‘He barely understood a word of the living will except the bit about IV antibiotics. I said antibiot nyet, and he responded by nodding wisely.’
The doctor had exited without saying a word, after which Margit had waited a further two hours before a friendly Filipina nurse had come and disconnected Eino from the tubes, bottles and stickers. The nurse had clearly expressed her displeasure at not being able to treat such a lively old fellow, but these textbook sentiments, memorized during nursing school, had had no effect on Margit. The nurse had pushed Eino’s bed into the lobby to wait for the non-emergency ambulance to arrive.
‘It took another three and a half hours before a single non-emergency emergency vehicle was available in this city.’
‘That’s quite the contradiction in terms,’ Siiri chuckled, glancing at the family that had occupied the next table. The exhausted mother pulled a plump, wool-swaddled baby out of a sleeping bag, the kind given to all Finnish parents in their government-issued baby box. The poor thing was dripping sweat and red as a beet but very good-natured. The infant patted its mother on the shoulder and peered brightly at Siiri, giving her a winning, albeit toothless, smile.
‘It’s a good thing there’s someone who isn’t in a hurry, even if that someone is an ambulance!’ Irma chuckled, and they laughed merrily. The tired mother started feeding her chubby child unheated baby food, which brought Siiri’s game of peek-a-boo to an end. Margit continued ploughing through her account, without skipping a single detail.
Eino was back at the SquirrelsNest, only in a new room, because his spot had already been released for some fresher dementee’s use. It made no difference, because Eino didn’t seem to understand where he was lying. Margit gathered that the doctors had poked and prodded Eino enough to find, in addition to advanced Parkinson’s and a difficult case of dementia, heart failure and pneumonia.
‘But that’s wonderful!’ Siiri cried spontaneously.
‘How so?’ Irma said.
Margit was very calm. She explained to Irma that she’d been hoping to expedite Eino’s death for some time but hadn’t come up with an effective strategy until one of Anna-Liisa’s caregivers had advised she mix morphine tablets and sleeping pills in yogurt.
‘And you were there, Siiri? You didn’t say a word.’ Irma seemed angry, but Margit looked at Siiri approvingly.
‘We were too late. It was pretty macabre, since Eino wasn’t able to eat properly any more,’ Margit continued. Ultimately, it was a big relief that Eino didn’t have to die from the yogurt she fed him. She hadn’t completely thought out whether she’d be able to bear responsibility for the consequences of her actions.
‘Besides, if they had done an autopsy they would have caught you,’ Irma said.
‘They wouldn’t necessarily have performed one, but for that reason alone I would have had plenty of sleepless nights,’ Margit said tiredly. ‘Now we just have to hope that this case of pneumonia is merciful to Eino.’
Irma thoughtlessly started pondering out loud about the likelihood that Margit’s force-feeding had somehow caused Eino’s pneumonia, and could that be somehow detected through an autopsy. Siiri listened impatiently; this had occurred to her, too, but she decided to weed the notion out of Margit’s mind.
‘I don’t suppose even the most eager medical examiner would want to open up a sick old man who died of an apparent illness to determine the cause of death. They must have better material,’ she said.
‘For teaching purposes, maybe?’ Irma suggested. ‘I’m leaving my old bones and organs to science.’
Margit didn’t trouble herself over autopsies. ‘My only concern now is whether Eino will be allowed to live out the time left to him at the SquirrelsNest. But they’re not prepared to deal with dying seniors there; all they can handle are the kind that lie there without any symptoms and can be regularly medicated.’
Margit had engaged in many contentious conversations with the nursing home’s head nurse, director and head of resident services on the topic. They had arrived at a truce of sorts when Margit agreed to pay out of pocket for a dedicated nurse to watch over Eino at night.
‘Last night a frightened little thing with her face and ears full of spikes sat there at Eino’s side. I’m sure she’ll be an incredible comfort to me when I have to face my husband’s death.’
‘Look! Tauno’s in the paper, too.’
Irma was browsing through the tabloid someone had left on President Halonen’s table, and there was an entire spread on the retrofit at Sunset Grove and the steadfast veteran who refused to desert. There was nothing new in the article; it just rehashed the story from the weekend news with an extra dash of scandal. Facts about retirement home renovations were called out in a box to the side, and it said that most of the buildings were so new that Sunset Grove was a precedent of sorts.
‘It reads here that the costs of the Sunset Grove renovation have tripled during the project, and it’s the clients who will foot the bill. That means us.’
‘Of course. They can raise the rents and the service fees as high as they want. And there’s no law against it,’ Siiri said.
‘A Facebook group has been founded called “Save the Last Vet Standing”, and thousands of people have already joined,’ Irma read. It was a beautiful gesture; the intent was to offer Tauno help and moral support, but it didn’t seem as if it had much practical effect. Irma had come to learn that the Internet was like the Shakespeare comedy Much Ado about Nothing.
‘On Facebook you can like and poke and tell everyone what’s on your mind, but what good is that going to do us or Tauno? Besides, Tauno isn’t the only World War Two veteran who’s still standing.’
‘Siiri, my love!’ rang out in a familiar voice, and in that same instant Muhis and Metukka were seating themselves at the table. The boys had been grocery shopping, and this time they planned on preparing something from veal kidneys. Eyes twinkling with enthusiasm, Muhis recounted what beautiful innards were available downstairs. He couldn’t understand why Finns ate ready-made pizza by the yard and frozen French fries when fresh organs were available much more cheaply.
‘Kidneys taste like urine to me,’ Irma made the mistake of saying, and was repaid with a long lecture on how kidneys needed to be rinsed several times, stewed and spiced until they were succulent and delicious.
‘Have you found work?’ Siiri asked. She was concerned about her friends’ unemployment and consequent drift into illicit activities. Muhis reported that he had spent a couple of days the previous week cleaning schools, and Metukka had lent a hand at an acquaintance’s moving company. But nothing else had turned up, and they didn’t have anything in store for the week ahead. Metukka drummed the tabletop restlessly and Muhis adjusted his hat; their beaming smiles had vanished.
Then Siiri had what she thought was a brilliant idea: ‘Maybe you could come and work for us? We’re too tired to clean, do laundry, press the sheets and cook every day. You could help us out, and we can give you a little spending money in return.’
As soon as she spoke the words, a wave of relief washed over Siiri, as if the burden of their blended household had been instantly swept from her shoulders. The boys liked the idea. Margit didn’t participate in the conversation; she just gathered up her things, still muttering about Eino. The chubby baby at the next table had finished her meal and squealed cheerfully. She continued squawking insistently, until Siiri looked over and was rewarded with another exuberant smile. Suddenly Siiri felt as if the sun were shining through the roof of Hakaniemi Hall and straight onto her face, even though it was November.
Irma doubted whether they could afford manservants, but when Muhis and Metukka said that twenty euros an hour would be plenty, it stopped sounding so bad. Besides, it would be charity: they would be helping the boys, and the boys would be helping them.
‘But isn’t that what they mean by under the table?’ Irma asked, lowering her voice conspiratorially. ‘Might we end up in jail?’
Muhis and Metukka burst ou
t in guffaws. Of course it would be under the table, but in Finland even ministers didn’t need to report payments made for a little help around the house to the tax office. It was ‘totally normal’.
‘Or “hella normal”, as my darlings would say,’ Irma said in satisfaction. ‘Have you noticed how everything is normal these days?’
Muhis and Metukka promised to come by that very week to clean the apartment and do the laundry.
‘We know the place. We’ve done a few odd jobs there in the past,’ Metukka said with a wink.
Chapter 29
Margit had spent five days at Eino’s bedside, praying for a beautiful death for him. Every night, a paid nursing student had relieved Margit so that she could go to the Hakaniemi apartment to sleep. And every night Margit had lain awake, afraid that Eino would die while she was gone, with some spike-faced stranger ogling him. By the sixth morning she was utterly drained, but of course she couldn’t stay home to rest, because if she did, someone might roll Eino out to an ambulance and send him back to the hospital. Every day without fail, Margit had to explain to the new workers at the SquirrelsNest why Eino was not to be carted off to the hospital or even the health centre, even though he had a fever.
‘I can’t take this any more. Why can’t an old person just be allowed to die?’ she mumbled tearfully to Siiri, who had woken up earlier than normal to Margit’s clattering around the kitchen.
‘Don’t you worry, Eino will die,’ Siiri said with such serene certainty that she surprised even herself. ‘Maybe it will happen today.’
‘That’s what I’ve said every morning,’ Margit muttered in exhaustion. ‘Could you . . . could you come with me to the SquirrelsNest today for moral support?’
Of course Siiri could. And so they set out together, right then and there, while the others were still sound asleep in their bedrooms. But when Siiri opened the front door, she and Margit were greeted with a surprise. A man was standing there with a key ring in his hand, clearly intending to enter their apartment. He was short, dressed in grey, and had combed his hair into a tuft in the middle. Siiri took such fright that she thought her heart had stopped and she’d gone blind, but when her vision returned, the man was still standing in front of her, just as startled as she was. Siiri couldn’t help but be reminded of the scene in The Magic Flute where Papageno and Monostatos stare at each other, equally frightened. ‘It must be the devil himself,’ was how the old version of the libretto went, but that wasn’t relevant in this instance.
‘Excuse me, are you an in-home caregiver?’ Siiri asked, after regaining her composure. ‘Are you here to see Anna-Liisa Petäjä?’
‘Yes . . . exactly, absolutely,’ the man replied. There was something familiar about him; perhaps he’d been by to rehabilitate Anna-Liisa before.
‘Go on in. I believe Anna-Liisa is still asleep, but I’m sure you know how to wake her gently.’
The man slipped into the apartment, and Siiri and Margit continued on their way. The street below was rather quiet and pitch-black, and the metro was practically empty. Apparently, at this hour on a Saturday morning, no one except in-home caregivers and old people waiting to die had any call to be awake. Luckily, there was no slush and it wasn’t pouring with rain, the way it had been for nearly the entire month of November.
The ambience at the SquirrelsNest dementia ward was even more static than usual. Everyone was in a deep slumber. The sleeping aids were effective; the strapping male nurse dozing in the glass cubicle was the only one in the place enjoying a natural, fatigue-induced sleep.
Margit knocked softly on Eino’s door, and she and Siiri stepped in. The room was just like Eino’s old one: efficient and practical, in other words grim. A whale of a woman, surprisingly young-looking, snored in the other bed, and a slight, green-haired girl lay curled in a foetal position on the floor at Eino’s side. She had bunched Eino’s bedspread up into a pillow. Margit gave the girl an unfriendly nudge, vexed that the private nursing student she was paying out of pocket was sleeping instead of watching over Eino.
‘Rise and shine, missy. How did Eino sleep?’
The nurse jumped, too groggy to grasp who Margit and Siiri were. Her body was decorated with tattoos, and steel balls pierced her face. She thought they were patients and spoke in a gentle, soothing voice as she got up.
‘What are you naughty little things doing here in the middle of the fucking night? You should go back to fucking bed, because it’s like fucking midnight right now and everyone is supposed to be fucking tucked in their beds like good fucking little girls and not like shuffling the fuck around.’
Siiri recognized the nurse: they had met in the tram months before, when the girl was looking for an apartment in Helsinki. But the girl didn’t remember Siiri; she just looked at them with her round, kind eyes and tried to take hold of Margit’s arm so that she could lead her back to bed.
‘It’s morning, and I’m your employer, Margit Partanen, not some midnight shuffler. I’m the one paying you to look after my dying husband.’
The nurse grew visibly alarmed. Nervously she pulled herself together, tugged her woollen scrap of a sweater straighter and raked her green hair into a tidier mess. Margit marched past her, stepped up to the bed, bent down to give Eino a peck on the cheek, and shrieked. It was a piercing, heart-rending sound that must have woken up everyone in the dementia unit and the majority of the population in the surrounding neighbourhood.
‘Eino’s dead,’ Margit said a moment later, in a barely audible voice. She gave her husband another kiss on the cheek, this time more carefully and respectfully, placed a hand on his throat, then his chest, and then back on his throat. ‘Eino’s dead,’ she repeated, pressing her head to her husband’s shoulder. ‘Eino is finally dead. Eino, my dear, sweet Eino.’ Margit leaned against her husband with all of her substantial weight, quivered there silently, and cried soundlessly, not in grief, yet, but relief.
The nurse looked more flustered than ever. She didn’t have the slightest idea what time the patient had stopped breathing while she was stretched out on the floor.
‘He was fucking sleeping . . . like totally peacefully . . . no one fucking told me that this was the kind of situation I had on my fucking hands. He ate a fucking ton, too, like a huge fucking ton, late at night, even though usually in the fucking terminal stage – Fuck!’
Siiri soothed the night nurse, who felt like she’d made a dreadful mistake. Siiri explained that this death was beautiful and long anticipated, that this was exactly the way everyone hoped to die, in their sleep, painlessly. And there was nothing a nurse or anyone else needed to do.
‘OK,’ the nurse said. ‘Well, that’s a fucking relief. What . . .what the fuck should I do now?’
‘You could go and get the doctor. Or phone one; I don’t suppose there’s a doctor on call here at the SquirrelsNest. But we need a doctor to come and pronounce Eino dead.’
The green-haired nursing student who’d got this gig from the nursing agency didn’t know where to call. Siiri went with her to find a phone, so Margit could spend a moment, however brief, alone with Eino – although, of course, they weren’t alone, the whale of a woman was still sawing logs in the other bed, blissfully ignorant of the irrevocable, momentous event that had taken place in the room. Margit’s scream hadn’t roused anyone else in the ward after all. They found a phone in the glass cubicle and managed to bring the male nurse to a sufficient state of consciousness for him to be able to mumble which number they should call.
‘One one two.’
‘Silly boy, that’s the emergency number. One of your patients died during the night and we need a doctor to come in and confirm the death.’
The slap-happy nurse kept insisting on the general emergency number. The SquirrelsNest didn’t have its own doctor, and doctors weren’t on call at health centres on weekends. That left the emergency number, where it was doubtful anyone would be sent to the dementia ward to look at a corpse, as first aid and hospice staff had better things to d
o with their weekends. Even the private sector didn’t have doctors on call to confirm deaths, the nurse chuckled sourly.
‘But you’re welcome to use the phone if you want to try.’
Siiri hesitantly lifted the receiver and then lowered it; the nurse seemed to know what he was talking about. Siiri just didn’t understand what she was supposed to do under the circumstances. Should they leave Eino lying there until the day after tomorrow, when hospice and health centre doctors would be on duty again? How could this be so complicated? Didn’t old people die at the SquirrelsNest all the time?
‘Sure, people die here, too, even though we usually try to spot the ones who are contemplating it and shunt them off to a hospital. Was it the old guy who refused to stay at Haartman?’ The nurse flipped through an open folder on his desk. ‘Eino Partanen? He should have just stayed at the hospital; he would have saved everyone a bunch of trouble.’
The nurse explained a little crossly that if you’re obsessed with dying in your own bed, you ought to do it on a weekday, and preferably during business hours. Friday night or Saturday morning was the worst possible time to get it in your head to die in a nursing home. There was no morgue at the SquirrelsNest where they could store Eino; now they were going to have to start calling around to medical examiners and hospitals to see if someone would accept the body for storage.
‘The police might help, or hearses, I mean their drivers. They’re the ones who are going to come and move the body anyway. There’s another patient sleeping in the same room, isn’t there?’
Siiri started feeling wretched. She had to sit down and hold her head in both hands. The absurdity here was beyond that of any scenes from Olli’s life: at first an old person isn’t allowed to die, and then when he does, there’s nowhere to put the body. Whatever happened to old-fashioned doctors you called any time, day or night, if grandpa passed in his sleep at home? What on earth was going through the heads of those who came up with these rules and procedures? What had happened to wakes and weeping women? Siiri took a deep breath, then an even deeper one, and listened to the arrhythmic beating of her heart. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the night nurse with the green hair packing her things and preparing to leave, but then she sat back down. She didn’t look the picture of health, either.
Escape from Sunset Grove Page 24