Eileen

Some of the buttons on the metal pad are worn… the 2, 4, 6 and 8. The door will open if I press them in the right order. One of the nurses explained to me last time that it was in the sign of the cross. I never learned that in Quaker Meeting so I get it backwards the first time. Then the door opens. You need the code to get in as well as to get out.

 Eileen is in the hall, sitting in her wheelchair. They’ve pulled her bushy grey hair back in a lilac elastic headband that matches her cardigan. The ever-present Dixie cup of Ensure languishes on the tray in front of her. I smile and put my hand on her shoulder and introduce myself again. She looks at me with light blue eyes and says, “I don’t remember you.” I say, it’s OK, I forget people too.

 I have brought her a cup of Irish tea with sugar and milk. When I visit Marco downstairs, I bring him pignoli cookies. My daughter thinks this is racist of me. But Eileen loves the tea, and Marco munches on the sweet disks, and I think it would not go as well if I switched them. Of course when I brought in some Celtic music for her she was not at all interested, so who knows. Eileen alternates between the tea and the Ensure. “That’s good tea," she says.

 A stooped man shuffles by with a walker, nodding at her. I ask her if she knows him. She dismisses him with a wave of her hand. “I wouldn’t even bother,” she says. Over the gurgling intercom a man announces that lunch will be arriving shortly. A woman across the hall is bouncing a chubby baby doll on her lap. In a high-pitched voice, she shouts, “My baby is hungry! My baby is hungry!” A very tall young black man is being escorted in by an aide. He looks as if he could have been a basketball player. When I came in the police were there. He had tried to hit someone. Now he looks dazed, even subdued. Still I try not to catch his eye.

 Eileen is sipping the ivory cream from her small paper cup. Ensure has the consistency of half and half and everyone seems to like it. She has no front teeth and her contorted hand shakes but I cannot help her eat or drink. We got a memo about that. Only the aides can help. Instead her aide passes by and rips a Kleenex from a nearby box, jabs it into the corner of Eileen’s mouth, throws it on the tray and storms off. She has said nothing. Eileen turns to me. “Did you see that?” she asks. I nod. “Was I dribbling?” she asks. I don’t think she was, but does it even matter? “Can you believe that?” she says.

 Eileen says she wants to leave, she wants to go home. She wants me to walk home with her. She has lived in Stamford since she came alone to America from Ireland at 16, to be a nanny. I ask her what color her house is and she can’t remember. I can’t walk you home today, I say. It’s a long, long way. And it’s very cold outside, it’s raining. “Why can’t we talk about what I want to talk about?” she asks. I tell her I would love to talk about anything she wants to talk about. She is quiet for a moment, then she says, “What’s the weather like outside?” I tell her it’s rainy and cold. Then I ask her if she wants to talk about anything else. She pauses then says, “I can’t hold my urine anymore.” I say, that’s alright. You don’t have to. She says, so I should just let it go? Yes, I say. They have wrapped an afghan around her shoulders, but she is still cold, and so am I sitting next to her. I look up and see that the blowing vent is directly above her. Why they have placed her here I don’t know, but there was no memo about moving wheelchairs so I take her down the hall a bit where there aren’t any vents.

 Once I asked her if she had any hobbies. Did she knit or sew or like to cook? She admitted she liked to cook and then said she would write stories if she had time. My heart perked up. I could help you write down stories, I said. I’m writing some stories now myself. I tell her about the story I just wrote about an older man trying to move wet leaves off a road so that no one will get hurt slipping on them. She furrows her brow, looks at me and says, people bought that story? I laugh. No, I say.

 I am happy today that even though she is asking to go home, she isn’t crying. Sometimes she just cries and cries and asks me to call her son Seth to come get her. When I tell my manager, she says she will have to talk to Seth about compassion and dignity, but I think that horse left the barn a long time ago. Seth doesn’t want her on the Ativan which calms her down and makes her less anxious because it also makes her sleepy and then when he visits he can’t always talk to her. But when she is not on it, she is very anxious and sad.

One day she was weeping and kept saying that she didn’t like this place and she wanted to leave. She turned to her aide, who was plumping her pillows and asked her if she would want to stay here, in this place. The aide laughed, a laugh whose emotion I could not discern. Of course I would stay here, she said, it’s a wonderful place. Later on Eileen looked me straight in the eyes and asked me whether I would want to stay here. I couldn’t lie and I shook my head softly. I want to think that she appreciated my honesty, but I don’t know.

 I do not blame anyone. The aides have a grueling job with no appreciation from these patients, whose social rudders have broken. The families don’t recognize these mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, and the feeling is mutual. I know that it takes a large, committed family to keep someone at home. I want to believe I would do everything to make sure that my mother stays in her home, but daily events bring on doubt. A few weeks ago my mother took all the papers out of folders my father had in his file cabinets, making a disorganized messy pile. Then she said the folders were wrinkled and she would have to iron them.

 I am holding Eileen’s hand and noticing that underneath the wrinkled thin skin I can see every vein, tendon clearly, like a macabre Damian Hirst piece. I squeeze her hand and tell her I must go, that I will be back soon. She holds on tightly, imploring me to stay. Because she’s never done this before, I wish I could. But I reassure her that I will return soon and I head to the locked doors. The sign of the cross lets me out.