Pentimento, Jean & Jaki Jean

From Glicinas by Claude Monet

Friday, November 2, 2012

Day 24 of life in the hospital with Jean.  Her nurse for the first shift is Elizabeth (Erica went home early because of a family emergency) and her PCA is Linda.  I know these things because every morning I dutifully write the information on a white board facing Jean’s bed.  I revise the personnel information when the shift changes at 7 pm. 

I have spent obsessive time & effort & used massive quantities of Greased Lightning Super Cleanser & Degreaser to remove every faded, albeit enduring, remnant of every previous date & shift change & cheerful smiley face from the white board.

No white board pentimenti for Jaki Jean.

This afternoon, as I walked down the hall toward the elevators on one of the  myriad treks I take daily in search of ice, a thin, elderly gentleman in socks & an open gown wanders from room to room in search of his assigned slot on the floor.

Elizabeth the RN scolds him, trying to redirect him to his room.  It is not easy persuading him.  The world of a hospital wing is a small town.  I am a squatter, firmly embedded in my mother’s room.  Patients & fellow squatters recognize family & friends visiting a resident.  I cannot recall with any certainty if the wandering thin gentleman in socks & an open gown has visitors.

He does, from time to time, drape himself in a blanket or sheet, and in a standing position, spread his arms to create the illusion of wings.

It occurs to me that he was not looking for his room earlier.  He was looking for a place to spread his wings & fly away.

Jean asked me this afternoon:  Is it AM or PM?

There is a clock on the wall facing her bed, but clocks do not indicate morning or afternoon or tea time or Evensong or the night.

So I retrieve the sandwich sized Ziploc bag that stores my low odor dry erase markers & take out a red marker & write PM in large letters on a mini-white board resting on the room’s board.

On one of our adjacent wings, there is a screamer.  Not a patient crying for help or for a nurse, but a human being whose communication is limited to a capella arias of distress, anger, pain, loneliness, frustration, confusion, dismay, despair.

For a short time, we had a screamer on our wing.  A small, frail & shrunken elderly woman whose only visitor was not squatter or hallway banter friendly.  A sign on the patient’s door read:  No visitors per son’s request.

Every time I passed her closed door, strains of lonely, desperate arias no one appreciated or understood seeped through the barrier.  I wondered whether she would stop screaming if her son allowed her visitors.

As the afternoon closes into Evensong, I think to myself.  Self, it has been a good day.

Jean’s appetite was excellent, her speech therapy went excellently well, she only pulled her oxygen tube out a few times.  Her doctors are pleased with her progress, everyone who encounters her remarks on how well she looks.  

Jean & I discussed using nursery rhymes to stimulate & strengthen her speech.   I say Jack Sprat had no fat, he wife had no – Jean responds lean.  And so between them both, they licked the platter clean.

Together, we agree that it is a good plan & I make a note to retrieve some volumes of nursery rhymes from home.

A good day, Self.

I almost forget that earlier she told me she needed help getting to the other room & was confused by my response that we only had one room & a bathroom here on the second floor of the long term acute care hospital. 

Or that earlier she heard Stephanie, the respiratory tech, tell her she would return with medicine when Stephanie told her that it was time to remove the mask used in Jean’s breathing treatment. 

Is it AM or PM?

The gentleman in socks stands in the threshold of his doorway, without wings, & calls out to everyone of any gender who passes by & everyone he imagines passing by:  Please.  Please, mam.  Please.

As I pass on my return route to Jean’s room, I avert my eyes & think about thresholds & their significance in literature & drama & art.  Thresholds, representing the possibility of transgression or transformation.

Or in the case of my elderly gentleman in socks, stasis.  A lack of movement.  No possibility, no opportunity.

No pentimento.  No glory.

Evensong has passed.