It is near Christmas. Two days away. In winter, in the mountains of West Virginia, there is always snow. And cold. And most days are accompanied by an endless gray sky punctuated only by the bare fingers of trees old enough to hold their limbs up that high. I am itching to be done with work; I have just this one building to take care of, these few people to tend to, then my time will be mine again.
In the office, I glance over my patient list, and plan the most efficient use of time and quickest path to different rooms. Outside, the snow is falling. And I have a long trip home. I begin; a few patients tolerate my presence. Betty, in particular, rolls her wheelchair along in a rather fast pace, and grabs me and begs me fretfully to take her home, surely I know where that is, now she will miss them, her family, they are coming, don't I hear her? I point to the window and try to draw her attention to the persistent snow.
"It's so cold out", I console. Her knotted fingers curl tightly around my forearm. "We have a place for you here, a nice warm bed, and your family would rather you stay here for the night."
Her fingers relax a little, and she releases my arm, looks at me through her glasses. The lenses are thick and covered in finger prints. Then they know I'm here, my family, Betty reasons, and then glances into the doorway of her room, now her home, and tries to make her deteriorating mind believe this is her place. Her hospital bed is spread over by a quilt, its stitches all hand done and small. I glance over at her hands, at the knuckles swollen with arthritis, nails cut short, and the thin skin housing the bones and ropes of tendons sprinkled with dark spots. Perhaps they once made these tiny stitches, once when the fingers were limber and slim.
"Betty, did you make this?" I question, running my hand along the quilt, the stitches like Braille on my palm. Betty looks at me and tries to register. She tries hard to recall, but she begs me again. Honey, take me home.
There are other patients; in the changing world of health care, I see all kinds of patients. I see a woman only 2 years older than me, who depends on a tracheostomy tube to breathe. I see a man in his 60s who smoked too much and barely has breath enough to generate a voice. I see a few more patients, like Betty, with dementia. I try to help them make sense of a world that their brains simply no longer have the ability to make sense of.
And then there is Ruth, 99, if she lives to see February she will be 100, and I sit with her and aid her with lunch. She is a slip of a women crowned with a tussle of grey hair. She wears the obligatory red sweatshirt that everyone buys their grandmothers this time of year, the Christmas one with snow birds embroidered around the collar. I need to comment on her slippers, with flicks of gold thread running through the fabric of them. The toes are frayed with wear.
I ask Ruth how she is, and her eyes dance as she tells me her age. "I had a wonderful mother, she was English," she says, "Oh, Honey, she was wonderful. And she died when I was nine, Honey, when I was just nine years old." Ruth talks about how her mother opened a banking account for her and her sister, how her mother never wasted. She mentions again that her mother was English. And she asks me, Honey, did I tell you my mother died when I was just nine?
At 99, her mother's death pours from her mind and into my lap. She compliments the food on her plate, and then mentions her English mother. She asks me where I am from, and then refers to her English mother. She talks about the Lord, and attributes her faith to her English mother.
"I am 99," Ruth says, tapping a finger on the table, "I have been rolled over and over by life. But the Lord gets me through. The Lord gets me through."
When Ruth is finished eating, we walk to her room. We pass windows, and the snow falls. It is so close to Christmas, almost a century of Christmases for Ruth, and she still smiles on the memory of her mother and praises the work of God. I take my time with her. She puts an impression on me and slows me down. She is a slice of time and love and memory dressed in a red sweatshirt and glittery slippers. I realize I have been blessed by her. By her loyalty to her mother and her praise of God. I know my work is important and not to rush, despite the gathering snow.
I leave her alone in her room, sitting on the side of her little hospital bed. She smiles to no one. I walk back into the hall, and notice Betty fretting to a nurse.
I go to her, and bend down, and tell her.
Betty. It's ok. The snow is coming and your family knows you are safe here.
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