A Corporal Work of Mercy

Yesterday, Karen called and asked if I would like to accompany her on a visit to Annie, who is in University Hospital at this time. I was very pleased that she had thought to ask me because I have Annie on my mind so often these days. Annie is one of Karen's closest friends, they went to high school and college together and have remained close throughout the years. She has been quite ill for the last six months. Karen either didn't know yet or just failed to tell me that she, Karen, was having 'one of those days'!

Our trip downtown was fairly uneventful. We entered the University Hospital Parking Garage and drove clear to the top, maybe six or seven floors, but found not one parking place. As we exited the garage, the attendant gave us a paper with instructions for getting to another garage on Chestnut Street. ((A deer was running loose on Chestnut on Wednesday and it growled at a news man trying to take its picture.) Anyway, Karen said, "Why don't you just get out here and wait for me?" We were just across the street from Univ. Hosp. entrance so I got out and she drove on in her quest for a parking place.

I am a people watcher so I rather enjoyed watching the people come and go. I saw a lot of blue scrubs, the predominant dress for the day, and a lot of people with back packs, one person walking a dog,must have been a downtown dog, and a number of people who were pale and wan and looked like they needed attention. The streets were filled with buses, trucks, taxis, and cars, some of which were Jaguars or Mercedes (doctors) and some junkers (patients). I was very entertained.

After a prolonged length of time, I became concerned, I had visions of the headlines in the paper or the lead story on the 6 o'clock news: "Woman abandons mother on street corner in downtown Louisville!" I didn't even know which direction I should be looking to see if I could spot her coming for me. So I looked in all directions, a bus pulled up to the corner and I, for a nano second, thought she might get off the bus. The taxi cabs didn't even slow down so I didn't expect any thing from them.

Suddenly, rain drops appeared on the sidewalk in front of me so I ducked around the corner of the building that I had been leaning against. Large pillars surrounded me but I thought I was under cover and would be protected there. Not! The rain quickly became a deluge and the wind picked up and the pillars only protected me from being blown away. As I left my house this morning, I ran back in to get a light sweater in case it turned cool but I failed to pick up my ever present hat. I had a few biopsies performed on my head a few days ago and I was angry at myself for forgetting the hat when I felt the pain of the rain drops falling on my head. Actually they were not falling they were pelting my head.

The sky had darkened and the situation was looking quite grim when Karen came hurling around the corner, shrieking,"This is a nightmare! I swear to you I had this nightmare just the other night! I was lost downtown and it was storming..." True deja vu!!

Water was dripping from her hair, from her nose, she looked like she had just stepped out of a swimming pool. I fished ,no pun intended, a kleenex out of my wet purse and gave it to her to help dry her face and eyes. We took off running across the walkway to the hospital. The water was coursing down the street, it looked like a stream, we waded through it at full speed and finally reached the marquee where we were protected from the 20 or 30 mile an hour wind. I just barely made it because the wind almost blew me off my feet, my wet feet!

The dry people on the elevator remarked, "Is it raining outside?"

We stopped in the restroom on the 7th floor where Annie's room is to repair some of the damage. Karen was wet through and through! She combed her hair and sopped some of the water off but she still looked pretty miserable. I fared much better than she because she had walked about four blocks in the deluge. She did get a parking place in the garage but took a wrong turn when she left, on foot and realized her error when she arrived back at the garage. She had apparently walked around the block. Needless to say she was pretty mad, I hesitate to say, 'mad as a wet hen'.

When we got to Annie's room we informed her that,' greater love hath no...' She meant no offence but couldn't help but laugh her head off. Oh,boy.She said ,"Why did you come in the rain?"

Her lunch had just arrived and so while she ate she regaled us with an account of her room mate. The room mate was a bit bizarre. She started telling Annie about some of her friends or relatives and she kept getting phone calls. She would yell at the caller and tell them not to call her again and then she would cry aloud. For some reason the phone did not ring on her side of the curtain, it only rang on Annie's side, so Annie would have to answer it. Someone named Joe kept calling. We were having a conversation on our side of the curtain and she would join in and laugh when ever we laughed and be generally disruptive, in between phone calls.

We had some very serious, personal discussions with Annie and had a few tears but then some conversations that were very funny. A nurse that had been in the Army with Annie and now works at University brought her own lunch and came to visit with Annie while she ate. She is a psyc. nurse and since they are doing some remodeling work in the usual psyc. department they have temporarily moved to a trailer out in the back parking lot so she finds it more relaxing to eat in Annie's room. Good visiting with her.
While we were visiting the nurses and aides came in and moved the off balance room mate out. We were so interesting in our own selves that we didn't even notice what was going on until a nurse stuck her head around the curtain and said, "She's gone! We moved her to a private room!"

The Psyc. nurse left and we went on with our visit but I did get the other chair in the room and move it over so we could both sit down. Annie, with former room mate in mind, was recalling a time when Linda Mansfield went to a mixer at Central State Hospital during their high school days and at one point when one of the guys she had met there made an absurd comment Linda said without thinking, "Are you Crazy?"

In the middle of our laughing the person from housekeeping came in to sanitize the vacated section of the room and simply joined our conversation. She shared 'war stories' as Annie called them. She, at one point asked if Karen and I were sisters! Annie said," no, its mother and daughter." From that point on she referred to me as "Mom". She was about 5'8" tall and was African American and felt very free to be a part of our gathering. Sheez!

Shortly, thereafter when Annie was telling us about the last time she was in the hosp. One of her friends took her soiled underwear home to launder it for her and she hasn't seen it since. Once again we were laughing and a nurse's aid walked in and said, "Each room is only supposed to have two chairs so I will have to take one of these chairs because the room over there has six visitors in it and they only have one chair." I suggested she could have waited until we left to take the extra chair out of the room and she said that the person in the room was not going to 'make it' and her visitors needed to sit down. Unbeknown to Karen, she must have rolled her eyes, because as the girl was removing the chair from the room she snarled, "And you don't need to roll your eyes!" Now between the time they moved the off kilter room mate, who was laughing and blabbing on the phone and butting into our conversations,and the chair incident, she must have had a sudden down turn. The chair was going to her and her six visitors that had suddenly showed up. Rude behavior on the part of the aide and me thinks she was stretching the truth just a tad!

By this time we decided to end our visit and as we were starting to leave Karen mentioned the fact that the next time we were going to come on a sunny day. Promptly, Annie burst into song and without losing a beat we joined her singing a familiar tune: "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again, some sunny day...."

The housekeeper said,"Goodbye Mom." and we left. Our shoes were not dry yet and Karen looked not quite as bedraggled but we walked the few blocks to the parking garage and used my old trick of hitting the panic button on the remote to help us locate the car and we were off. There was a small glitch when Karen couldn't recall where her ticket was but it was easy to find and we were on our way.

Karen called this morning to say when she got home she could not get into her house at first. They have a new lock and for some reason the key wouldn't work. She was at the point of taking some drastic action but decided to try the back door and finally got in. When she has a bad day she doesn't mess around! We're hoping she got it all out of her system!

You might want to visit the sick and do your corporal work of mercy It is refreshing! Ciao

Epilogue

Annie called Karen and pretended to be an administrator of the hosp. and banned her from coming again to the hospital in her "drowned rat" condition and giving the hospital a bad name!