Release. Part 4

A Novel In Parts by Michael Gray Griffith

Previous Chapters Here.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

Chapter 6

Ben was whimpering. He’d cut his paw on a shard of glass and his red print was stamped around Mary’s head, and blurred on her dress and on the wool of her cardigan.
The morning was long gone, and blowflies, who’d got in through secret doors that only blowflies know of, were landing on and taste-testing Ben’s bloodied tracks.
From licking his bleeding paws, Ben returned to licking Mary’s face. Mary’s cheeks were rouged with his work. But her cheeks were not the same. The left one looked as though it had slipped. That side of her mouth sagged too.
Finally, from where she’d travelled to, Mary returned and opened her eyes. Ben was so happy, he forgot his cut and barked as he pissed all over the floor.
Waking to the mother of all splitting headaches, she told him to calm down. But nothing came out.
She tried to say his name again, but it was no good. Whatever had happened to her, it had taken her voice.
Her body came back to her brain with its initial, but fudged, damage report. The left side of her body wasn’t working. She knew, instantly, that she’d suffered a stroke. She’d known enough stroke victims to be aware of the signs. She knew too that some people got better and others . . .
Simultaneous thoughts saw her asking, why she just couldn’t have died? What in heaven’s name was she going to do? And, as if she had long accepted the facts of her current situation, she also, calmly, began organising her rehabilitation.
It would take time. She saw the patients sitting around the trestle tables in the day room of the rehab hospital her sister had spent a year in. Some had visitors, some were watching the distant TV, some were just waiting. She heard the professionally optimistic tone of the physio and saw herself both in a wheelchair and struggling to stand with a frame. She even saw herself driving one of those scooters that, around here, loads of oldies drove.
But as she saw herself tearing down the sidewalk, her little flag flying and Ben sitting next to her, the wind in his ears, she also appraised her current situation.
She looked at the clock. It was ten past one. If it was still the same day, then she’d been unconscious for over three and a half hours.
What she needed to do, was get up. What she needed to do was call for an ambulance.
Mavis had been on at her to get a personal alarm. Worn around the neck, she could have pressed it now and automatically an ambulance would have been sent.
Lacking this, she would have to reach the phone. The phone was in the hall; the other end of the hall.

With Ben whimpering and licking her face, Mary lifted her right hand and mentally told its fingers to move; they did. Telling her right foot to move, she found that it too was fine. She could even feel her arthritic toes.
Her left side, though, was not complying. Completely unreachable, it was as though she’d been killed in half.

Everything shouldn’t have been, but was, calm. The panic was missing, along with the fear. But then Mary had never been one for panicking, and her ability to think several things at once had always got her through the odd tight situation.
Bringing up her foot, she braced it against the floor with a goal to push herself forward. At the same time, she threw out her hand, with a goal to grab the floor and, with a pull and push effort, propel herself to the phone.
The pain was like fire and, to the fire, she screamed—and the scream she released was silent.
A large shard of glass, the thick broken bottom of the jar, had sliced open the thin skin of her forearm. Blood was everywhere.
Pressing the wound against her dress, she looked around. The floor was covered in broken glass and coins.
With Ben whimpering, because he knew this was wrong, and he too was hurt, Mary held up her arm and, grimacing from the pain, tried to study the wound. But there was nothing to study but pouring blood.

To protect her heart from clots Mary was taking warfarin. Trouble was, while warfarin thinned her blood, it also made it difficult for even small wounds to coagulate. To this wound, the thirteen factors, whose interactions were responsible for clotting breaches, gave up.
With her head thumping from the stroke’s wake, and her arm burning, she let her head fall to the lino and gave up too.

At least one question had been answered. Mary had always wondered if, on the morning of one’s death, you would have an inkling that this was your last day. She hadn’t.
The morning had been so similar to the ones that had come before, it was impossible to part them. There had been no crow cawing mournfully from its perch on her aerial, and no whispering spirits lighting up the rooms she didn’t use.
It was just a day.
Her last day.

The accepting of this was so easy, it was as though she’d been here and done this several times before. And as Ben, somewhere off in the corner, whimpered and occasionally barked, she admired herself for being so at ease with it all.
Or at least that was until she heard death arrive.
Looking up, she both heard and saw it circling in the fat black body of a blowfly.

Fear found her now.
Using only her leg, she pushed as hard as she could. It didn’t work. The dead weight of her left side was too much for her leg alone. She tried again, only to have her shoe slip on the lino.
Perusing, the fly landed on her face. Shuddering, she madly flicked it away, splattering her cheeks in blood, as the fly lifted disdainfully and buzzed around her head.
Yearning her on, Ben barked.

Knowing what she had to do to live, Mary used her good, but wounded, arm to turn herself over.
Blood poured, glass crunched. She ignored it.
Tilting herself onto her dead side, she used her working leg and arm and pushed and pulled her way to the hall.

With Ben barking beside her, she reached the start of the hall.
The hall was carpeted. It used to be polished boards, but since she’d become afraid of slipping (for she’d slipped on it twice), she’d had the entire house, bar the kitchen, carpeted.
The phone was near the front door.
She headed off, but straight away, the going was harder.
Although the carpet was easier to grip, it also gripped and held onto her body. In no time, its friction wore her out. She stopped.

Squinting to try and alleviate her headache and the fire in her arm, she searched her soul for some inner strength she hadn’t tapped. It wasn’t there. Regardless, her wound bled into the carpet.

Time passed and found her wondering if Ian was here. Glancing sideways, she found only the walls of the hall and the start of the living room. If he was here, she couldn’t feel him.

As Ben continued whimpering, somewhere beyond her reach, she re-evaluated. She knew it wasn’t an artery she’d cut. If it had been, she would have died in the kitchen. Still, she was feeling light-headed.
The fly returned. It droned above her head in a patient orbit and yet it didn’t sound so awful now. Instead, its voice too was familiar. Finally, without even realising she had, she closed her eyes to its constant lullaby.

Behind her eyelids was a reward. The approaching peace removed all her fears without her even realising that she was losing.
She relaxed.
As she sank further, she began wondering about what or who she was going to meet, for she knew she was about to meet someone. She could feel their approach. A soft, growing pressure pushing against this new sense she had either acquired or begun to use.
And she wanted them to come, because she wanted to go.
Perfectly, her life fell into place.

Moisture disturbed her.
Opening her eyes, she found Ben licking her face.
The gentleness of her face was mirrored in his. She had never seen it as clearly as she could see it now, and here she was, preparing to leave him alone.
How could she even contemplate it? Apart from her, he had no other life.

Pushing herself up, she spat out her dentures, grabbed some carpet, and began.
When she reached the phone’s table, she grabbed the cord and, panting, pulled the phone onto the floor.
She dialled.
‘What service do you require? Police, fire or ambulance? . . . Hello? Hello?’
They hung up.
Mary had tried to speak, but it was pointless. But Ben had whimpered—hadn’t they heard that?
She hung up and dialled again. Then, as soon as they answered, she hung up and dialled once more.
To this third time, the voice said they were informing the police.
Mary blacked out, and did not wake again, until Ben began barking to the sound of glass breaking and a man saying:
‘It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.’

Chapter 7

Owen’s mobile woke him. Rubbing his eyes, he squinted at the number. It was his agency.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Owen, this is Rebecca from Origin. Are you free to work this afternoon?’
‘Where?’
‘Orangebrook Private, you’ve been there before.’
‘What’s the shift?’
‘It’s just a short one. Five till ten.’

Orangebrook Nursing Home resided on a quiet backwater street in Canterbury. Twenty-seven years old and two storeys high, it had been, for the good part of its life, the flagship of the Lutherans’ Melbourne-based aged care facilities.
Historically clean, it had always been well-funded and organised. Now though, it was marked for demolition. This was for three reasons. Firstly: the Lutherans also owned the land, the price of which, in twenty-seven years, had gone through the roof. Secondly: they were building two larger homes in cheaper, outlying suburbs, and so they needed the money. And thirdly, the great kerosene bath scandal had just occurred.
Allegedly, in a desperate effort to tackle an outbreak of scabies, a nursing home in Melbourne’s southern suburbs had bathed their frail residents in a bath diluted with kerosene, then, as a tragic result, one of these residents had allegedly died.
A pack of starving wild dogs would not have fought over a bone as savagely as the media and the politicians fought over the elusive truths of this story.
While it was clear that a kerosene solution had been used, what wasn’t clear was the mix. Was it fifty-fifty, or a bath full of water and a dabble of the K-juice? In the end, this didn’t matter. Just the fact that the words “kerosene” and “old people” had been married was, the majority decided, a definite and reprehensible crossing of that elusive line.
At that time the Aged Care Minister had been Bronwyn Bishop, and in a mad panic to keep her hair in place—especially under the weight of the opposition’s constant attack and the media’s new trick of constantly digging up fresh aged care stories full of neglect and abuse—she hit back by closing Riverside: the home where the baths took place.
Bronwyn and the federal government didn’t stop there. A whole wrath of reforms were tabled and debated over while, for a few evenings at least, the contrary images of Riverside’s residents and their families crying as they were evicted from the doomed nursing home filled our screens.
Overnight, Orangebrook became officially out of date. To be eligible for future government funding, every home had to meet a certain standard or prove that they were working towards attaining these standards. Single rooms with en suites, a sprinkler system that reached every room, and qualified staff were to be the norm.
Orangebrook had no sprinkler system, and there were only six showers to service sixty residents, all of whom, bar a few, resided in four-bed wards.

But demolishing Orangebrook wasn’t easy. First, the Lutherans had to close it down, and to do this they had to evict its residents—residents no other home wanted.
Most of Orangebrook’s residents were poor. They’d paid no bond to get in here, and other than relinquishing the majority of their pension, they left the government to pick up the rest of their tab.
Although not legally obliged, the Lutherans felt morally obligated to relocate these residents. No easy task. To make a profit, the newer homes needed residents who could pay the upfront bond. Some homes wanted hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that was just to start.
Those that did receive government funding were obligated to take a few pensioners, but with so many needy to choose from they could take their pick. The more incapacitated the resident was, the more money the home was eligible for. Plus, nasty as it all sounded, none of these homes could even flick on their vacancy light until one of their own pensioners carked it.

But then the Lutherans had some time up their sleeve. Orangebrook had eighteen months to go before it was earmarked for demolition.
Unfortunately though, they made a mistake and let the staff know. Naturally, seeing no future here, a hefty slice of the permanent staff left. This left agency staff to plug the gaps.
With so many gaps on offer, this created an unusual environment. Through the sheer weight of their numbers, the agency staff began acting like they owned the place. They didn’t turn to the permanents for guidance, and by completely ignoring what was left of the pecking order, they treated the permanents with the same disdain they, as agency workers, often received everywhere else.
Sadly, with so many agency workers coming and going, the standard of care naturally slipped and continued to slip. Within months, Orangebrook went from a well-oiled, caring machine to a disorganised home located on the unregulated frontier between how the nursing home industry had been run, to how it was going to be.
To be a resident of Orangebrook then you had to be able to endure. To live here without a family member to come in and stick up for you, you all but disappeared. And once a ghost, if you weren’t lucky enough to be already lost in the cloudy arms of dementia, you sat in your own drying piss and knew that the best you could hope for was a merciful release.

Owen liked working here.
‘Sure,’ he said.

A shower brought him back to life. Dressed, and with a strong coffee in his system, he made sure he had the pouch and Hilda’s photograph. He did. He left.

The TV was on. Cricket. Ponting was at the crease and he was facing Sreesanth.
Beverly was in her armchair. Since the West Indians had lost their way, she hadn’t really liked cricket, but she watched it anyway because she couldn’t stand Oprah and hated the soaps.
Owen was standing behind her.
Ponting hit a four. The crowd cheered. Richie Benaud was also impressed.
‘Cup of tea?’ said Owen.
‘If you’re making one,’ said Beverly, her voice as dry as two-thirds of the country.
Taking her ashtray with him, Owen entered the kitchen and found cups in the sink. He grimaced.
Kettle on, ashtray emptied, he rushed it back to her before she started flicking ash onto the carpet, or worse, butted out her cigarette on the scarred arm of the chair.
There were more cups out here. One was on top of the TV. It was full and cold. Another was on the mantle. That one was empty but had a cigarette inside it.
‘Have you had a shower today?’ he asked.
‘Yep.’
‘You don’t look like you’ve had one.’
She looked up to him, challenged him, as only she could, then her eyes went slightly vague: ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ she asked.
‘I’m making you one,’ he said. ‘You know I am. And if you don’t have a shower, now, I’ll go get a bowl of water and wash you out here.’
She returned to the TV and laughed off his bluff: ‘If you do you’ll be wearing it,’ she went.
He tried to laugh too, but only a slight smile came out, and he lost this as he sulked back to the kitchen.

After he’d given her her tea, Owen began cleaning the house. He started with the dishes. He’d grown up in this house, and when it had been a home the only dishes in the sink had been those that were being washed.
Finished here he migrated. Most of the rooms were fine, mainly because neither he nor Beverly ever went into them. The bathroom too was immaculate. The toilet, though, was covered in piss and shit and a pair of soiled knickers lay dumped on the floor.
As he cleaned this, he thought about how to get her into the shower but then changed his mind.
‘I’m going to get the spa ready!’ he yelled.
‘Did you hear me? I said I’m going to get the spa ready!’
‘Have fun,’ she mumbled.

With the water running, he came to get her. This time he didn’t back down. Switching off the cricket, he stood between her and the telly and said:
‘Up! Now! You got out of it yesterday. You are not getting out of it today.’
She glared at him, he threw it back: they became two rams facing off. He won.

The water worked. Leaning forward, she closed her eyes as the jets’ bubbles massaged her legs and thighs and brought feeling back to her feet.
As Owen gently scrubbed her back, she repaid him with a long groan.
‘Here,’ he went, and handed her a soapy flannel. ‘It’s for down there.’

Her back was covered in lesions and growths. Her right shoulder had three zip scars from where some basal cell carcinomas had been removed. Yet, despite these, there were small continents on her skin that were clear enough to be mistaken for nearly any year of her life. Even the years before him.

Once she was clean he got out.
‘Your bum’s getting bigger,’ she said.
‘Really,’ he went and turned to the mirror to check.

The TV was a wide screen. He’d bought it for her after he’d paid to have Foxtel put on, because she was always claiming there were no movies on. But flipping through the channels confused, frustrated, and bored her, so despite the money he paid out, she only watched Channel Nine.
Regardless, he found an old western was playing: Shane. He liked this movie.

Leaving Shane to head to town, his troubled guns back on, Owen got dressed then went to her room and picked out some underwear.
The bathroom had heat lamps and under them she stood, her arms out as he busied himself drying her. Drying meant more than just removing the moisture—there were the moles on her front to check.
She had one on her nose that he wanted queried, and another on her thigh that looked like Wales.
Drying finished, he grabbed the vitamin E cream.
‘Lift them,’ he said.
Mechanically, she lifted her breasts. Under the left one the skin at the crease was fine; he applied the cream anyway. Under the other it was still red. This annoyed him. It had been red for weeks. He’d give it another few days then he’d try another cream. Perhaps an antifungal.
‘Doctor Anderson is coming over today,’ he said as, bending down, he held her knickers in place as she, a hand on his shoulder for balance, stepped into them.
‘Did you remember?’ he asked.
‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we get another doctor?’
‘But why? He’s always been our doctor,’ Owen said as he helped her into her bra.
‘There’s no such thing as always,’ she said.

Chapter 8

Doctor Anderson’s face had always been long, but as he’d aged his cheeks had sunk, and so now, ironically, he looked like his face had always been small, and that now his heavy chin was responsible for pulling it down.
Beverly was watching the cricket again, and she was smoking too.
Owen was sitting at the kitchen table. Hands before him, he’d glued his eyes to his fingers as he picked the skin surrounding his chewed-back nails.
Next to his hands were two brochures. He had not touched either of them.
At the sink, Doctor Anderson was washing his hands. He knew where the bathroom was, but he preferred to use kitchen sinks because, on home visits, it reminded him of long years.

‘I’ll give you a referral for the dermatologist,’ Doctor Anderson said.
‘Alright.’
‘You happy with the doctor I’ve been sending you to?’
‘Uh ha.’
‘I thought you would be. She’s very good, and thorough. Most of the people I’ve sent to her seem happy. Not that I think Beverly has much to worry about. That mole on her thigh is nothing, though don’t be surprised if they excise it anyway. But the one on her nose—well, I’d say that one’s a question mark. Still, it’s only small, so even if they do remove it, a small skin graft will cover the hole. I don’t know what it is about the nose, but skin cancers love it—especially basal cell carcinomas. Perhaps one day they’ll discover that that’s what happened to the Sphinx.’

Owen knew this was meant to make him laugh.
He did not laugh.

Drying his hands on a tea towel, the doctor came next to Owen and, placing a long finger on the first brochure, he tapped it.
‘This is a good one,’ he said.
Owen ignored it.
‘I have patients that have moved in there, so I visit it a lot. They seem very happy.’
Owen said nothing.
‘The food is good too, and they have a great activities program. Plus it’s a hostel—Assisted Living, is what they call it now. Each resident has their own room and an en suite. It’s more like a vacation than a . . .’
Owen interrupted him, ‘Have you forgotten that I work in aged care?’ he asked.
‘You work in nursing homes, Owen. This is not a nursing home.’
Owen made sure there was a pause, and then he returned to his fingers and said, ‘She’s not going into care.’

Giving him some thinking time, the doctor pulled out a chair and sat.
The doctor’s hands were soft, and his nails were clean. Still, putting them in front of him, he mimicked what Owen’s hands were doing. It was a psychological trick that was meant to make the other person feel at ease. It worked with many of his patients. It didn’t work with Owen.

‘You know, Owen, in a fair and just world, you should be congratulated for how you have cared for her.’
Tensing his lips, Owen tilted his head towards the doctor. This was his only reply.
‘But you won’t be. In fact, unless you are willing to quit work and stay at home twenty-four hours a day, this arrangement isn’t going to be acceptable.’
Owen’s fingers fell still.

To this the doctor leaned across the table and rested a hand on Owen’s closest wrist.
‘There is a burn on the carpet next to her armchair,’ he said. ‘A cigarette burn. If that had caught fire—well, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.’

On the opposite side of the table, opposite the doctor, there was a nick in the table that Owen’s father, years ago, had inflicted when a screwdriver slipped. Owen tried to focus his attention on that nick.

Letting Owen’s wrist go, the doctor picked up the second brochure and presented it to Owen.
‘St Leigh’s,’ he said. ‘It’s more expensive than the first one, probably because it’s near the beach. But basically it’s on par. They’re both five star, you see. And it wouldn’t be like you were losing her, or abandoning her. You could visit every day—even at night. There are no time restrictions. Surely you could at least look at the brochure.’

Owen finally nodded. Taking it, he turned over the first page. There was a glossy picture of an old woman with a younger staff member, and both of them were smiling. It made Owen smile, and placing it back down on the table, he turned to the doctor and said:
‘Do you need me to see you out?’

Sitting back, Doctor Anderson grimaced.
‘You need to listen to me, Owen.’
‘I have listened. I listen every time you’re here. But you are the one who doesn’t seem to be able to hear. I am not placing my mother into a home.’

Doctor Anderson nodded, but it was not a nod of acceptance, but of resignation.
‘I need you to reconsider,’ Doctor Anderson said.
‘I just have,’ Owen scoffed.
‘That’s why I need you to reconsider,’ the doctor said. ‘You see, one of my onerous responsibilities is to report any person whom I consider to be in danger. And I consider your mother to be in danger. And while I won’t put that report in right now, if you don’t reconsider—and soon—it will be out of my hands.’
‘That’s crap,’ went Owen.
The doctor shook his head. ‘Don’t let this decision be taken out of your hands, Owen.’
‘No,’ Owen scoffed. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re making that up.’

Doctor Anderson grimaced, and then he said:

‘You know, if they do take the decision out of your hands, you might not have much of a say as to where they finally place her. I’m sorry, Owen, I really am. But it’s reached that point. Either you quit that job and stay with her, or place her into care.’

PART 5 Coming

Michael

P.S. Any guesses as to where it is going?