Unlike cops, who are allowed “pain” as an element in restraint and control, medical workers are not allowed “pain” and may be legally censured if patients are injured.
Despite my training, there have been injuries of patients I’d been obliged to restrain and control, both in U.S. care facilities and in the medical units in Iraq.
None of these were my fault. And yet, there were injuries.
The nurses were gossiping: Sister Mary Alphonsus had no close next of kin.
Or, if there were relatives of the deceased woman, they were distant relatives who had no wish to come forward to identify themselves.
Maybe no wish to associate themselves with the individual who’d been director of the Craigmillnar Home for Children, which had been shut down in 1977 by Oybwa County health authorities and the State of Wisconsin.
Just recently too, Craigmillnar was back in the headlines.
A full week after her death on November 11, no one from the Oybwa County medical examiner had contacted the facility. So it appeared Dr. Bromwalder’s death certificate had not been questioned.
The gauzy strip of “curtain” — unless it was some kind of nun’s “veil” or “wimple” — had disappeared from the premises. All of Sister Mary Alphonsus’s things had been packed up and removed from Room 22 and a new, unsuspecting arrival, also an elderly woman, had been moved in.
Yet the subject of the mysterious “head covering” continued to come up in Unit D. It seemed strange to me — I said so — that I appeared to be the only person to have seen Sister Mary Alphonsus fix something like a “head-shroud” over her head several times in the past. Some kind of cloth — might’ve been a towel (I didn’t remember it as white) — she’d drawn like a hood over her head, for whatever reason. I hadn’t asked the sister what she was doing, of course. She’d have been offended at such familiarity.
One day our young consulting physician Dr. Godai asked me about this, for he’d overheard some of us talking.
So you’d seen the sister putting some kind of “cloth” on her head, or around her head, Francis? When was this, d’you remember?
Might’ve been a few weeks ago, doctor. Maybe two months.
How often did you see the sister putting this “cloth” on her head?
Maybe three times, doctor. I never thought anything of it, you know how old people are sometimes.
Dr. Godai laughed. He was the newest consultant on our staff, from the University of Minnesota Medical School. He had a burnished-skinned Paki look, dark-eyed, sharp-witted. Knowing that certain of the elderly patients and certain of the medical staff did not feel comfortable with him, as nonwhite, Dr. Godai was what you’d call forceful-friendly, engaging you with his startling-white eyes and smile sharp as a knife blade. Between Dr. Godai and me there flashed a kind of understanding, as if the elderly nun was in the room with us, helpless, yet furious, glaring at us in disdain and in hurt, that she could not lash out at us to punish.
Eccentric is the word, Francis. A kindly word. For you wouldn’t want to say demented, deranged, senile — eh?
Dr. Godai and I laughed together. I wasn’t naive enough to think that Dr. Godai could ever be my friend, though we are about the same age.
I told Dr. Godai that each time I’d seen Sister Mary Alphonsus behaving in this way, putting a “shroud” on her head, I’d made no comment, of course. I didn’t even ask her if she was cold, or needed an extra blanket. Nor did Sister Mary Alphonsus encourage conversation with me or with others on the staff. In my memory it had seemed to me that the woman was just slightly embarrassed, and annoyed, by my having seen her with the “cloths.” And so out of courtesy I turned away from her, as if I hadn’t seen.
It’s a strange life, isn’t it, Francis? — I mean, the religious orders. Poverty, chastity, service, obedience these nuns swore to.
To this I made no reply. Dr. Godai was speaking bemusedly, and may have been thinking out loud.
Of course, I don’t understand the Catholics, maybe. Are you Catholic, Francis?
No, Dr. Godai. I am not.
You are an arrogant young man. I will report you.
I know YOU. YOU will not get away with this.
There are two categories of geriatric patient. Those who persist in behaving as if they aren’t elderly; or as if their current condition, inability to walk, for instance, is a temporary one; individuals who shuffle slowly, in obvious pain, leaning against walls, against the backs of chairs, out of pride. And there are those who have conceded that they are not “one hundred percent” but must use a cane, a walker, a wheelchair. (It’s possible to think that a wheelchair isn’t really “permanent” — it is always expedient, helpful more for the staff.) Each step you think is temporary and you will soon return to your real self, but that’s not how it goes.
Sister Mary Alphonsus had been in the second category. She may have been elderly but not old-elderly; and she would resent bitterly your behaving as if she were. Her hearing, like her vision, was impaired, but Sister Mary Alphonsus was more likely to blame you for not speaking clearly, or loud enough, than she would blame herself. In fact, Sister Mary Alphonsus would never blame herself.
If she spilled food, or dropped something, and you were present — somehow, the fault lay with you. At first I’d thought this was a sign of dementia, but later I came to realize it was the woman’s perception of what is: blame must be assigned, only just not with her.
Unlike most of the elderly women in the facility, Sister Mary Alphonsus hadn’t been what you’d call frail. Her body was thick, waistless; her skin was leathery; her eyes were suspicious and close-set; her legs remained heavy, especially her thighs, which strained against the polyester stretch pants she sometimes wore. Her most characteristic expression was a peevish frown.
Sometimes Sister Mary Alphonsus seemed annoyed by rain outside her window, as if it had been sent to provoke her. For there was a small courtyard into which we could wheel patients, in good weather.
Once, I’d wheeled Sister Mary Alphonsus outside into this courtyard and had to go away on an errand, and by the time I returned it was raining hard, and Sister Mary Alphonsus had managed to wheel herself beneath an overhang, by an effort of both hands.
You did that on purpose! You are mocking me.
No one considered that it might have been poison that Sister Mary Alphonsus had taken. Poison that was her own soul.
It was general knowledge in Eau Claire: in recent months the children’s home at Craigmillnar, which had acquired a “controversial” reputation since it had been shut down by state health authorities in 1977, had resurfaced in the news.
Now, interest in Craigmillnar was part of a broad investigation into Catholic-run charity homes, hospitals, and organizations following a flood of disclosures of sexual misconduct by priests in the United States, with the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy. A militant group of former residents of the home at Craigmillnar, which called itself Survivors of Craigmillnar, had been picketing the archbishop’s residence in Milwaukee, demanding acknowledgment of what they charged had been “widespread neglect and abuse” at Craigmillnar. The state attorney general was considering criminal charges against some former staff members who, the former residents claimed, had been responsible for a number of deaths at Craigmillnar in the 1950s and 1960s.