Kristy Athens
They had offered Denise a sheriff’s escort back at the hospice office, but she waved them off. “I’m only going to be there an hour,” she said, grabbed some cans of vitamin drink and chucks, and hit the road.
Denise looked at her gas needle and cursed. She hated gas stations—the smell; the mess—but it was just the price of helping people. She could have been a social worker who sits in an office (or worse, a cubicle) all day and entertains a parade of welfare mothers and their sick children. Instead, she chose to help people who were dying and help their families come to terms with this. Her friends commended her on her bravery but in fact she considered it a cop-out—there were so many worse things than dying.
It was a fact of life in this rural service area to spend twice, or even three times, as much time in transit as caring for a patient. Some of the ranchers had spent sixty years in a house; some had been born in them. “Downsizing” was an unfamiliar concept when these folks had been in their 60s or 70s, young enough to sell their acreage (since their children had left for “better lives”) and move into more manageable quarters in town. It was too late for that—now the only option was The Home, and all but the most disabled man or woman was too proud to consider it. Instead, they clung to their old ways, carrying the firewood one piece at a time instead of eight and eating beans from a can.
It was a triumph to convince one of the ranchers to accept hospice care, to allow strangers to give him medicine, help him bathe, and even talk about his regrets and fears. Yet here Denise was, thirty miles from anything in any direction, gassed up and on her way to see Mr. Delbert in Bonehill.
After moving to the area, Denise quickly became bored with the sagebrush scrubland that dominated the landscape. The mountainous terrain was impressive but lacked trees or any vegetation except this knee-high grayish-greenish shrub whose bloom-clumps perfumed the air with a low musk. She used the drive as time to clear her mind of the previous case and prepare for the next. While everyone had in common the fact that they were dying, there the similarities ended. One person might deteriorate so slowly that both she and her doctor might question her “terminal” status. One person might be out mowing his lawn one day and die the next. One might be in limbo—one foot in either world—for weeks.
And that was just the physical state. Not only did bodies prepare for death, psyches did too. Denise remembered a young patient, a 36-year-old man with a picture-perfect family—successful wife, young kids—who held on much longer than his body could handle because he was unwilling to leave his family behind. This psychic struggle resulted in tremendous physical suffering: the cancer that wracked his cells created a kind of relentless, overwhelming and intense pain state that eventually gave nurses no option but to sedate him into unconsciousness. Still, he clung to life.
After a few hours—once the wife had calmed enough to stop screaming, “Why can’t you help him?” and was merely staring, lost in her world of disbelief and grief—Denise pulled her aside. “Brian needs you to let him go; he needs you to tell him you will be okay,” she said. The woman stared at the spot in her palm where her husband’s fingernail had pierced the skin. Denise made a mental note to have a nurse clean that up later. “Can you do that?”
The woman didn’t move, then slowly nodded and approached the bed. The children were brought from the neighbor’s, drowsy with sleep, and laid on their father’s compromised chest. They protested weakly, like puppies, and then settled in; a blanket was draped over them. Denise and her colleagues withdrew into the kitchen as the young woman gathered up the courage to push her husband’s boat away from shore.
Mr. Delbert was a completely different scenario. As Denise pulled off the main road to travel the two-mile driveway to Mr. Delbert’s house, she consciously banished distractions and put her guard up. Tyler’s two dogs met her a quarter-mile from the house, jumping against her car door to snap and growl. She almost wished that one would miscalculate its trajectory and get caught under a tire. No luck; they followed her all the way. As she turned her car around so that it faced out instead of in, Tyler ripped open the kitchen door and bellowed at the dogs, kicking at them as they cowered into the house.
Denise collected her supplies, making sure she had her cell phone in her front pocket even though the signal was poor, and stepped out of her car. She took a deep breath and put on a smile.
“Hi there, Tyler!”
Tyler sneered at Denise from the doorway. “He’s sleeping.”
“Okay,” said Denise. “I have some supplies that the nurse asked me to bring, so I’ll just take those in.”
“I can take them.”
Denise stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps that led to the door. The dogs growled at her from behind Tyler’s legs. “Tyler, come on,” she said. “We’ve been through this. You know I need to see your grandpa before I go.”
Tyler stood his ground a minute, then snorted and disappeared into the house, presumably to his “apartment” in the basement. The dogs, thankfully, followed.
Denise picked her way through the kitchen; every countertop was stacked with soiled TV dinner trays and paper plates. Half-filled bags of garbage peppered the floor. Flies covered the light fixtures. Past the bathroom, which was in a relatively sanitary state because a hospice housekeeper came periodically to clean it, Mr. Delbert dozed on an adjustable bed that hospice volunteers had somehow managed to maneuver into the back bedroom. His sunken cheeks moved slightly as he breathed noisily through his mouth. Thin wisps of white hair ran straight over the top of his head, in perfect alignment with his lined forehead. Though one never really could tell (and Denise was a social worker and not a nurse), she gave him a couple of weeks, tops.
The room was stifling and rank. Denise quietly cracked the window and approached the bed to feel for Mr. Delbert’s pulse and straighten his blanket. The man quickly opened his eyes and held his hands in front of his face. “Leave me alone!” he yelled. Denise took one of his hands and stroked the top of it. She bent her knees a bit to look him the eye and said in a calm voice, “Mr. Delbert, it’s Denise, from hospice.”
The man continued to flinch for a moment, jaw opening and closing, then met her gaze and slowly lowered his other hand.
“How are you doing today, Mr. Delbert? Can you smell the sage outside?”
The man scratched at the few days’ growth of white whiskers on his chin, considering. “I’m thirsty.”
Denise pulled a plastic cup from her bag and filled it in the bathroom. She held it to his lips and then put it on the table next to his bed. She threw the old one in a trashcan that hospice had supplied. Denise was surprised that Tyler hadn’t already sold the metal container for scrap.
“How are you feeling today, Mr. Delbert?” She could discern at least six different vintages of food stain on his shirt. As primary caregiver, this was really in Tyler’s domain, but she knew that if she wanted the man in clean clothes today, she would have to do it herself.
“Would you like to put on a different shirt?” Denise opened the closet and pulled out a plaid work shirt not unlike the one he was currently wearing: blue checks instead of red. She unbuttoned the soiled shirt and helped Mr. Delbert to lean forward so she could slide it off him, steadying him as he let go of the bars on either side of his bed to get the sleeves over his hands, and then reversing the process to put on the new one.
As Denise helped Mr. Delbert to gently lean back into the pillow, she felt a presence behind her. She turned (faster than she intended to) to find Tyler and the dogs filling the doorway.
“What’re you doing to my grandpa?” Tyler sneered.
“I-I’m changing him into a clean shirt,” said Denise. She ordered herself to calmly continue to meet his gaze. I am not afraid of this low-life, she thought. I’m not.
“Why bother,” said Tyler, striding to the foot of Mr. Delbert’s bed. “He’s gonna die soon enough anyway.” Mr. Delbert looked at his shaking hands.
“Tyler, that’s no way to talk about your grandfather.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Tyler said. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To make him die faster?”
“We don’t make people die faster or slower,” said Denise. “We make them comfortable.”
“Well, I wish you’d make this old son of a bitch hurry up and get it over with.”
Mr. Delbert tried to pick a piece of dried food from his blanket but couldn’t get his gnarled fingertips to close over it. Denise reached over and plucked it up.
“You look at him and think, ‘What a sweet old man,’” said Tyler. “You don’t know this man.”
“That’s true,” said Denise. “But my job is to care for him, not judge him.”
“He used to beat me,” said Tyler.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Tyler, I really am.” Denise remembered how horrified she used to be by what she saw or heard at work. Every night, she would cry herself to sleep. Eventually, she learned to keep going, to keep blasting by at 60 miles an hour. Keep your eyes on the road.
“He used to … When I was ten years old,” said Tyler. “Grandpa, why don’t you tell this lady what you started doing when I was ten years old?”
Mr. Delbert didn’t move.
“You remember Pull the Snake, Grandpa?”
Mr. Delbert mustered the strength to raise one arm and point at Tyler. “You get out of my room, boy.”
Tyler stared at the finger for a moment. Then he gave his brain a good shake, the scowl returned and he and left the room, grumbling, “Old piece of shit.” A door slammed in the basement.
Denise realized that she had her hand in her pocket, ready to activate her cell phone. She had long ago taught herself to dial 9-1-1 without looking. She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders.
“He’s lying,” whispered Mr. Delbert.
“Okay,” said Denise.
“That boy’s always been a liar,” said Mr. Delbert, raising his voice, attempting to shout. “That’s why his momma killed herself. Tyler drove her to do it with his made-up stories and lies.” He flopped back onto the pillow and panted.
“Please calm down, okay, Mr. Delbert?” said Denise. “I just need to check the condition of your feet, then you can get back to your nap.” She pulled the sheets up from the bottom of the bed. The darkening had begun—the beginning of the end. Denise gave him a quick foot rub, probably his last, and replaced the bedclothes.
“Okay!” she said briskly. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I leave?”
“You need to help me,” said Mr. Delbert. “I want to change my will. I don’t want that liar getting my money.”
“But he’s your only living relative,” said Denise.
“I don’t care!” His breathing had become slightly uneven. “Aren’t you here to help me?”
“Here, please drink a little water.” Denise brought the cup to his face but he turned his head.
“Help me!” he tried to shout.
“Mr. Delbert, please calm down,” said Denise. She could hear Tyler’s feet on the basement steps. “I’m going to have to leave if you can’t calm down.”
“What the hell is going on in here?” Tyler reappeared in the doorway with his growling foot soldiers.
“This lady is helping me change my will,” pouted Mr. Delbert. “I’m giving everything to this hospice.”
Tyler towered over Denise. “What’s the big idea?”
“Look,” said Denise, “I wasn’t doing anything. Your grandfather’s upset.”
“Is that how you people work? You come in and talk old people into giving you all their money?”
“No!” said Denise. “He’s just upset.”
“I’m not upset!” strained Mr. Delbert. “I have a right to change my will. You’re a liar and I’m gonna see to it that you don’t get a cent.”
“Why, you son of a bitch! After all I been through.” Tyler lunged toward Mr. Delbert.
“Stop it!” yelled Denise. In her pocket, she heard the faint static-y squeak of the emergency dispatcher’s voice; the men didn’t notice. It would take the sheriff’s department a minute to recognize that Denise was on the hospice list, and then to call hospice to figure out where she was, and then fifty minutes in transit. But it was better than nothing.
“Leave me alone!” said Mr. Delbert.
“I earned that money!” said Tyler. “It’s mine!” One of the dogs pulled on the corner of the blanket, snarling.
Denise backed carefully out of the room, through the kitchen door and out the screen door. The door had no latch, so she knew that she wasn’t safe from the dogs until she got into her car. One burst out the door as she closed hers; it leapt from the stoop and left slime smears on her window as it tried to eat her through the glass, a quarter-mile down the driveway.
Halfway back to town, the sheriff whizzed past her in his sedan. He waved. Who knows what he’ll find. Things that are worse than dying.
Denise realized that her vision was blurring; she slowed and pulled to the shoulder. She could see up and down the road for 10 miles, and there was no traffic in either direction. She got out and crunched across the gravel to the dusty land beyond it. The smell of sage was nearly overwhelming. Because she was on an enormous plateau, her view transcended the horizon to snow-capped mountains, far on the other side of a river she couldn’t see. She held her hand against her brow to shield her eyes, and then dropped down to the ground. The stress of her visit poured from her in a wail, then was gone. She breathed. She opened her eyes, inches from the ground, blinked, and focused on green plants no taller than the width of her thumb. Some bore flowers the size of a poppy seed; some yellow five-petaled pinpricks; some white nubbins with blue centers. All surviving in this dry, cruel land.
