These would look better in my bathroom than matchbooks from various strip clubs and dive bars, no? Witty matches only five bucks by Dippy Lulu.
So it was right at lunchtime when Mrs. Smith stood outside the door with tears streaming down her face. I figured he had said something particularly nasty to the poor thing. I approached the slight woman with my hands out. I was seconds away from cooing, “Don’t worry, I ‘m sure he doesn’t mean to be so rude…” in an effort to ease her tears, when she blurted out “He’s gone.”
“Where?” I was confused. He had just been in his room. Had Mr. Smith finally made good on his promise to escape to the gas station down the street to get cigarettes and booze?
“He’s dead.” There was a flash of puzzlement on her face, before she started up with a round of fresh tears.
Oh. Well, shit. I had just asked a grieving widow, who had only been a widow for about twelve seconds, where her dead husband went. Lovely.
I took her in my arms and hugged her. I felt tears flowing down my face too. This would be one of the last times I would cry at the thought of a patient’s death. This was before I had become completely immune to all tragedy in the hospital.
The dentist showed up and then his mousy sister. They stood in room 401 for a few minutes with the doctor and then they were all gone. I would never see any of them again.
It was twelve o’ one. Bryan, the other aid was at lunch. I was the only one on the floor. It was just the apathetic charge nurse, Tina and me.
“Do you need help?” Tina asked gently, not in her usual sarcastic tone. “You haven’t done post mortem care before, have you?” No. I hadn’t. I shook my head as I mulled over the term “post mortem care”. It sounded like so many other generic medical terms used to turn awful situations into manageable tasks, each a simple procedure to be checked off of a list.
We entered 401 with a handful of supplies. Towels, an adult diaper and a pink plastic basin filled with water. It was time to give Mr. Smith his last bath sponge bath. I was dizzy with the thought of his ghost in the room, watching and judging.
Mr. Smith looked like he was asleep with his eyes open, right about to snore with his jaw hanging down and forming a black cavern in the middle of his face. I was reminded of the “The Scream” painting where the figure’s mouth is pulled into an eternal shriek.
“There’s no helping the open mouth. The jaw muscles relax and that’s that. I will close his eyes though, that much we can do.” I stood by the wall as Tina gently pushed his lids closed.
Mr. Smith had never been a thin person, as far as I knew, but now that he was dead his body was heavier than I could have imagined. His flesh had become grey like fish skin, with a slight oily sheen. I struggled to push him onto his side as Tina pulled from the other direction. As soon as I had wiped his bottom and fastened the diaper, Tina pushed him toward my side as I pulled to get him on to his other side. He let out a loud groan as his face came toward mine. I couldn’t help but scream. Even Tina was startled but then she said, “ Don’t be silly. It’s just air escaping from the lungs. Sometimes they make noise when you move them. It’s normal.” As soon as she finished her sentence Mr. Smith let a loud fart only inches from Tina’s face as she had bent down to to pick a washcloth up from the floor. Any other time, I would have paid twenty dollars to see the charge nurse take a fart in the face, but the situation was too grave for me to appreciate it at the time. I hoped Mr. Smith was laughing, wherever he was, as he hated Tina with a passion.
“I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t think he exactly liked me…” the words came out in a nervous rush.
“Well, you know, he still might be able to hear us. They say hearing is the last to go. I just hope he feels better, wherever he is right now, than he did a few hours ago.” I nodded my head and watched as we began the final preparations, wiping his face, cleaning the dried blood from his mouth and nose.
She took out his IV, wiping the dried blood from the place the needle had been, while I removed the heart monitor stickers from his chest. He didn’t feel it when some of the chest hair came with them. We propped his head up on a pillow and covered his blotchy yellow gray body with a sheet, but we didn’t cover his head like in the movies. We just tucked him in, the same as if he had been alive.
I went to lunch as soon as Mr. Smith was presentable. I didn’t eat anything. I just watched part of a soap opera that was on the staff room television. I came out of the break room just in time to see a handsome blonde mortuary guy wheeling past the front desk with the body, now hidden under a green carpet.
Tina stopped him to chat as he was rounding the corner.
“Thanks Steve. Grab a cupcake before you go, it was Mary’s birthday yesterday.” The mortuary guy, Steve, laughed and handed her a form to sign.
“Thanks, but no thanks Teenie. It’s a hundred and ten degrees out and I have a few more runs after this. The frosting would melt, anyway.” So he was calling nurses by nick names and being offered cupcakes? Who was this guy? He acted like a regular at a neighborhood bar.
No one saw me touch the green mound as Steve wheeled past.
Tina walked up to me with her usual stern look. “You’re getting a new patient in 401, they should be up as soon as the room is clean.”
And the revolving door swung past, booting out Mr. Smith and flinging in some poor Eighty year old with a bad cough and a worse bladder infection.
I enjoyed reading the segment. I also enjoyed that Tina got farted in the face, what goes around come around. Keep em coming! Has that Writers magazine helped with any good information?