Warts and All

Susan Ralston Submitted to Contest #335

Here we are again, Journal, back in therapy. It's been quite awhile, so let me fill you in since... I don't even know when we last wandered around in my closed-off thoughts. Sometimes, when I write and think about the hard stuff, I replay the past like I'm watching a movie. Other times, I'm right there, acting my part in real time. But always, always, knowing how it ends, wishing I could draw out the honeymoon beginning forever and never reach the middle where it all goes wrong. So I write, knowing that my part of the story will never conclude as long as I live and breathe.

I two-knuckle knocked on her open door, enough to break the concentration without startling her. She put her finger on the page that I assumed was to mark her place before her head lifted and the brown curls parted from her face.

"Hello, Dr. O'Neill," I said. "My name is James. I’m your new Charge Nurse. Okay if I come in?”

She set aside the chart she was reviewing and gestured with her glasses for me to sit in one of the two leather office chairs facing her desk. “Welcome aboard, James. You look familiar. Have we met before?"

"We spoke briefly last week during my interview with the facility administrator."

She narrowed her eyes as if in thought, then nodded slightly at the recalled moment.

"Have you ever worked with the elderly?”

“No,” I replied, "I asked for this rotation to close some of the gaps in my training.”

She smiled, showing small wrinkles around her lips and hazel eyes. I thought she was very pretty, probably late 50s. Very professionally dressed even without her physician lab coat. "You'll find plenty to learn around here. Our patients have lost a lot but they make up for it in pride and dignity. We feed it to them every chance we can.”

Knowing next to nothing about elder care, I applied to work at a skilled nursing facility that provided care for oncology patients in transition from a hospital to somewhere more permanent, Alzheimer and dementia folks who were there briefly to recover from their short hospital stay due to illness or accident, or the myriad of older others that needed intense medical and rehab services as a transition between hospital emergency rooms to a final destination. A dreaded medical rotation for some but a bonus for my career advancement, and personally, an aid in my own healing process.

Sorrow and loss are old acquaintances of mine. My wife since college died only five years before I applied for this new job. I thought I'd never recover. The imprint of her touches left a gap in my life like a phantom limb, - a brush of her kiss on my neck that wasn't there; the playful snap of a dish towel to my bum; the constant pressure on my heart not caused by anything science could detect. My nursing career always centered around children which was a grateful diversion from watching my best friend and lover's cancer swallow her whole in less than two years. My daughter was devastated and is still working through her own recovery. Thankfully, her husband is a wonderfully patient and empathetic man.

As part of my grieving process, I float between depression, and acceptance that I've done all that I could. But acceptance is losing the fight as my wife's last wish was for me to move on and love again. It stripped me to the bone to have loved and lost so much. I was terrified to imagine trying again, so I never dated and threw myself into my work, but my colleagues couldn't look at me without sadness. Hence, the need for a new job.

As occasionally happens between doctor and staff that work together long hours with stretches of down time woven between sporadic and intense chaos, CeCe O'Neill and I became attuned to the other. She relied on me as her eyes and ears to accurately describe, and if she asked, to interpret, the vibration of the patients and the nursing staff. Over the first year, our short, and often interrupted conversations, developed into a non-verbal language followed by non-verbal responses that the other's message had been sent and received. We were an efficient medical team.

Our reliance built, and probing impersonal chit-chat eased into sharing personal snatches of daily life. Talk of the weather was conjugated with personal stories masking our desire for companionship. In time, the illusion of only a working partnership was replaced with secreted, walled-off privacy in our off-hours. We fell in love as the personal vulnerabilities were revealed and unspoken assurances and acceptances gained ground. She was afraid that her imperfections would drive away another lover. I was immobilized at times that anyone I loved would die before me, leaving me maimed beyond recovery.

In another time, another continent, our religion, 15 year age gap, and class differences would have made our love a hanging offense. But the planets aligned and we wed. Life was busy for a decade, and we cherished that we had found each other with a second chance at love. Holidays spent together that included our grown kids were tough at first. My daughter felt guilty to move on without her mother, even though it had been half a decade. But CeCe did not push. Her empathy as a good doctor was a positive trait. Her sons warmed to me faster than we imagined; they thought that their mother was way over-due for a loving companion.

Holiday get-togethers expanded to weekend cook-outs and day-trips to local haunts. Her daughter and husband formed bonds with my sons and their family, based on mutual interests. Soon our workshop became a garage for anyone to work on restoring the half rebuilt Mazda Miata. Our bonus room always had at least one jigsaw puzzle waiting to be completed, then if voted upon as good enough, mounted, and hung on a wall. One night a week became pot-luck dinner and game night for whoever could make it, friends were welcome, too. The home blossomed in too-long-suppressed, carefree joy.

CeCe retired at 65, having worked her way to Chief of Staff and accrued enough kudos and financial compensation to last us our remaining days, -gods willing and the economy don't collapse, we used to joke. I changed jobs to be a home-health care nurse, setting my own hours, mostly to stay connected to a job I loved.

Her decline was subtle and rarely talked about during the first year, but the family was heartsore when the thieves brazenly began to steal her words, then her thoughts. Never a good eater, drinking fluids slacked off too, and arguing or cajoling about it got nowhere good. This last trip and fall put her in the hospital where they diagnosed pneumonia, a UTI, and naturally, dehydration. Meds and physical rehab brought her back enough to be discharged, but not to home. Too much weakness, too much forgetfulness to even be in a wheelchair unsupervised.

Home wasn’t a practical next step. I couldn’t lift her without hurting my back. Showers, and changing her diapers took two people. She cried when I left her that first night, alone inside this 50-bed skilled nursing facility, not unlike the building where we had worked together for years. I told her that when she could walk I'd bring her home, knowing that would likely never happen. I wept driving to our empty house and throughout the night. Her nurses told me the next day that she had also.

A week later, I took her out for a root beer float. She waited in the car while I stopped by the house to retrieve paperwork that the facility needed. She never asked why we stopped, or where I had gone while she waited. Our home of 10 years. I felt so alone.

I visit her twice a day and find that my naps in between seeing her help me to forget about life. Her sons and family have stopped visiting and rarely call. She doesn’t know who they are and their tears would confuse and scare her.

She sleeps most of the days, and is losing weight rapidly. But, we've found our pace and our peace. I’ve become quite the manicurist. She likes when I touch her and it pleases me to feel that her fingers are still warm because I know that one day soon that will end. Her hair has turned a lovely shade of silver with streaks of brown that I brush with 100 strokes to make it shine. She smiles when we pick out one piece of candy every afternoon from the stash I have in her section of the communal refrigerator.

When I visit her in her room every morning after breakfast, I play a little game that never fails to make her smile. I two-knuckle knock on her open door and announce, “Hello. My name is James. I’m your new nurse. Okay if I come in?”

"Yes. James?" That pretty smile. "Have we met?"

"Yes. Last week during my talk with the facility administrator," I reply.

She narrows her eyes and nods, expressing those small wrinkles around her warm lips and beautiful hazel eyes. Thoughtful, I imagine.

Therapy has taught me to journal my feelings, but it always drains me. This is my umpteenth notebook and I've titled it, This Is My Story, Warts and All. It's naptime, so I'll stop now and hope for a better tomorrow.