Executive Directing

One of the last things we did today before we head home from our trip to Arizona, was to drive by SunCrest Healthcare Center. It was the place I spent almost a year working. The last place I worked at in Arizona. It is a small nursing home on the outskirts of South Phoenix, serving a very indignant population. It wasn't unusual for families to drive up to the facility, bring in their loved one, admit them, and drive away, never to return. It was sad, but it happened.

SunCrest looked, on the outside, exactly like I remembered: a one story, white brick building, shaped like a cross (unintentional, possibly), facing south on a very busy street named Southern Avenue. I was the Director of Social Services there. My friend, Dave--who we saw first on this trip--liked to prompt me to tell people I was the Executive Director of Social Services. He said it sounded superior, and made me seem more important. I only used his advice once, when I went to St. Louis for the wedding of my friend/college roommate, Andy Palombo. We knew I was going to run into a bunch of people I knew from college with whom I did not communicate, and the title would make me look more successful than I really was.

I didn't go into the facility today. It didn't feel right. It's not a very big place; 115 total beds, which is small in comparison to many facilities. I doubt any of the residents or former employees who were there when I was, still live/work there.

As we drove away from the facility, Cyndi wondered aloud how I was able to get such a high responsibility job at 23. Even though I felt the need to make the job more executive, it was a pretty big job. I was charged with the responsibility of being the liaison between the facility and the residents; ensuring their rights were not being violated, and their needs were being met, as dictated by the State and Federal government. It is a high stress job in a nursing home, no matter where the physical location is; add the demographics and it made everything more challenging.

There wasn't a secret to getting the job. They had an opening, I had the experience, and we agreed on a salary. It was that simple. After I settled into the job, it was the residents who lived there that mostly kept me coming back. Granted, I have a life-long friend now because of the job, but that was an unexpected long-term bonus.

I wrote about one of my favorite residents, Casey Jones on March 11 (http://ayeartill40.blogspot.com/2009/03/hello-boy.html). Here is a sample of the few others that made the job all worthwhile:

Devon, the Singing Black Man
Devon drank his life into an alcoholic stupor. His life was relatively happy prior to succumbing to the drink. He was happily married to his high school sweetheart, they had two children—both daughters, who loved their parents and were thankful that they loved them back. He had a house, money in the bank and the understanding that he was a good provider and a good man.

As I remember the story, one day prior to the holidays, Devon’s nice life was destroyed. His wife and children were all instantly killed in a car accident while Devon was at work. His wife had picked the children up from school and was taking them somewhere. They were hit head-on by a semi-tractor trailer, killing everyone in the car instantly.

Devon was destroyed. He began drinking constantly. He lost his job, his house, his car. He lost everything. He drank and drank and drank. The drinking eased his pain. The drinking made the memory of his life disappear. The drinking pickled his brain.

Devon was found wandering the streets of Phoenix one night in July, singing Christmas carols. He had no idea where he was, where he was going or where he needed to be. He had an empty wallet in his pants pocket, making it difficult for the police to help locate his surviving family. The smell of alcohol was only slightly masked by the body odor that Devon emitted. Figuring he was simply just another homeless black man who to needed to sober up, the police put Devon in a cell to get some sleep.

Several hours later, Devon continued to speak incomprehensible sentences and pace the floor while singing Christmas carols. The police knew that they had more than just a drunk man on their hands. Devon was able to tell the police his name and prior address and phone number, but they were unable to initially locate any family.

Devon became the responsibility of the State. The paperwork was completed to get him on Medicaid and he was sent to live his life, singing Christmas carols, walking the halls instead of decking them

David McFarland
When Mr. McFarland arrived and it was time for me to meet and assess him, I knew immediately that mentally he was in the wrong place. Physically, Mr. McFarland was suffering. He was a total assist of three to four people, as he was paralyzed from the neck down due to Arterial Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Mr. McFarland was a big man. He looked—and this is extremely cliché, but there is no other way around it—like Santa Claus. The hair on his head and his face was pure white and he had a constant red hue on his cheeks as if he spent all of his time outside in the freezing cold versus inside an extremely hot Arizona nursing home.

Mr. McFarland came to SunCrest from his home in Tempe. He was an extremely intelligent man which, I was told, was why his disease was taking longer to kill him. His full-time nurse/live-in girlfriend, Thelma, was no longer able to care for him at home so they sought an alternate means of assistance.

Whenever Mr. McFarland was not in Thelma’s presence, he would complain about her and beg for help.

“She used to make me sit for hours in my bed,” he told me during my initial assessment. “She would pretend not to hear my pleas for help. I often had to sit in my own piss and shit for a very long time.” Mr. McFarland did not like telling me about these incidences.
One morning, about two weeks after he moved in, Thelma was standing behind the nurse’s station looking through a chart. It was not Mr. McFarland’s chart so I immediately became concerned.

“Why is Thelma behind the nurse’s station reading a chart,” I asked Lisa.

“Mr. Wagner hired her last week,” she said. She came highly recommended by Mr. McFarland.”
Their master plan, unbeknownst to me or any other staff member was to have Thelma admit him into the facility, get a job as a nurse and continue to be near his side while drawing a paycheck from the home.

I could not believe what I was hearing.

“Did anyone do a background check on her?” I asked Lisa. “Check references, read my progress note in the chart? Anything like that?”

I went to Mr. Wagner and informed him about the troubles that Thelma had caused Mr. McFarland at home.

“Are you sure he’s not confused,” he asked. He drew a deep breath, took off his glasses and began rubbing his temples. “I mean, maybe it’s okay. Maybe she didn’t do the things he said she did.”

It was not possible. “She cannot work here,” I insisted. “He’s not confused. No way at all. He’s probably one of the most intelligent people I have ever met.”

Mr. Wagner immediately fired Thelma and I became her number one enemy.

Thelma knew that I was the reason her first day at SunCrest was her last. Mr. McFarland was controlled by her in ways I will never understand. Even though he would complain to me about the poor treatment she provided, he continued to keep her in his life and tell her everything he confessed to me.

After she was fired, Thelma stormed my office, coming within inches of my body. The only thing separating us was my desk. “What the fuck you think you’re doing?” she snapped at me.

She kept pointing her finger toward my face and chest, but never actually touched me. She knew if she did, it would cause a bigger problem for her.

“Why you messing with my business? You don’t believe that shit he told you ‘bout me, do you?”

I got up from behind my desk and walked around to stand next to Thelma. She was a big woman. I stood even with her large chest and she outweighed me by at least 100 pounds. I was scared, but I had to stand my ground. It was my job to protect the patients who lived at SunCrest. My heart was beating fast.

“Whether or not what Mr. McFarland told me is true, you cannot actually tell me you believed you would be able to work here, did you?” I said. “The allegations alone are enough to keep you from working at this or any other nursing home. I’ve documented everything and will continue to do so.”

Thelma did not like this. “You better watch you ass from now on, Mr. Cory Fosco. Mr. Director of Social Services.” Thelma lowered her voice, “You better watch you self and look around every place you go.” Thelma looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice even more. “And you can take that as a threat. That I promise.”

This wasn’t the first time I had been threatened. When I was in college, I was a Resident Assistant. I had a reputation as a hard-ass, and I wrote people up often. I was threatened one night by one of the guys who lived in the all-male dorm at which I lived. He told me he was a member of a gang and that I needed to watch out for stray bullets. He left school before second semester ended and before he made good on his promise.

It didn’t matter how many times I had been threatened. What Thelma said to me was jarring.
I paid close attention to my actions and watched myself every where I went. I decided to alter my schedule, coming into work earlier or later than I normally did. I took different routes to and from work. My home telephone number was published, so Thelma had easy access to my information. I called the phone company and asked about getting my number unlisted. They told me it took 10 business days to process my request and that I would have to pay $3 per month more to have an unlisted number. The operator also pointed out that my address and telephone number would have been listed in the just published new edition of the phone book.

Every time Thelma came to visit Mr. McFarland at SunCrest, she would purposely walk past my door, pop her head inside my office and smirk at me. I expressed my concern to Mr. Wagner and I documented the incidents in Mr. McFarland’s chart.


Mr. Wagner considered calling Mr. McFarland’s children about Thelma’s threats. Since Mr. McFarland was not limiting Thelma’s access to him, he decided against it.

Nothing ever materialized from Thelma’s threats. Eventually, Mr. McFarland pressed charges against her. She continued to remain in the townhouse he owned and his children encouraged him to evict her. Once he realized that she was not longer a threat to him because he was safe living at SunCrest and away from her, Mr. McFarland became more confident with his ability to control his life. He told Mr. Wagner that he did not want Thelma to visit him anymore at the nursing home and he filed papers with Maricopa County to remove Thelma from his property. I thought for sure that she was going to blame the behavior and actions on me. I thought for sure that she was going to make good on her promise to injure me.

In the end, it was all very anticlimactic. Thelma just sort of disappeared. She left Mr. McFarland’s home, leaving most of her personal belongings behind. She never popped up from behind the bushes at my apartment. She never approached me at my car in the parking lot at SunCrest or at my apartment. She never touched me physically, but mentally she abused me. I allowed her to control my thoughts and actions for a very long time. This is something Mr. McFarland and I will always have in common.

Shadow
Shadow was a broken man. Literally. Both of his legs and one of his arms were amputated to diabetes and alcoholism. His life prior to living at SunCrest, involved shattered relationships with his family and friends.


Shadow knew exactly how to manipulate the residents and staff to get what he wanted. Being a person that depended so much on others, the only thing Shadow possessed to control his surroundings, was his finely tuned manipulative ways. He was extremely alert and oriented—more so than 90% of the residents that lived at SunCrest—and this was his greatest asset and his most depressing challenge. Shadow was forced into an existence of institutionalization because he had no other choice.

Once you got past the manipulation, Shadow was never really a problem resident. He would try to coax the nursing aides to bring him beer or marijuana, offering to give them money or buy them their own stash. Sometimes, if the aides were in good moods or if a new aide was hired, Shadow was successful. He’d get a six pack of Budweiser or a small bottle of cheap whiskey.
Shadow’s alcohol consumption was never enough to cause major issues for the staff. He never really became belligerent or uncooperative. He never lashed out physically at the staff. He would drink enough to get a slight buzz—enough to suit his desire to numb his unwanted place.
Shadow also had an insatiable sex drive. Residents in a nursing home have to have a written order in their chart by their physician for just about everything. If a resident was used to drinking a glass of wine with dinner every night and it did not interfere with his medications, his doctor would write an order basically blessing wine with dinner.


In Shadow’s case, since he had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, alcohol was not officially allowed. However, porn was. Shadow had a written order in his chart that allowed porn and masturbation. As long as the privacy curtain was pulled and neither his revolving roommate nor anyone in the hallway could see, Shadow was allowed to masturbate in his room while watch porn videos.

Shadow loved his porn and he loved his penis.

If given the opportunity, Shadow preferred the company of a woman rather than his hand for gratification. He would often proposition the aides—harmless flirtation, really—and was always denied the touch of another.

And then there was Mary.


Mary was schizophrenic and bipolar who had lived at SunCrest for a few years. She was in her early 60’s, was missing most of her teeth and had tardive dyskinesia, which was a neurological disorder caused by years of Mary taking antipsychotic medication. The disorder swelled Mary’s tongue to be double the normal size and it caused her to flap and smack her tongue constantly. Mary was a mess, both physically and mentally. She often refused her medications, which threw off her controlled cycles. At a particularly manic stage, Mary walked into Shadow’s room naked. She had a hairbrush in her hand, crawled into bed with Shadow and started to masturbate with the hairbrush. Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity, Shadow removed the hairbrush and inserted himself. According to Shadow, the sex lasted less than two minutes, but he was in love.
Shadow and Mary professed their love for one another and informed the staff that they would be engaging in sex as two consenting adults.

“It is our right,” they told me in my office together. “We have rights and we are in love.” Mary was holding Shadow’s left arm stump in her right hand and rubbing his left leg stump with her left. “We want to live in the same room.”


Mr. Wagner was not happy with the situation. If we ever admitted a husband and wife, the need for them to cohabitate was a no brainer. Moving a male and female resident into the same room was nearly impossible, especially if one person in the relationship was insane.

He called me into his office. He was pacing back and forth and loosening his tie. “You have to make sure you document everything about this. You are documenting this, right?”


I nodded.

I knew Mr. Wagner and I could both lose our jobs and he could lose his Nursing Home Administrator’s license if the State came in and found the relationship to be inappropriate. I did not care one way or another. If they wanted to have sex—quick sex at that—or if they wanted to live together forever, it did not negatively impact me or my job.


“Just write it all down. Write down everything.”

Writing everything down, did not change the situation. It covered our asses. Writing down that Mary and Shadow were having sex several times a day or keeping track of each time Mary and Shadow engaged in oral sex did not make it go away. It made me a diarist for their affair.

The relationship lasted a couple of weeks before Mary’s mania took a turn for the worse. She started to flirt with other male residents and even went so far as attempting to have sex with Shadow’s roommate. Mary insisted that she never had sex with Shadow and could not love him because he was black and she was white.


In the end, it was bad. Shadow was with me in my office, crying about Mary, when she stormed in.

“You two are making this all up,” she said. “You are both a bunch of fucking liars and I hate you!”


Shadow’s life was falling apart. He was also upset that his son had tricked him. Shadow’s son said he was going to cash his father’s Social Security check and bring back the money later in the day. His son had made that promise to Shadow three days earlier.
Despite the short reprieve, despite the fact that he felt the touch of a woman, Shadow remained a broken man.

Calvin
Calvin was one of those people that Hollywood studio executives love. His story was filled with hope. His story was filled with sadness. His story was supposed to be from rags to riches.
Calvin grew up in the South Phoenix area. He was a product of the harsh environment. Gang activity, drugs, prostitutes, joblessness and homelessness surrounded him. It was daunting. Calvin had probably seen many of his friends die unnecessarily and it probably scared him.
From an early age, football interested Calvin. The sport was a way to work out his aggression, it helped keep his mind off of the pressures of adolescence and the threat of a dead end life. When he was not playing the sport, he watched it on TV. When he was not watching it on TV, he was reading books about the lives of his favorite players and teams and books about the strategy of the game. Football was a harmless and productive escape and all of the effort Calvin put into it paid off.

I never heard much about Calvin’s progression from football fanatic to the NFL. His life seemed to begin and end with the Los Angeles Rams. It was as if he just woke up one day and was a professional athlete. But I know the struggle he took to get where he wound up was present. Life was never just easily handed to Calvin on a silver platter. I am sure he worked hard in high school, got a scholarship to college and proved his worth to the NFL teams. I like to think so, at least.


When I met Calvin at SunCrest, he was already a changed man. He was tall and athletic, but his demeanor was frail. He had a vacant look on his face reserved for people 50 years his senior, riddled with dementia.

Calvin kept one picture on the night stand next to his bed. A black and white framed 8x10 of a helmet-less Calvin in his uniform, clutching a football tucked between his forearm and his waist, looking as if he was running to score the winning touchdown. In the photo, Calvin was a good looking man. His mouth was filled with gleaming teeth, his hair was neatly groomed, and he had a faint trace of a thin beard that outlined his face.


As his story was relayed to me by staff members at SunCrest who knew him from the neighborhood, Calvin liked to drink. Although he was becoming a moderately successful pro-ball player, he was not amongst the ranks of the highly paid. Calvin was not a first string player; all of the fame and glory was reserved for others on his team. I like to think Calvin’s time was coming, if he had only held out a little longer.

Calvin’s life during the off-season was no better than the other members of the South Phoenix community. The little money Calvin had in his pocket went to help his family put food on the table. It also helped Calvin feed his looming alcoholism. Calvin needed to make better choices in his life, but growing up with little guidance and support like he did, making wrong choices was easier.


One night—after a particularly stellar two-day drinking marathon—Calvin stumbled along a busy South Phoenix street, alone. There were no sidewalks along this street, so Calvin walked along the shoulder against traffic. There were very few street lights illuminating the road and Calvin was wearing a black shirt with dark blue jogging pants. He was a black man, on a dark street, wearing dark clothes—a moving invisible target. Calvin was hit by an unidentified car being driven by an unidentified person, and left on the side of the road to die. Calvin suffered a massive head injury, leaving him unconscious and unaware. His arms and legs were broken in several different places and his hips were fractured. He lost most of the teeth just before clamping down on his tongue causing a severe incision.

Calvin should have died. He may have been better off if he did. But he didn’t. Calvin survived. Maybe it was because he was such a fighter. He fought his way out of the despair of his surroundings; he fought his way into a respectable profession; he fought for a better way of life. But even fighters fall, and Calvin’s weakness was the comfort of familiar surroundings.

After several months of rehabilitation and time, Calvin’s broken body recovered. He was able to walk, but with a very noticeable limp on his left side. Cognitively, Calvin lost everything. His short-term memory was destroyed. He could not remember anything from the accident forward. Because he was so drunk at the time, he actually did not remember the accident. Someone driving by had seen him lying on the side of the road, went to a local convenience store and called 911 from the pay phone. Calvin did not remember his friends and family. Which, in the long run, was a good thing, because most of them abandoned him after the accident. Calvin had no idea where he was, what year it was, whether it was time to eat breakfast, how to use the bathroom, or even what clothes he should wear.


He did remember that he once loved the game of football and that he was an expert at the game.
When wandering the halls and asked where he was going, Calvin would invariably reply, “Goin’ to play some ball. I gotta game I gotta get to. We gonna win today, for sure. For sure.”
With the exception of his age, Calvin was pretty much the same as many of the other residents at SunCrest—alone, confused, stuck in an era, waiting for death. If there was a switch on the back of his head that allowed me to magically cure Calvin of his ailment and erase the one major mistake he made during a moment of weakness in the off season, I would have flipped that switch. Because Calvin deserved better. Because Calvin was too young to have that vacant look. Because Calvin had promise. Because it would have been the right thing to do. Because.

Carl
Carl was the nursing home’s Loveable Giant. He was huge. Well over six feet tall, over 250 pounds; strong even with his disabilities. Carl had lived at SunCrest for three years prior to my arrival. He was in his early 50’s and had a stroke which paralyzed the left side of his upper body, gave him a permanent limp, and removed his ability to speak.

The only thing Carl ever said was, “Well, yeah.” You could ask Carl any question and the only thing he could say in response was “Well, yeah.”


In his mind, Carl was having a complete conversation with you whenever you spoke with him.

“Carl, tell me about your childhood.”


“Well, yeah.”

“Carl, what is your favorite food?”


“Well, yeah.”

“Carl, who is the president of the United States of America?”


“Well, yeah.”

Each response had its own inflection, which once you got to know Carl, made each “Well, yeah,” sensible.


Carl was never married. Before he had his stroke, he lived with his mother. He never had any siblings, he never had any friends, and he never finished high school. I learned all of this from the nursing staff that knew Carl from the neighborhood, and from reading previous assessments written in his chart. His mother died during the three years Carl was at SunCrest, but he could not comprehend her being gone. He was always waiting for her to come and visit. Had his mother been alive, she may have been able to care for him at home. Since he had no family, the State paid for his care and continued to approve a low reimbursement in a nursing home. It may have been a much easier way to keep him safe. Easier than having Carl live in his mother’s home alone, with subsidized assistance.

Carl was not an easy person to manage. Living in a nursing home, patients are subject to strict rules and specific daily routines. Patients were mostly told how to live their lives. They had very little input on what time of day they woke up, when to eat a meal, what clothes to wear.

Carl did not like to be told what to do. If he wanted to sleep until Noon, Carl would ignore the pleas of the aides and stay in bed with the sheets over his head until Noon. If he wanted to wear the same shirt two days in a row, Carl would wear the same shirt two days in a row. If Carl wanted to grab you, squeeze your arm until sharp pains began surfacing, he would do just that.

Linda
Linda showed up at my door one afternoon, asking me if I knew where to find the therapy room.


“I just arrived here yesterday,” she said, “I was in the hospital and the doctor said I need to get strong so I can go home.”

Before I was able to answer her, Linda walked away. I got up from my seat and watched her walk down the hallway, without assistance. Linda was tall and thin and had long, thin gray hair.

Underneath the aging and wrinkles, Linda was probably a very good looking woman in her prime. She waved to everyone she passed, acting more like a visitor or volunteer than a patient. When she turned the corner at the end of the hall, I thought to myself that her stay would be
short. She was going to be one of the lucky ones that got to return home.

The next day, I walked down to Linda’s room to do my initial assessment, discuss her goals, and help her return home as quickly as possible. When I went down to her room, Linda was not there. Her name was not on the door, and her side of the room was bare. The bed was stripped of the sheets and cover; the sign of a discharged patient.


When I went back to my office, Audrey was waiting for me.

“Did you hear what happened to one of your patients last night?” she asked. She had her eyebrows crunched together. “Linda,” she said,” did you hear what happened to Linda?”


“Didn’t she get discharged?” I asked. “I was just down at her room and she was not there.”

“She wandered out of the facility and was picked up by the police. The night shift thought she was one of the other patient’s family members and didn’t think twice when she walked out. She’s now on Green.”


“Green” meant Linda was moved to the facility’s locked unit. As a social worker in a nursing home, we were told that we should not use the term “locked.” We were to use the preferred word “secured.” But, no matter what politically correct term we were supposed to use, there was no way around the fact that the unit was meant to keep people in. Visitors and staff needed to dial a numeric code on a digital pad next to the entrance and exit of the door onto the unit.

Patients were so confused that even if they attempted to punch in a series of numbers, there was virtually no chance in cracking the code.

Patients who lived on Green were an elopement risk. They were often the people diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and who had a desire to walk and walk and walk. Some of the patient’s wound up on Green because of their own carelessness in their lives prior to coming to live in a nursing home. A Hispanic woman—36 years-old and the mother of four young children—was sent to Green because she accidentally took her father’s diabetes pills. They both went to the doctor one morning and were given prescriptions; he for his diabetes and she for a bladder infection. They had the prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy, in English. When it came time to take her medication, the young mother of four—who could not read English—proceeded to take her father’s potent medication. Almost immediately, she felt numb and her heart began beating very fast. She started to have a seizure and her family called 911 for assistance. The young Hispanic woman, whose life barely lived, was going to be confined to Green—or a unit like Green—the rest of her life. She, just like everyone else on Green was no longer oriented to place and if given the opportunity to be in an unsecured area, would immediately be lost and risk injury.


I was afraid of Green. Patient’s there were extremely disoriented. They had no idea who you were, where they were, and had no self-control. They often grabbed at you, pulled at you, kicked you, screamed at you. Their aggressiveness was uncontrollable at this stage of their lives. It was all too overwhelming and frightening to me. I avoided going onto Green.
Moving to Green also meant that Linda was no longer my patient. Audrey worked with the patient’s on Green, so Linda technically became her patient. Even though Linda was no longer my patient, I became interested in her life because of the written history she left behind.

Since Linda’s children had no contact with her, Audrey and I had the responsibility of cleaning the stuff out of her apartment. Before coming to Thunderbird, Linda lived in a converted hotel in downtown Phoenix, “The Ambassador,” that was once visited by President Kennedy and other high profile people. The Ambassador became a low-income apartment complex after the space lost its charm and people lost their interest in staying there.

The apartment complex was located in an unsafe part of town across the street from what we would later learn was the parking garage that Linda worked at for several years. Audrey had contact the manager of the complex prior to our arrival and pre-arranged for her to let us into Linda’s apartment. The complex was defined better as a classic “motel” versus hotel. There was no inner lobby with gathering places and common areas for residents. There were no indoor hallways leading from one apartment to the next. The hallways were outside, made of cement and did not provide adequate light, even on a cloudless day.


The manager led us to the right door. She had dark brown hair that was pulled back and tied with a green rubber band. She wore an oversized white T-shirt that said “The Complaint Department is Closed.” She weighed about three hundred pounds, and walked very slowly. Her breathing was labored, but she smoked at least two cigarettes during our short, five minute walk.

“I’m not sure what you’re gonna find in there,” she told us. Several of her teeth were missing, so she spoke with a bit of a lisp. “I never had no reason to go in there and she didn’t bother me with nothing much.” She pointed to an apartment three doors down from Linda’s. “She used to like to spend lots of time with John. The two of them, well, they, you know.” She wiped some sweat from her forehead with her bare hands and then wiped her wet hands on her shirt. “They was together, you know. Sexually.” She smiled at Audrey and me like it was some kind of secret we needed to hear. Like we were part of Linda and John’s inner circle and she was revealing something to us that we always suspected but never could confirm.


The apartment manager made me sick to my stomach. I was afraid that she was going to want to shake my hand when she left. Luckily, she just told us to close the door when we were through and she continued down the hall, slowly, as she lit another cigarette.

Linda’s apartment was a mess. There were empty boxes everywhere. Boxes you get from the supermarket when you are going to move. Fruit boxes they put bananas and pineapples and oranges in. The boxes were cluttered in the kitchen and in the living area. There were a few in the bedroom and each of those was half full with clothes. It was as if Linda was preparing for her exit from the complex or someone started the job before we arrived.


The apartment had a sour smell to it. Linda obviously had cats because there was an empty food and water dish next to the refrigerator and a dirty litter box in the bathroom. There were no signs of a cat anywhere. Linda had pictures of Siamese cats tacked to her fridge with magnets and one photo of another Siamese cat in a frame on her coffee table.

Audrey and I decided to start in the kitchen so we could help eliminate the sour smell as fast as possible.


Audrey opened the fridge. “Yuck,” she immediately said. “Here is where the smell is coming from.” She started to empty the contents, throwing everything away in one of the large black plastic garbage bags we brought. There was expired milk and cream. Old butter, turkey breast, cheese, wrinkled apples and pears, wilted lettuce, salad dressings, opened cans of tuna fish and cat food. There was a bottle of cheap vodka and three Natural Light cans of beer. It was all very smelly and very disgusting. I brought the garbage bag out into the hallway to get it out of our sight and away from our noses so we could finish the job. Audrey had the foresight to bring a can of disinfectant from Thunderbird and sprayed what seemed to be half of the bottle in the kitchen.

After the kitchen, we decided to tackle the bedroom. Linda’s queen sized bed almost took the entire space of the room. She had an oak four dresser drawer, a nightstand with a lamp, and a folding chair in the corner of the room. I began taking Linda’s clothes out of the dresser and putting them on the bed. Audrey started boxing them all up. We worked in silence and quickly filled the three boxes that were in the room before we arrived. Our goal was to get some of Linda’s things packed up to bring them back to her at Thunderbird. We knew we would not be able to take everything. I let Audrey make that call. She had a better idea of the clothes and things that Linda may have wanted or needed. The rest of her things would be donated to charity.


As we were finishing up the bedroom, Audrey stripped the bed of the pink linens that Linda had on it. The apartment manager asked us to pull the mattress off of the box springs and lean both pieces against the wall in the living room. She said that one of the new tenants was sleeping on her floor and how nice it would be if she could get Linda’s old mattress.
When I pulled the mattress off, part of Linda’s past life was revealed. While many older adults are known to hide money between their mattresses, Linda had other items in mind. Linda had a small cardboard box hidden between her mattresses.

Audrey and I looked at each other, looked back at the box and then back at each other. It was as if we were in a play and our actions were scripted.


“What the hell do you think we are going to find in there?” I asked, softly laughing.

“Open it,” Audrey taunted.

I picked up the box from the bottom mattress. It had some weight on it. I shook it like it was a birthday or Christmas present that I found and I was trying to guess what was inside.


“Come on already,” Audrey said. She lightly punched my arm and smiled. “Open the box already.”

I opened the box. Audrey’s mouth dropped open. I laughed and immediately dropped the box. It instantaneously had cooties.


“Oh my god!” Audrey shrieked.

“A dildo,” I said.


“No,” Audrey said. She looked right into my eyes. “It’s not a dildo. It’s a vibrator.”

Linda’s life became much more interesting. I couldn’t help feel embarrassed. Not for me, but for Linda. The things that people secretly find pleasure in can somehow find their way to illicit assumptions. Linda was no longer the confused alcoholic. She became the lady with a hidden past; he lady who found pleasure in solitary masturbation; the lady who possibly found pleasure in using the vibrator during sex with another person. When the object became part of her life, she probably never thought that some day in the future, a 23 year-old borderline alcoholic social worker would find it. She probably did not care. It may have helped bring happiness to her sad life. It may have turned her life around for a few moments here and there.

I felt as if my life was about to take a sudden turn as well. The discovery of Linda’s sex toy made me look at Audrey in a new way—a sexual way. Finding Linda’s vibrator moved me to a place I never really thought I would go when it came to my manager. I was never sexually attracted to Audrey, but the physical presence of an object we both knew was used for sexual gratification, turned me on. I wasn’t sure what to do. Audrey and I stood next to each other in silence. We were both leaning against Linda’s bed, staring at the vibrator.


In my mind, I went there. In my mind, Audrey wanted me to go there. She was engaged to be married to a divorced man who played the guitar and who had young son. They lived in a mobile home and had a small dog that would only go to the bathroom if Audrey took her out and walked her. I was with Lyn, a woman working on her second divorce, who claimed she sang Christian songs with Amy Grant one time, and who had three children. We were living in a three bedroom house with a dog named Skippy who didn’t really like me. In my mind, the vibrator willed us to throw each other down, have quick meaningless sex with or without its assistance, and continue with our task, never mentioning again what we did to each other, our significant others, clergy or any other living being.

In reality, we left the vibrator in the dresser drawer hoping someone would get good use from it. In reality, we quickly finished packing up Linda’s things and brought them to the car. In reality, back at the nursing home, I would find five full journals Linda was writing in, which detailed her fall from casual drinker to alcoholic to demented alcoholic. In reality, it was the journals that painted a picture of a woman who struggled with the choices she made in her life and opening a new challenge for me I was unprepared to accept.