by Wonny Lea
‘See you tonight,’ said Eva as she walked towards the door. ‘I guess you’ll be doing the twelve-hour shift again.’
‘You guess right,’ called back Sarah as she headed for the office. ‘Whatever happened to the Working Times Regulations? Their rules seem to have escaped the notice of our illustrious leader Mr Cooper, but that doesn’t surprise me. We were supposed to be interviewing some new staff last Thursday, but not one of them turned up and I doubt they were ever going to. It’s cheaper for him to work us around the clock than to pay the extra employment costs of additional staff.’
Sarah was talking to herself as Eva had already left, probably to take a different route home, one that would take her past the place where she knew a body had been found.
Sarah looked from the office window into the lounge where the elderly sat in the same chairs as they had sat in yesterday – with the exception of Mr James, of course. She was constantly asking the care assistants to move the residents around, but it never seemed to happen, and so when one of them died the empty chair was obviously where the deceased had sat the previous day and all eyes seemed to focus on it.
For some reason she couldn’t explain, this annoyed Sarah more than usual today and she walked into the lounge calling out a cheery good morning to the forlorn faces as she moved the offending chair to the edge of the room. Jim Knott acknowledged her actions but not in the way she would have wanted.
‘Bet you wish it was that easy to move the rest of us on, don’t you? I can’t believe Colin went just like that. Until a few weeks ago he was the only one I could have a pint with, so God help the rest of us. Who’ll be the next, I wonder?’
Out-of-character Sarah rose to the bait. ‘At least he died in the comfort of his own room, and wasn’t found dead in some wet and muddy field like the poor sod the police found this morning.’
Sarah had broken the cardinal rule. She had spoken the words ‘died’ and ‘dead’ in front of the residents who spent most of their time thinking about death and she immediately regretted her words. The incident of the body in the field this morning had obviously had more of an impact on her than she had realised.
She needn’t have worried, as her news seemed to have had the opposite effect to the one she had anticipated and immediately caused a ripple of interest and even excitement amongst those who were even vaguely compos mentis.
‘Where did the police find a dead body?’ asked Jim. ‘In a field you say – what field was that?’
Sarah realised that most of the eyes in the room were on her, and the only thing she could do was to repeat the story of her journey to work – but that was obviously not enough to satisfy her audience.
‘How many policemen were there?’ enquired Margaret, a ninety-four-year-old woman who was usually slumped in her chair but who now sat forward eager to hear more.
‘Four officers, I think,’ replied Sarah. ‘Yes, there were three policemen and one policewoman, why do you ask?’
‘Was there an ambulance?’ Margaret continued without answering Sarah’s question.
‘No, obviously if there had been an ambulance I wouldn’t have been needed to help with the woman who found the body.’
Barely had Sarah finished her sentence when Margaret put forward her opinion. ‘A-ha!’ she exclaimed. ‘Four police officers and no ambulance can only mean the body was well and truly dead – probably murdered.’
Sarah laughed. ‘OK, Miss Marple, but you’re probably letting your imagination run away with you. It’s more likely to be some poor tramp who’s been sleeping rough and died of pneumonia. Now may we change the subject, please – it’s not the most pleasant of topics to start off the week.’
But as Sarah returned to the office she heard the somewhat animated conversation and guessed that a million causes of death would be considered by lunchtime. Maybe that’s what it was. Maybe they were all stimulated by being able to discuss someone else’s death instead of pondering about their own.
It was curious that they never discussed the death of a fellow resident. Jim had briefly mentioned Colin but Sarah knew, from past experience, it was unlikely he would be spoken of again. Perhaps it was just too close to home – the death of a stranger, even if it turned out to be a murder, was sufficiently remote to create macabre interest but not personal panic.
A few weeks ago Sarah had asked the proprietor, Mr Cooper, for an electric kettle and a mini fridge for the office as it was on the opposite side of the building to the kitchen and residents couldn’t be observed from the kitchen. He knew that due to the low staffing levels he just managed to get away with, it was almost impossible for the staff to get their breaks, and so he had agreed to the request.
However, Sarah had not been surprised when a second-hand kettle and a cool-box had turned up. It was unlikely that he had bought either of them and more likely he had ferreted amongst the unclaimed property of past residents.
The man was a complete cheapskate when it came to the staff. What a different picture he presented to potential clients who, when they first visited his office, were offered anything from cappuccino to green tea presented in cream-coloured china cups. If they looked really promising they could even be seen sipping sherry or joining Mr Cooper in a ‘wee dram’.
Although he still referred to the partaking of a ‘wee dram’ he had in fact transferred his allegiance from Scottish to Welsh whisky when a friend of his became involved with its production at the local Penderyn distillery. Sarah had heard him boasting to potential clients about the excellence of the product, but she suspected that his enthusiasm would be more likely something to do with the discount his friend offered him.
There seemed to be no shortage of money for his side of the business, and that included the fancy glossy brochures that were handed out.
The staff found themselves doing a reality check when they read about the individual meal selection on offer to residents and saw the photographs of happy clients and smartly dressed staff. The uniforms that were actually provided were basic, and if staff wanted more than two they had to buy them from Mr Cooper.
Sarah could only assume the advertising company had searched the net for ‘images of contentment in one’s twilight years’ – they had certainly not shot the pictures at Parkland.
She concentrated her mind on reading the Nursing Kardex, a transportable card filing system, where the nurses made their notes. She was able to get a quick update on what had happened to each of the residents since she had left them at eight o’clock the previous Friday night.
Her colleague Eva had mentioned having an awful night, but as far as Sarah could actually see from the nursing notes there had been very little activity. Everyone had slept soundly with the exception of Mr James, who it could be said had slept more soundly than was normal.
She thought about Mr James and had to agree with Jim Knott regarding the rate of his demise. He had been almost exactly the same age as Jim, and only a few weeks ago they had both celebrated their eighty-third birthdays. They were youngsters in comparison with the majority of the residents and had wound up their birthday celebrations by drinking at a local pub and returning to Parkland rather the worse for wear.
Sarah smiled as she remembered the two of them helping one another up the drive and to the side door, probably hoping no one would see them. It had not been late as her shift that day had finished at eight p.m., and she had made it her business to see that both men were toileted and tucked-up in bed before the night staff came on duty.
That shift had been the last of a ten-day stretch for Sarah, and she had then had four days off followed by two days’ annual leave. So six days off, before returning to work and finding a much-changed Colin James.
Apparently Dr Shaw had been called the day after the birthday spree as Colin had been complaining of a headache. Sarah knew she would have put this down to a hangover and given him a couple of paracetamol tablets and plenty of fluids – but she hadn’t been there.
The qualified nurse who was
on duty was one of the many who came and left after a couple of weeks and she didn’t know Colin, so rather than take any chances she simply referred him to the doctor.
Colin had not been the brightest of men, and according to his medical notes he had had some learning difficulties. His inability to cope at home on his own had been the main reason for his admission to Parkland.
Sarah had met his daughter Patricia once, together with her overbearing husband, and the meeting had left her feeling profoundly sorry for Colin. With the right family support he could easily have remained in his own home, but his daughter was spineless and she bowed to her husband’s opinion that her job was to look after him and not to pander to her father’s needs.
Colin’s parents must have been quite well-off, and it was clear from the way he had spoken about them that they had loved and cared for him. They had even supported him when he married someone who was obviously more interested in his money than in him, and they had been more than happy to take on Patricia when his wife met someone else and left Colin with the child.
But Colin’s parents had been dead for many years, and his daughter had married a pompous maths teacher whose values in relation to women’s rights were well and truly rooted in the Victorian age. He probably considered Emmeline Pankhurst to have been evil personified and would like to see women back in their ‘rightful position’ at the kitchen sink.
Colin’s bedside cupboard had always been full of photographs of his family, and lots of his daughter when she was growing up – but none of her husband, not even one of their wedding.
All the staff had seen photographs of Colin’s house and it was rumoured that since his admission to Parkland the daughter and her husband had moved into the large detached property overlooking Roath Park Lake. Well there was nothing to stop them now and according to the nursing home administrator, Colin had been an obsessive saver so consequently died a wealthy man. Sarah thought it unlikely that Colin would have made a will, so his daughter would inherit and her husband probably had the flags flying this morning.
Sarah read Colin’s nursing and medical notes looking back to those six days she had been off work. Following Dr Shaw’s visit Colin had been prescribed a cocktail of medication including sleeping tablets, although Sarah had never been made aware he had any sort of insomnia problems. Yes, he had type 2 diabetes and a low-grade heart murmur, and was possibly in the early stages of dementia, but none of these things had been causing him any real distress. Sarah belonged to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ camp, but she had learned during her fifteen years of nursing that the majority of doctors had their feet firmly in the ‘fix it at all costs’ camp.
On the face of it the medication that had been prescribed was totally appropriate for each condition but for someone to go from only taking vitamin pills to swallowing daily doses of more than twenty pills – well, that was something else. Sarah had questioned the level of medication on her return to work but could see how it could be justified. Gradually Colin became more and more withdrawn, and then he contracted pneumonia.
That, of course, had had nothing to do with the medication he was receiving, and four other residents also developed the same condition all around the same time. Unfortunately for Colin this infection meant even more medication and there was talk of transferring him to the University Hospital of Wales. It was then that some of the medication she had queried was stopped and he seemed to improve, so he had stayed at the nursing home.
He had obviously deteriorated rapidly since last Friday night and Sarah referred to his nursing notes to see the exact series of events. She had been talking to Colin in his room last Friday evening and remembered feeling pleased at the progress he was making. He still looked frail but had become more chatty and had returned to teasing her about what he called her ‘love life’.
‘Got some handsome young man waiting for you at home?’ he had joked. ‘Only to be expected with a beautiful girl like you – no wonder you can’t wait for your shift to finish.’
Sarah had picked up on two elements of his description and suggested a visit to Specsavers if he could see anything resembling any sort of girl, especially a beautiful one.
‘Don’t put yourself down,’ he had told her. ‘By my standards you’re very young, and beauty has got little to do with what you look like and everything to do with what you are.’
As Sarah had pondered on whether or not there was a backhanded compliment in there somewhere, they had been interrupted by one of the care assistants. She had told Sarah that Mr Cooper was looking for her and wanted her to go to his office before she went home.
Sarah remembered being surprised that the home owner was still on the premises so late on a Friday night and had immediately expressed these thoughts to Annie, one of the care assistants.
‘Well he’s had some visitors in his office for the past few hours,’ Annie had replied. ‘I didn’t see who they were, just that it was a man and a woman, and they’ve gone now. Perhaps it’s another lot wanting to get a relative in here ahead of the queue.’
There was a lot of in-house gossip about how and why some people got a place in Parkland almost immediately while others whose relatives had expressed an interest, often went elsewhere when they got tired of waiting. Sarah had kept her own counsel as to why this should be; after all, she had left the NHS because she had got fed up with the politics of management, and she was determined she was not going to be sucked into it here.
When Sarah had gone to Mr Cooper’s office her first thought had been that the place smelled like a brewery, and three empty glasses and an almost-empty whisky bottle told her why.
She had been summoned to hear that it had been Mr James’s daughter and her husband who had been the visitors, and apparently they had expressed concerns about Colin’s care.
‘What concerns?’ Sarah had demanded. ‘What do they even know about Colin’s care? When did they last see him, and why didn’t they visit him tonight? I’ve just been talking to him and he is still a sick man but he is well up to receiving visitors.’
Anthony Cooper had bristled, and although he had smiled at Sarah there was no sign of a smile in his eyes, and his voice was unusually harsh, even for him. ‘We are not here to tell clients what they should or should not do, just to comply with their wishes wherever possible.’
‘And just what are the wishes of Colin’s absentee relatives? More importantly, what about Colin’s wishes? Which set of wishes takes precedence?’
Sarah remembered realising that she was virtually shouting at Anthony Cooper and he had responded in a similar manner. ‘Don’t ask so many questions. The relatives have every right to question issues of care, and it would appear that Mr James has told them that on no account does he want to be admitted to hospital. So we need to get Dr Shaw involved and ensure the request is properly documented.’
As Sarah boiled the second-hand kettle and made herself a cup of coffee, she remembered that that conversation with her employer had gone from bad to worse. She had been outraged by the suggestion that Colin had given instructions to his daughter and had said she didn’t believe it. However, Anthony Cooper had been adamant that the request had been made, and had said that Dr Shaw was expected later, to give his written professional support to the family’s wishes.
The last thing Sarah remembered about her visit to Mr Cooper’s office was the significant pile of twenty-pound notes on the table alongside the empty crystal whisky glasses. The money hadn’t really registered at the time but now she found herself wondering why it had been there and where it had come from. After all, it had been a Friday night and there was always a last-minute flurry on a Friday afternoon to ensure that any cash or money was banked.
A pathetic cash float of twenty pounds made up of small change was all that was ever left for the weekend. It was never enough and Sarah had often used her own money to buy things like bread and milk when the kitchen ran short. True, she could claim it back with the presentation of receipts to
the home administrator, but she resented having to do it in the first place.
The home administrator, Peter Doster, was an old school friend of Mr Cooper’s, and they must certainly have taken the same interest in lessons on getting blood out stones. Mr Doster was the master of recycling anything that could be reused in the nursing home and when it came to reducing waste he was the king.
The cook’s food waste bins were regularly inspected and the thickness of the potato peelings was the cause of many a kitchen dispute. No wonder there had been so many cooks – not one of them had stayed more than a few months.
Sarah became aware that her mind was wandering and she was having difficulty in concentrating on any one thing. The office door suddenly burst open and William Morris, Colin James’s son-in-law, barged in, leaving the door open for his wife, Patricia, who was still halfway down the corridor.
‘I’ve come for his things and to pick up the death certificate,’ he announced.
Sarah turned to face him and, trying desperately to keep her temper under control, she replied, ‘Good morning, Mr and Mrs Morris, and may I say how sorry I am at your loss.’
Turning to Patricia, who had now entered the office, Sarah continued. ‘Your father, was well thought of here, he was a real gentleman. We all loved him and will miss him greatly.’
‘Yes, well, you didn’t actually have to live with him, did you?’ said William Morris. ‘You get paid for looking after these old fogies, it’s not something you do out of the goodness of your heart, so don’t come the Florence Nightingale with me.’
Sarah couldn’t remember when she had met a more objectionable man but she bit her lip and said nothing. She had some sympathy for Patricia Morris but couldn’t understand how the woman could be such a pathetic wimp and even now she couldn’t find the words to defend her father.
‘Mr James’s belongings are in the home administrator’s office and that’s also where you will get the death certificate,’ Sarah told them. ‘I am afraid he doesn’t start work until nine o’clock, and in any event the death certificate won’t be available until after Dr Shaw has signed it.’