And I am applying to journalism jobs.”
I could, in fact, hear his jaw clench.
“You know, Isha, everyone likes easy jobs.”
It was too cold to fight. Boundaries, Boundaries! I heard my therapist’s voice.
“Of course they love you there,” he went on.“They pay you nothing. You work all day because you think you’re important. But you are completely replaceable -”
“I’m looking for jobs. I just graduated. Into a pandemic. Can we be real for a second?”
“Do you wanna’ wipe peoples’ shit your entire life, Isha? Is that what you wanna’ do? Ahi shappat… ‘I like it’’ he was on a roll now. Loudly crunching his breakfast.“What does ‘I like it’ mean, Isha? When are you going to take life seriously?”
What kind of a complete psychopath could be so hurtful while eating a digestive biscuit, I thought.
“We’ve talked about this a hundred times,” I tossed my bagel into a passing trash can. “I’m not doing it again. I’m almost at work.”
“Ok, Isha.” His voice softened. “Mummy is telling me to calm down. But you need tough love. Remember, this is not your future, ok? If we wanted you to be a cleaning lady we wouldn’t have sent you to college.”
“I’m a receptionist.” BOUNDARIES, Isha. You don’t have to explain yourself. But you do have to defend cleaning ladies!
Boundaries are for Americans — I heard my grandma’s voice. I suddenly felt too tired to say anything else.
“Ok… ok.” I heard my mother saying something in Hindi in the back. “We love you, ok? Careful of the virus. Bye.”
I took a deep breath in and pulled my mask up. And as I entered the code to the building and walked in, I felt the dull weight of anxiety swell down my legs. Would I be stuck here forever? Would I ever find a real job? I walked through the kitchen, down the break room and into the carpeted hallway leading up to my station — the front desk.
I began turning the lights on. The radio — channel 69. Truth is, I didn’t disagree with my dad about my future. This was temporary. It had to be. But it was also, three months in, beginning to feel different from anything I had ever done in my life. I had done more academically challenging things, perhaps. But this was difficult in a way I never knew possible.
Care, what that meant — truly, as a profession — I wouldn’t understand for some time.
My thoughts were interrupted by the husky maintenance director barreling down the stairs. He mumbled through his mask, then pulled it down, sipping his extra large Dunkin’ coffee; it appeared twig-like in his massive hand. But it looked good. Smelled good. I was distracted by the steaming cup only momentarily and then heard what he had said.
“Wait, what do you mean?” I took my gloves off.
He looked out the window, and tried to point the way around the building. “Just saw her, um — by the back parking lot there. Can’t see her anymore though. Should we… send someone?”
“Who?” I asked, unfurling the scarf from around my neck. “You should go, Dave. Nobody else is here.”
He adjusted his belt buckle, sitting just under a round belly. Small slits for eyes — often oblivious, but always tender — widened. It was, of course, Saturday. Just us two. Too early in the morning for even my least favorite nurse to be in the building.
Dave was the director for the day, and attempted elopements were above my pay-grade.
“I could… cover the desk for you?” he blew on the coffee, wafting the malty aroma my way; on a frigid morning like this one, it was lulling. “Go ahead.”
Despite the fact that he had put in over twenty years in the direct-care world, social interaction was not Dave’s strong-suit. To be honest, I had often wondered what his strong-suit was. He wasn’t great at maintenance — the decades-old building was falling apart. Dave’s only maintenance assistant resented him. And he spent most of the day answering inquisitive phone-calls about his location from his wife. But with some odd twist of fate, he was my boss. If he wanted me to find a wandering resident, so it would be, according to the healthcare hierarchy.
It had somehow gotten colder than when I had clocked in just a half hour ago. The onslaught of raw air pricked my skin, hesitantly at first and then all at once — and startled me to a realization: Virginia was out here in her nightgown. I think I gasped audibly. I first went down to the gazebo, hoping Virginia would have stopped there from the cold or exhaustion. Then across the street to the nursing home, but they were on complete lockdown due to a cluster of COVID-19 positives. Then to the back parking lot, hoping she had circled back there. No luck.
I decided to cross through the roundabout and head down to the water. That was the only other way to go.
On cue, the mammoth birches lining both sides of the road rustled in unison, a warning. I braced myself for the gust, tucking my chin into the collar of my coat. We were getting closer to the marina. With two to three inches of ice thickening around the boardwalk; the bluster picked up a glacial, unsympathetic force and spiraled it around so it sank through your L.L.Bean and touched your bones. My eyes filled with water.
Virginia Bruce had been a psychiatric nurse in a state hospital through the 60s until about fifteen years ago. She was smart, I thought. She is smart. Surely, she wouldn’t have lost the intrinsic common sense of the cold being bad and the warmth being good. Just then, with vivid clarity, I began to picture her body lying in the water somewhere. Blue. Frozen. Floating. Lying in cryogenic shock, soaked in her innocence, and in the nervous care that she devoted to every resident in distress. The “nurse” inside her bubbling to the surface at any hint of pain.
When I finally saw her, a cottony head on top of a rectangular figure two blocks down, I felt thawed by my nerves. I ran. The heels of my heavy boots clacked loudly on the pavement, disrupting the quiet winter. I hoped silently it would wake one of the rich folks living in the beautiful, brick townhomes around us. Why should I be running maniacally behind an old woman on a frigid Saturday morning while they get to be wealthy and warm and asleep and perhaps drinking coffee?
Focus.
R-R-R — I thought on my sprint. It was in the tutorial. The 3 Rs of dementia care. R-R-R. Repeat.. Repeat, Reassure… What was it?
I called her name and she glanced over her shoulder, but made no attempts to stop. I was glad to see she was at least wearing shoes.
R-R-R — Reassure, Repeat…
I slowed down a few feet behind her. A thin periwinkle nightgown, nearly paper-like, fluttered on her stocky frame.
“Hi Virginia…” I tried to calm my panting. “How are you?”
“F-f-fine,” she smiled knowingly, her teeth chattering. Other than a set of chapped lips and some dry skin around her nose, she didn’t seem much bothered by the cold.
“Where are you going?” I tried to sound casual as I slipped out of my coat. “I’m gonna’ put this on you, ok?”
Virginia was built like a strong, small lumberjack and she had trouble snaking her arms through my coat. So we settled on putting it across her shoulders like a cape.
“Wanna’ go back now?” I hugged myself, blinking away the moisture.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
Sparkling, grayish eyes glanced at me, and an unfamiliar smirk spread across the former nurse’s mouth. At once, it made me uncomfortable. In its secret suggestiveness, it appeared nearly flirtatious.
She tried to lick her lips but they were too dry, and the bottom one got caught on a tooth. With her tremors, she struggled to adjust the orientation of her mouth. I turned away as she used her fingers to pull the lip off her dentures.
“Wanna’ get a cup of coffee?”
Aha — Redirect! That was the third R!
This piqued her interest and she slowed her gate substantially. “Where?” she asked.
“Back in the dining room,” I said it louder. “I saw them making blueberry muffins today.”
She shook her head, mouth twisting in pain. We walked in silence. I looked around for cars, or for Dave, or the nurse. Hoping someone would try to chase us down. Throw Virginia over their shoulder and carry her back kicking and screaming.
As we neared a paved street between us and the water, Virginia’s feet slowed. She turned to me; sharp yellow nails burying into my coat. I liked that coat, I cringed inwardly.
“Where now?” She asked, like this whole thing had been my idea.
“Um…” I looked around, bobbing up and down on my heels to keep warm. “Well, should we… head back?”
“N-n-no, I can’t,” she said, eyebrows knitted together. “She-she’s waiting for me.”
I put an arm on her back and stroked it up and down. She seemed to relax into the touch. Without a question, I began walking in the direction of the facility. Virginia acquiesced.
“Who is?” I asked.
That twinkle returned to her eyes, and she smiled wide this time. Breaking into a breathy girlish giggle. I raised my eyebrows at her, and she raised hers in response. Still smiling impishly. Albeit bemused, I couldn’t help but join.
“I-I ca-can’t tell you,” she said finally. “It’s chilly out here.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
She looked like she might say something, but her wrinkled face broke into another playful grin.
“I-I — b-bet you’d like to-to know.”
I nudged her with my elbow. “You’re such a tease…”
When we turned back around the roundabout, our destination came into view. The building, in its dated glory, stood like a beacon of warmth and safety. Never before had I longed to be in there so badly, usually just wanting to rip off my PPE and rush out. I squinted, Dave, in his beige uniform, was watching us from the french doors, still sipping his coffee. That bastard.
Alas, the warmth would have to wait. Virginia had decided to sit at the marina bus-stop. I sighed, and squeezed in next to her for warmth.
“Where are you headed to?”
It took her a few attempts, but she came up with a destination. “T-t-Tremont s-square.”
“In Boston?” I asked. “Downtown?”
She nodded, staring directly ahead. “I-I’m I-m supposed to-to see Norma.”
That was easy.
“Oh?” I was intrigued. “Who’s Norma?”
Virginia’s mischievous smile returned. She turned to look at me. Her eyes tracing my face like it was a hand-drawn map. I didn’t push any further. Another gale came and we both shivered. Like flickers of an Edison bulb going out, I saw her dim away.
It might have been another ten minutes or so, before I held her hand and tugged her up. Wordlessly, she followed me. Her shoulders slumped from tiredness and she began to have trouble keeping our pace. I slowed down. Virginia whimpered, and I looked at her in concern. I squeezed her hand tightly in mine.
“I-don’t wan-want to go back,” she said matter-of-factly.
The birches swished again.
I didn’t want to go back either. Virginia had no family aside from a niece who visited once every few months. She never married, apparently devoted to her vocation of nursing her entire life. She didn’t have a phone, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to operate it at this stage of her dementia.
This Norma in Tremont Square sounded so much more inviting. She sounded comforting and like she knew Virginia better than we did. She sounded warm and safe, and full of intimate memories.
“Let’s get you a cup of coffee…” I said, tugging at her arm.
She didn’t break eye-contact, the words arranging and rearranging in her head before me, like a stack of books on a freight train. We walked back without interruption.
Before we entered the front-door, Virginia yanked my arm. She leaned close to me and said, “D-d-don’t tell anyone w-where I’m going.”
III. Bus Stop
My grandma always says a place never looks more beautiful than when you are leaving it. And certainly, that proved true for my time at the senior living facility.
I don’t know how it went by.
With the “all hands on deck” sentiment of pandemic-era work — it all melted. The front desk jumped in for the kitchen, the kitchen for housekeeping, housekeeping answered phones, directors wet-vaccumed bathtubs, clipped toenails, receptionists changed and fed, organized vaccination clinics, sang “Happy Birthays” through windows that separated families from their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Days became nights and nights became seasons and everyone did everything until they got sick or there was need. And need was always.
My final day would come over a year later, owing to an impending move to a new city — the opportunity of moving on and being afforded the luxury of reminiscing about difficult work.
But I was scared to leave. Sad, as well.
We were all vaccinated and could have a proper going-away party in the living room. Frank got the first piece of cake, of course. The residents and staff wrote me cards, messages I would carry with me always. They were all lovely, but one sticks out to me as I write this:
“Isha, I am so happy you came into my life. But it is time for you to go. And I know you will soar.”
It was from an 80-something-year-old bright woman, an utter hypochondriac marauded by her fears of the world. Meredith and I spent hours arguing over the phone. She would call, on her bad days, 25 to 30 times a day. I had to answer every call as a strict part of my job. In that time, as I pleaded for her to stop calling, and as she tried to convince me of a myriad of conspiracy theories during my busiest times of the day — we formed the most peculiar bond.
It was a year of peculiar bonds.
My time there was brief in the scheme of life. It was work. It was Care, a notoriously underpaid, under-appreciated field. The women (and men, but mostly women, largely women of color) I met there were exceptional in unique ways. The nurses in their steadfast dedication, the hospice-workers in their undulating support, the priests and nuns who visited in full PPE for mass when the residents couldn’t go out to Church. The social-workers who supported residents about to be evicted as their bank accounts ran dry. The Resident Care Assistants and housekeepers, undervalued most of all, but in dire need of work.
I learned about the cost of Elder Care. And the price of it.
I learned that though time may be brief, it is still important, and should be considered so — with as much care and as much attention as time that is long.
When I walked out for the last time, it was summer. The birches were full now, jostling energetically with bright green leaves. The mosquitoes buzzing. The fireflies awake, fluorescent. I turned around only once, and saw the marina bus stop I had sat at in the winter.
It looked the same still, waiting patiently.
Virginia would pass away from pneumonia a few months after her great escape. My shock and sorrow over it at the time are too great to describe in this essay. But the loss of her reminded me of my feelings the first time I walked into the building, so many months before — as I felt struck by my youth, by the energy in the building, by the youthful wants. By how much life there is even just before death.
And now and again, I quietly hope she has reacquainted with her friend in Tremont Square.
