by Amy Andrews
Catherine greeted her with a frosty ‘Sister’ and handed her a locker key. Fran followed her directions and found five navy dresses hanging there, as Catherine had advised. She stashed her bag and climbed into one. It was a size eight and she noted how much it hung on her! She’d never been this thin! She’d always been a generous size ten.
Glenda showed her around and introduced her to all the staff. She sat Fran down in a chair facing the view in her office and gave her all the residents’ notes to read. It took a couple of hours to wade through the charts and decipher their histories from the different handwriting and degrees of legibility.
When Glenda rejoined her, Fran fired the myriad questions at her that had come up as she had familiarised herself with the residents. Glenda went on to explain the home’s routines and strategic plan.
Fran was surprised to find out that it had been acquired thirty years previously by the foresight of the local council to address the needs of the ageing population of the area. It had only ever been slated as a low-care facility due to the expense and difficulties of converting the hotel.
That unfortunately meant that residents requiring a higher level of care had to be moved to other establishments and away from their beloved bay. The locals had fought for years to get the nursing home upgraded but there weren’t the resources or people required to staff such a facility and not enough political clout to force the issue.
Earl came in and plonked a steaming mug of hot chocolate and a heavenly piece of cake in front of her.
‘I insult easily,’ he said, winking at her. ‘Make sure it’s all gone by the time I get back.’
Fran doubted, looking at big jolly Earl with his round belly and ruddy cheeks, that anything would insult him. It was hard to believe that he was married to Catherine, who would have to have been his complete opposite.
As she bit into the fluffy sponge she admitted it was nice to be taken care of for a change instead of trying to go it alone. She acknowledged as she ate his offering that a lot of her weight loss was due as much to apathy as grief. It was hard to be motivated to prepare something when there was just her. It had been a bit of a vicious circle really. Unable to stomach anything coupled with disinterest and lack of motivation. Combined, it had been a dangerous precedent for her health.
After lunch Glenda took her to meet the residents. They were an eclectic bunch. There was Mabel, the ninety-nine-year-old matriarch who was hanging out for her telegram from the Queen. Molly, Dolly and Polly, the eighty-two-year-old Ibsen triplets, who knew all the gossip, both past and present. Sid, who suffered from presumed peptic ulcers but was the bane of David’s life because he refused treatment. And, of course, Ethel…to name but a few.
Fran’s head spun with all their names and faces but Glenda assured her it’d take her no time at all to get to know them. ‘A few pill rounds and you’ll know them inside out and back to front.’
The first catastrophe occurred early that afternoon. Ethel went missing.
‘What do you mean, she’s missing?’ asked Fran of Julie, the care assistant who’d rescued Ethel the day of her interview. ‘Have you looked everywhere?’
‘She’s not in any of the usual places,’ Julie assured her.
‘Does this happen often?’
‘She’s never gone completely missing before.’
Great! She’d been here for half a shift and she’d already lost a resident! How was she going to explain that one to Glenda?
‘Right, well, we’d better look for her. Have you searched the grounds?’
‘Not all of them. Should we tell Glenda?’
‘Lets do a thorough search first. Come with me.’
Bill, the gardener, helped them search every nook and cranny of the extensive grounds. Fran nearly had a heart attack as she followed the sturdy railing along the fenced cliff face, thinking about Ethel somehow managing to slip over the edge. Where was she?
‘I’ll go down the drive and check out the road,’ said Fran to Bill, her heart thumping madly in her chest at the awful possibility that a senile escapee was wandering along the treacherous coast road. If she couldn’t be found, Fran was going to have to get the authorities involved.
She reached the road at the end of the drive and looked both ways. Which way should she try first? Up or down? Fran felt sick, looking at the road. It reminded her of the roads you saw in European movies that hugged coastal cliffs with a sheer drop on one side. One wrong footfall on the shaly edge could be very perilous indeed.
A car beeped at her. David was in it. The window slid down. ‘Walking out already?’ He grinned.
His voice was light and teasing but Fran was too worried to notice. ‘Ethel’s gone missing. You haven’t seen her on your travels, have you?’
David looked at the concern in her blue eyes and the way she chewed nervously at her bottom lip. ‘Get in,’ he said, reaching across and opening the door.
Fran sank into the leather seat of his Saab and buckled up, grateful that a set of wheels would hasten their search.
‘She’ll be fine,’ David soothed, noting Fran’s barely concealed worry making her even paler. ‘Ethel grew up in these parts. She knows this road like the back of her hand. She’s probably on her way to the school. We’ll catch her up.’
Fran felt cheered by his words and smiled at him. ‘Hurry, OK?’
They found Ethel a couple of kilometres away, sitting beside the road.
Fran leapt out even before the car had come to a stop.
‘Ethel! Ethel, are you OK?’ Her hands were covered in blood and Fran automatically thought the worst. ‘You hurt yourself. What happened? Where are you hurt, Ethel?’
Ethel smiled at her blankly and looked at her bloody hands. ‘Oh, dear, must be my sore knee. Silly me, I slipped,’ she tutted, and smiled at Fran again.
David calmly got his bag out of the boot as he watched Fran frantically doing a head-to-toe check on a bemused Ethel. He crouched beside them. ‘Ethel, my lovely, just where were you going on this fine day?’ he asked and was rewarded with a flirtatious smile.
‘Knock that off, young man,’ she cackled. ‘I’m married with kids. I was just picking them up from school.’
Fran felt her heart rate settle as the bump to Ethel’s knee seemed to be the only damage she had sustained from her tumble. Her palms had a little gravel rash where she’d obviously put her hands out to break the fall. It was a wonder she hadn’t broken anything, although the gash on her knee was still oozing blood.
‘I think it’ll need suturing,’ Fran said to David.
She watched him as he calmly inspected the injury and chatted with Ethel. She delved in his bag for some gauze and saline so David could better assess the damage.
He looked at her and smiled. ‘You’re right. Let’s get a bandage on it and get her in the car. I’ll stitch it straight away.’
Ethel went quite happily, her hurry to pick up her kids forgotten already. They had her safely back at the nursing home a few minutes later, much to everyone’s relief. Fran thought she even saw a flicker of emotion on Catherine’s face as Ethel walked through the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly to David as she helped him with the minor suturing procedure. ‘I guess I panicked a bit.’
He smiled at her behind his mask as he pushed the curved needle through Ethel’s anaesthetised skin, drawing the jagged edges of the long laceration together. ‘No drama,’ he said.
Despite his facial features being obscured by his surgical mask, she could see his smile reflected in his incredibly blue, incredibly expressive eyes. ‘All I could think was how bad it would look, losing a patient on my first day, and that I needed this job and I didn’t want to be sacked.’ She snipped as he completed another suture.
David laughed and the richness of it caused Ethel to stop her humming and look at him. ‘Is the job that important to you?’
Fran looked at David over the top of her mask and their gazes locked. Two pair of blue eyes, one light, like bl
ue ice, the other deep, like sapphires, stared at each other.
Yes, it was. She may have only been there for a morning but getting back to work had been an essential part of her journey towards healing and she had enjoyed it. Well, until Ethel had decided to go walkabout anyway. She had felt useful and like her life had purpose again.
She had always loved being a nurse and had been really good at her job. And it had been great for a whole morning to be completely absorbed in something else other than herself.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, holding his gaze, ‘Yes, it is.’
They continued to stare at each other for a moment more, and he nodded his head. ‘Working helps,’ he agreed. She nodded back and after another moment he got back to the job at hand.
He placed three more stitches and dared to push a little more. ‘Glenda says you’re from Canberra.’
Fran paused momentarily and then snipped again. Even mentioning the name of her home town conjured up painful memories. She flicked her eyes up but he had his head down, concentrating on the procedure. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘Long way from home,’ he said quietly.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve always wanted to live by the sea,’ she answered noncommittally.
‘Batemans Bay is closer, surely?’
She looked at him again and this time he looked back. His eyes were telling her it was OK to talk to him. ‘Too close,’ she murmured.
‘Marriage break-up?’ He’d already pegged her for that anyway. He could still see the faint ring mark on her unadorned ring finger.
She steeled herself for the usual storm of emotions. If it had only been that simple. ‘Something like that,’ she admitted evasively
‘Messy, huh?’
‘Awful.’ She nodded and looked down quickly as she blinked away the tears she felt pricking at her eyes when she thought about all she’d been through in the last two years.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently, looking at her downcast head, having not missed the shimmer in her eyes.
David continued the job and let the matter drop and Fran was thankful to him. It was amazing how powerful a simple ‘Sorry’ could be, especially when it came from someone who had so obviously known his own share of grief.
‘Come on Eth, your soap’s on soon,’ said Fran, helping her down from the procedure table a few minutes later. She took Ethel’s soft wrinkled hand and led her to the communal television room. David followed.
The Ibsen triplets looked up from their card game and beamed at David as he walked through the door.
‘Dr Ross, lovely to see you,’ said Molly.
‘Three times as lovely for me to see my favourite women,’ said David, shooting them one of his easy smiles. They smiled back at him and Fran couldn’t believe that three elderly spinsters could turn into blushing girls.
He chatted with the group of women that had gathered to get their daily dose of their favourite soap opera and requested they fill him in on the latest twists and turns. Fran sat for a while, her hand resting on Ethel’s crinkled one and absently stroking it, relieved that she was safely back with them.
Ethel smiled blankly at her and nodded every now and then while her free hand polished her handbag with a piece of cloth. According to Glenda, Ethel went through three handbags a year by eroding them with her constant worried rubbing.
How awful, thought Fran, to be in a constant state of anxiety over a family of kids who were now grown and flown the nest. To be stuck in an unfamiliar home when every motherly instinct she possessed told her she should be elsewhere, looking after her little ones. Fran felt a strange kinship with the old woman, intimately acquainted with the totally bereft feeling of empty arms.
David made his excuses a few minutes later and Fran nodded and checked her watch. She should be getting onto the midafternoon medication round.
With David gone from the room and a commercial interrupting the show, Dolly turned to her sisters and said, ‘That man can put his boots under my bed any day.’
Fran stared at the eighty-two-year-old and tried not to look shocked.
‘Fight you for him,’ said Polly, and all three cracked up.
‘Ladies, ladies, you’re shocking the new girl,’ said Glenda, coming into the room and reading Fran’s amazed expression.
Dolly turned to Fran. ‘Ah, just because I’m in my eighties, Fran, it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a man who’s easy on the eye. Wouldn’t you say, Glenda?’
‘Oh, very easy on the eye, Doll. But it’s not blatant or showy, it’s just there. Kind of subtle.’
‘He’s reminds me of that actor…you know the English one that plays that dreadful American doctor?’ said Polly, tapping her forehead for inspiration. ‘You know, it’s on Monday nights.’
‘Hugh Laurie—isn’t that the chap’s name? A thinking woman’s sex symbol,’ Polly said, nodding sagely, and all three of them sighed dramatically.
‘Such a shame about his lovely wife,’ said Molly.
Fran dragged herself back from her astonishment at the sex-symbol comment. Shame? Wife? Fran had guessed there was some heartache in David’s past.
‘He really needs to find himself a nice woman. It’s been over eleven years,’ added Molly.
‘Fran has moved in next door to David,’ said Glenda, and watched as the three octogenarians slowly took her meaning. They turned their eyes on Fran, and Glenda almost felt sorry for her.
Fran shrank back in her chair and eyed them suspiciously as they looked at her as if she were the first mango of the season. Oh, no! She’d come to Ashworth Bay to get her life together. Not for romance. Fran doubted whether that would ever be possible again.
‘I’ll just see to those pills,’ she murmured, and fled the room.
Medication rounds were huge. Sixty residents with the mean age of eighty-one and their associated age-related illnesses made for a marathon trip. Fran pushed the heavy stainless-steel trolley out of the drug room and cursed its uncooperative wheels. Glenda had assured her she would get more efficient at it as she became familiar with the residents and the trolley, and that the first few rounds were always daunting.
And she was right. The round was bad enough without disaster number two landing in her lap.
One of her first stops was Mabel’s room. The resident was lying on her back on the bed, her face turned away from the door.
‘Mabel, I have your tablets.’
Mabel didn’t stir from her sleep. Fran almost let it go, almost put the cup with the medication in it on her bedside table and left her undisturbed. Surely at a whisper away from one hundred, Mabel was entitled to have an afternoon nap? But something compelled her to persist.
‘Mabel,’ she said, louder this time. Still nothing. She entered the room and shook Mabel’s shoulder gently. Fran was quite concerned now as the old woman still didn’t move. She rounded the bed to a most disconcerting sight.
Mabel had her eyes shut. She’d vomited and Fran’s nose caught the putrid smell of regurgitated partially digested food. Her breathing was gurgly and sounded obstructed, the left side of her face was droopy and drool trickled unimpeded from her mouth down her arm and onto the bedcovers.
Fran called her name and tried to rouse her, using a firm sternal rub. It was no use. Mabel was unconscious and, by the look of it, had had a stroke. Fran felt quickly for a carotid pulse and was relieved when the bounding vessel thudded against her fingers.
Fran rushed to the corridor and ran up it until she came across Catherine. ‘Catherine, Mabel has had a stroke. Get Dr Ross. Tell him to bring the portable oxygen.’
She raced back to Mabel’s room. OK, think, Fran. Think. She could hear Mabel’s obstructed breathing from the doorway and knew that’s where she had to start. She pulled the bed, which was on wheels, away from the wall and knelt behind it, enabling her to adjust the position of Mabel’s neck back to the midline.
Fran placed her fingertips just underneath Mabel’s jaw line in such a way that she was able to give ja
w support to maximise Mabel’s airway. There was an almost immediate cessation of the obstructed breathing and Fran let out a pent-up breath.
‘Don’t you dare die, Mabel. If you want that telegram from Her Majesty, you need to hang in there.’ Fran’s voice was quiet but she was sure the desperation was more than evident. Please, don’t die, not on my watch. I’ve already lost one resident—how will it look to also have a death? The last thing she needed was Glenda questioning the wisdom of her decision to hire her.
‘You’re having an eventful day, Fran,’ said David from the doorway, noting Fran’s pallor and worry.
‘Oh, thank God,’ sighed Fran, never more pleased to see him than she was right now. ‘The deficit appears to be left-sided so it’s a right CVA. Did you bring the oxygen?’
David entered the room and sat on the bed beside Mabel. ‘I’ll examine her first,’ he said.
Fran watched with growing impatience as he undertook a methodic neurological exam. What the hell was he doing? Didn’t he know that the first minutes and hours post-stroke were crucial? Mabel needed to be in an emergency care facility. She needed a CAT scan and maybe some kind of angiography or at least drug therapy that could reduce the size of the clot in her brain and improve her chances for a meaningful, maybe complete recovery.
OK, he was the only GP in a small seaside town and she’d been out of the loop for a while, but this was hardly cutting-edge information. Even he should be up on these treatments.
‘Shall I call an ambulance?’
David took the stethoscope out of his ears. ‘Why?’
Fran stared at him, nonplussed. Was he mad? ‘Because she’s had a stroke. She needs to go to hospital. She needs to get treatment.’
He looked at Fran’s earnest face and noted the wisps of blond hair that had escaped the plait. ‘Help me get her comfortable,’ he said to Glenda, who had entered the room at that point.
Fran stood aside as they inserted a guedels into Mabel’s mouth to protect her airway, stripped back the coverlet that had been vomited on, got Mabel comfortable in the recovery position and covered her up with a blanket.