There is no end to their torture. The photograph album is gone. I know I put it on my night stand when I went to sleep. Just like everything else they've taken they crept in in the middle of the night and took it while I was asleep. I left a note at one of the nurse stations, a polite note asking whoever "borrowed" it to please return it to my room. I think it will show up again in some distant corner of my cell. Like everything else they've taken. Someone will come in at night and tuck it away in an unexpected hiding place like the top of the toliet, or underneath some magazines by the dresser. I can already hear them telling me "Awww, poor man, I bet you just forgot it next to the chairs in the TV room." If I catch them putting the things back in my room that is the last straw.
Just let me catch her. I know it's Marissa.
Enough about that.
Someone new came in today. Another woman who slipped and broke her hip. That makes three broken hipped guests in the last month. I do not think she will last very long. The nurses check on her all day, popping in and out of her room every few minutes. Her machines make so much noise I can hear the damn things beeping when I get into the hallway. She seems kind though, even with the masive hematoma under her eye. Thomas tells me she fell face first into a rack of candles in a grocery store. If she stabilizes I will bring Janice in to see her. Janice is difficult to keep down. She would drag her oxegyn bottle from room to room even if the wheels on it came off.
One of the local churches brought a first grade Sunday school class in to sing for us. They wheeled us all into the TV room and cut the TV off. Two fo the guys weren't happy their show was cut off and tried to roll out of the room. The nurses stopped them and carted them back in, telling the two men, whose arms were tightly crossed about their chests "the fun is about to start." The children came in dispersed into the TV room giggling. Their laughter stopped when they smelled us. I've gotten accustomed to the smell. I only notice it when someone has lost all bladder control in the chair next to me. The kids began holding their noses by the time they gathered in front of us. Fear settled over them when they realized how old and hideous we looked. the stench of colostomy bags blended with fumes of industrial cleaner. The cleaner is never strong enough to wrestle the stench of our bodies out of the building. A patient near the front started caughing as she reached to pat a child's head. The caugh became so loud the child backed away and hid behind one of the taller boys in the choir. The woman coughed every time she tried to speak.
"come let me get a good look at you, you darling little thing." The rasping started again. A chunk of phlegm blasted out of her mouth and made a string from her outstretched arm to her chin.
Janice was there too. She pulled out a napkin and helped the nurses clean the phlegm off of the woman's arms. Two boys in the back of the choir ducked and called out, "eww, nasty. Look at the snot, oh my god."
I was hoping the Sunday school teachers would scold them, but they were too busy handing out sheet music and distributing placemats to us. I couldn't believe how the children were behaving. They began making fun of Janice as she cleaned the woman's arm.
Why anyone would think to bring such rowdy children into the home is beyond me. The children did not like us. Some were so scared they clung onto one another, others were so cruel, all of them were put off by our smell and could not keep it quiet about it.
Before their singing started the adults forced them to give us each a placemat. I am guessin the placemats depicted scenes from the Bible, but on mine Jesus was crucified on wood strapped to the back of a truck that was jumping over a group of ninja. Mud and rocks were raining down on the ninja from the under carriage of the 4 x 4, bludgeoning them. I knew they were ninja thanks to the labeling. The child turned the hook on the J the wrong direction. Arrows from the word "Ninjas" pointed to their heads. Red felt tip marker streaks shot off of them to indicate blood spewing.
Elton Riggs threw his placemat to the floor when a little girl handed it to him.
"Get that crap out of my face. Stupid kid can you see I am trying to read my newspaper?"
The little girl started crying. Rhoda Cheney, the woman nearest her, pulled the little girl away from Elton and gave her a hug. When the little girl saw Rhoda's deep purple vericose veins shaking with Parkinson's as they closed in she looked up and shrieked. Poor little thing was caught in the arms of an ancient woman hooked up to oxegyn and IV tubes. Rhoda's left eye is clouded with cataracts, her nose has a huge hair covered mole. By all accounts she looks identical to the worst fairy tale witch any child could imagine.
Rhoda tried to soothe the frantic girl, "what's wrong baby? Oh you are so cute I could just eat you up!" The girl broke free and ran out of the room screeching. I don't remember her ever coming back into the room.
A few of the ladies enjoyed seeing the children. They laughed when Rhoda's prey screamed and ran out of the room. I hear one woman say, "Aw, look how cute, that little scared girl." One or two of the children voluntarily hugged a few of us. The rest just huddled together staring at us in fear and disgust.