The Mona Lisa
Robert Oldshue
Adeline Perry had come to Holy Name years before I started working there. The aides would lift her from bed every morning. They’d dress her in whatever clothes had come back from the laundry. They’d put her in a wheelchair and push her to the television room, and there she’d sit, day after day, week after week, her body frozen, her face twisted, her glasses reflecting the stupidity of the morning talk shows, the afternoon soaps, and the evening news. There would be a baseball game. There would be a special report about a plane crash or a hurricane, or the President would be speaking, and there would be Adeline, hanging from her harness, her mouth pulled into something like a smile.
“Mrs. Perry,” said Marienetta, the aide on nights. “Mrs. Perry is no here.”
“Did you check the television room?” I asked.
“She is no there.”
“Did you check the dining room?”
“She is no there. Mrs. Perry is no anywhere.”
Now it might seem that a nursing home with only two floors and forty – seven residents would be a hard place to lose somebody. And all the stairways were alarmed. There were cameras on all the exits. There were bed checks, hall checks, and bathroom checks. But the residents who could walk often wandered and when we looked, we would find them in the chapel or in the laundry or in the telephone room. We once found Mr. Petraglia in a closet, and Mrs. Semich left the building in her underwear.
“Did you check the chapel?”
“She is no there.”
“Did you check the laundry?”
“She is no there. Mrs. Perry is no anywhere.”
The daughter’s name was Marilyn. Marilyn had a husband, and she talked about children who were starting to have their own children. There was another daughter, Eileen or maybe Angela. Her phone number was in Mrs. Perry’s chart, but the area code was one I didn’t know, and she never called, and she never came. And there was a son who lived in Youngstown, not far from Cleveland. But at Holy Name we tried to have one person be a spokesman for each family, and he’d designated Marilyn, and she’d apparently made no objection.
“Bernie, you haven’t got Mrs. Perry up there, have you?”
“Not that I’ve seen, Joanne. What’s the matter? Is the first floor misplacing residents again?”
“We’ve lost Mrs. Perry.”
“Adeline Perry? How’d you lose her?”
“I don’t know, Bernie. I was wondering if you’d seen her.”
“I’ve been sitting here at the desk for the last hour. I can see the elevator, and nobody’s gotten off. And the kitchen people turn the service elevator off at 9 o’clock when they go home.”
“Can you think where she might be?”
“Did you check the television room?”
“Yes, Bernie.”
“Did you check the dining room?”
I’d worked at Cleveland City for eight years. I’d seen a lot of people die. But in a hospital, you only know them for a week or two, a month or two at the very most. At Holy Name, I knew people for three, four, five years before they died. I knew their quirks. I knew their strengths. I knew their teeth. Honestly, we all did. The residents were always misplacing their dentures, or the other residents were finding them and wandering off.
Sometimes I hated the residents; I won’t kid you. But other times, I’d find myself looking for someone who had died several months or even a year before. I’d find myself wondering if I had seen him or her on medicine pass that morning or in the posse of wheel chairs assembled for Bingo or Mass or physical therapy. I’d think, how could so and so be dead? How could a life disappear? And it didn’t matter that I saw my people dying all the time. I’d see them get a cough they couldn’t shake. I’d see them get a fever. I’d see their weight begin to drop, and I’d know. We’d all know. We’d try to prepare the family. We’d try to prepare ourselves. But when the resident died, I’d feel the way I felt when a co – worker quit without telling me.
“Donna, I’m sorry to be calling you at home but we’ve lost Adeline Perry.”
“You mean she died?”
“No, I mean we turned around and she wasn’t there and now we can’t find her.”
“Is she a patient or an employee?”
“She’s a patient. You know her. She had a stroke — she’s paralyzed.”
“Well, where could she have gone if she’s paralyzed?”
“I don’t know, Donna. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Have you looked for her?”
“Yes, Donna.”
“Did you check the television room?”
“Yes, Donna.”
“Did you check the dining room?”
Donna told me not to call the family. She wanted to drive in and look around for herself, not that she didn’t trust us, she said. And just before eleven, she arrived, dressed in uniform, although the rest of us only wore white pants and maybe white shoes if we bothered to wear uniforms at all. She came to the desk, and she asked to see Mrs. Perry’s record, and she studied it, page by page, as if to find some error to explain the disappearance. She asked to see the order book and the vitals book and the behavior log, and then she turned to Marienetta.
“When did you last see Mrs. Perry?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Where was she?”
“Watching television.”
“Was she alone?”
“I no remember.”
“Did she look unusual?”
“I no understand.”
“Did she look funny?”
“She look like she always look.”
Donna grilled Marienetta, then she grilled me, then she went upstairs and grilled Bernie. He told her that someone had called and asked for $50,000 or Mrs. Perry and her wheel chair would never be seen again. And she’d believed him. I could tell. I saw how angry she was when she returned.
“Should we notify the doctor on call?” I asked.
“I don’t think there’s much he can do.”
“Should we notify Sister Elizabeth?”
“She’ll say we should notify the doctor. Do you know who it is?”
“Dr. Rasmussen.”
“Is he good?”
“Good at what?”
“You know, at this sort of thing. You know.”
As it turned out, Dr. Rasmussen had switched his call with Dr. Kendrick at the last minute, and Donna told him what had happened. He described a similar situation from several years earlier. A family had come to take a resident home on pass. They’d neglected to inform the nurses when they left, and the staff was frantic until one of them called.
“But the Perrys have never taken Adeline,” I said. “She’s a two person assist with transfers. And Marienetta saw her at eight o’clock. Why would they take her in the middle of the night? Why wouldn’t they ask to take her medicines?”
Donna made me place the call, and I did, hoping the phone would keep ringing.
“What?” someone finally said.
“Hello…this is Joanne Camerano…a nurse at the Home of the Holy Name. Is this Marilyn Stoshak?”
“What?” the woman said again. “What time is it?”
“It’s a little after one – thirty, Mrs. Stoshak. I’m sorry to be disturbing you at this hour, but I need some information.”
“Has something happened? Is there an emergency?”
“Well, we’re not sure. That’s why my supervisor asked me to call. She wants me to ask . . . well, she wants me to ask if you know where your mother is.”
“My mother? She’s in the nursing home. She’s—who did you say this was?”
“This is Joanne, Mrs. Stoshak…I think we’ve met…I’m the nurse on the first floor…”
“But where’s my mother?”
“We don’t know…that’s why I’m calling. You didn’t bring her home today did you?”
“How would I bring her home?”
“And no one else in your family brought her home?”
“My sister lives in San Diego. And you can call my brother, but I can’t imagine he would do that. And if he did, wouldn’t you people know about it?”
I made Donna call Mrs. Perry’s son. She dialed the number and sat, her spine straight and slightly away from the chair. She smiled and said hello and asked her questions, and when she finished, she set the phone down and stared at it for what seemed like a long time.
“I should have called Sister Elizabeth,” she said. “This has gone much too far.”
Fortunately, she decided to make the call from her office, and I could start my bed checks and my charting. I began to stock the medicine carts for the morning, but at two o’clock, right on schedule, Mrs. Kowalski appeared.
“Honey, could I please have some grape juice?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You know we don’t have grape juice Mrs. Kowalski. We have apple juice, and we have orange juice. We can give you one of those, and then we can help you back into bed.”
“I want grape juice. And I don’t want to be in bed.”
“Mrs. Kowalski…”
“Why can’t I have what I want?”
“Mrs. Kowalski…”
“I’m not a child! I want you to give me some grape juice. Is that too much to ask?”
I was still talking to Mrs. Kowalski when Marienetta said that Mr. Osborne had disconnected his stomach tube. She said his feeding had soaked his bed and made the floor slippery. She told me to be careful in his room, which I was. But Mrs. Kowalski followed me. I didn’t see her in the darkness until I heard the scream and the kind of crack you hear when somebody’s fractured their hip on linoleum.
“Uhh,” she said as I turned on the light.
“Uhh,” she said again as I tried not to believe what I was seeing.
Marienetta and Denise, the other aide on nights, helped me push a sheet beneath the poor woman and lift her to a stretcher. We rolled her to the nurses’ station, and I called Dr. Kendrick and the family, and as I was holding for the triage nurse in the Emergency Room, Donna returned. She looked as if a resident had assaulted her.
“Sister Elizabeth said that I’m incompetent.”
“What?”
“She said I’ve been promoted beyond my talent.”
“Get outa’ Dodge!”
“She said that I’ve compromised the future of Holy Name.”
The Home of the Holy Name—or The Home of the Holy Ghost as Bernie called it—was owned by the Diocese of Cleveland, and every year they talked about closing us. The home was too small to be efficient they said, or it was too big to be efficient, or it was too dependent on welfare cases, or not dependent enough. The home was stuck between a carwash and a discount department store on Fairmount Boulevard, too far from the city to be a mission and too far from Shaker or Beechwood for families with money. The Diocese was always discussing the future of Holy Name, and Sister Elizabeth was always discussing the ways we had compromised it. You don’t care, she would say. You show up late. You take all your sick days. You waste the paper towels.
“Oh come on, Donna. Sister Elizabeth says that to everybody.”
“Not to me,” she replied. “Not like she said it tonight.”
The triage nurse came on the line, and I described Mrs. Kowalski. I listed her allergies, her medications, her medical problems.
“At least she’s taken care of,” I told Donna.
But the night’s activity had woken other residents as well. Mr. Thomas said he had a stomachache. Mrs. Cleary said she had a fever. Mr. Donovan convinced Mr. Winshall the building was on fire, and Denise said Mr. Piva was having chest pain.
“He do it again,” said Marienetta, shaking her head. “Mr. Osborne. He pull out his stomach tube. He do it again.”
Mr. Mercier worked in the kitchen. He didn’t say much, and I never knew if his English was poor or he was angry or just quiet. “All right…” he would say if we greeted him. “All right…” he would say if we asked about the meal trays. But that morning, when he arrived, there were Donna and Sister Elizabeth. There were the residents, up and wandering. There were the police, and there was Mrs. Perry’s son, and there was a girl from The Plain Dealer.
And there was Mrs. Perry. She was on the service elevator.
“Diable!” Mr. Mercier exclaimed when he unlocked it. Marienetta heard him, although he later said he was kidding.
“He no kidding,” she said. “He scared. He plenty scared. I plenty scared. Everybody plenty scared.”
We decided a resident must have rolled Mrs. Perry onto the service elevator sometime before it was shut off. The resident had forgotten, and the doors had closed, and Mrs. Perry had sat there, frozen and mute for ten hours, but none the worse for the experience as far as we could tell. We took her pulse. We took her blood pressure. We listened to her lungs. We cleaned her up and changed her, and after we fed her breakfast, we rolled her to the television room. What else could we do?
“Live and learn,” said Donna. “We’ll have to make a new policy for the elevator.”
“Good for Mrs. Perry,” said Bernie. “I always thought she had some fun left in her.”
“The Diocese will never understand,” said Sister Elizabeth. “This event has seriously compromised the future of Holy Name.”
Dr. Chandar was my favorite among the doctors. If you didn’t know him, he could seem a little lazy. But he knew what he could do and what he couldn’t, and he once said that we didn’t really help the patients at Holy Name, we aged them until their problems were exquisite.
“And this one was the Mona Lisa,” he said.
I had the next day off. And the day after that I didn’t start until 11.00 pm, and Mrs. Perry was already in bed. I didn’t see her until the following day.
“Hey, Adeline,” I said when I got to the television room. “It’s me, Joanne. Hey, you know what I heard? I heard you tried to leave without paying your bill.”
But the woman didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She was watching the television, her mouth pulled into something like a smile.
(Hear actor Kelly AuCoin read “The Mona Lisa“)