TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S 35
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THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S --
The Continued Saga of Paul Ess's Rehabilitation
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This is episode 35. We've had a spat of quite warm weather for
an area so close to San Francisco Bay. Saturday afternoon the
power outage happened. I was right in the middle of composing an
impassioned email to a fan when everything went dark. Well, they
did this around noon and it was off for fifteen minutes.
Somebody is playing with the generator again. I just wish the
bosses of this tardfarm would give me a heads-up so I won't be in
the middle of a disk transfer when the power fails. This time I
don't hear the generator start.
Word finally filters down to us tards that this is a genuine
power failure all over California. Then my phone rang. It was
Mr Cheez to say that on Bernal Heights in San Francisco, he still
had power. There was no radio or television broadcasting to
matter, but he had his public service channel scanner on and
heard that San Francisco was declared in a state of emergency.
Police assigned to a game at Candlestick Park were called back to
the central city to prevent looting. People were stuck in
elevators in the financial district.
Meanwhile at the tardfarm, constant dinner was interrupted for
the tube feeders. Mr Salazar who has the compressed air bed
descended with a plonk into his 1200 pounds of little glass beads
and was frozen there. They had to get him out of that tub of
ceramic bits and into a regular bed for the duration.
Considering that the man would be way over six feet if he could
stand, and that he's quite muscular for an 80-something, he's a
handful with his deranged mind.
Word came from On High in the person of Miss Ralph that everybody
was to be put to bed and that CNAs were to check on each room
every fifteen minutes because the bedside signals weren't
working. It's a good thing there were no incidents during the
four-hour outage because the telephones are electronic and
useless in a power failure.
I go to bed normally except that it's a bit earlier than usual.
I get on the bedpan and settle in for a good long drizzle of a
shit. LIttle did I know I was going to be left on that thing for
over an hour and a half. Check on us every fifteen minutes my
bigass! After about an hour, the metal began to dig a ring in my
ass and make a pain in the small of my back.
Don't ever go to sleep on one of these things. When you wake up
you'll think somebody whacked you above the buttocks with a
board. I'm all screaming NURSE like The Buzzard does. The med
cart nurse was going up and down the halls and paid no attention
to my yelling. Finally i'm all YOU GOD DAMN BITCHES GET IN
HERE -- just like Buzzard. Still no response. I hear the CNAs
down at the desk cutting up. If I can hear them, they can hear
me. Sound absorbency is nil in this place.
Finally my nurse realizes she's forgotten about me and rushes in
all sorry and everything. By this time I have rolled over on my
side and have spilled the chocolate sauce in the bedpan all over
my "green sheet" absorbent bed pad -- standard gear for everybody
here, tight-sphinctered or not. Oops. She didn't remove the
canvas sheet I sit on in my wheelchair which enables me to slide
around easily. (Without this butt doily, the cloth of my tard
pants plus the urethane cushion covering combine like Velcro,
holding me in place. Canvas sheet has to go to the laundry. The
laundry is shut down because there is no power.
My butt is being cleaned with cold water (electric water heaters)
and by torchlight. How romantic. CNA is all So Sorry. I said,
Go ahead and be as sorry as you want; Monday I write a letter to
the rest home licensing agency in Sacramento. This is too much.
There is no hot water. The backup generator was red-tagged by
the fire department for a fuel leak. The telephones don't work.
Nobody is checking patients. I hear others yelling now.
Somebody didn't show up for work again, making the place short-
handed again. This is common, happening at least once a week.
No one is called in to help out. But why should they come? They
won't be paid anything extra for helping out on a day off. I've
heard licensed and certified employees alike grumble that they
often put in an extra one or two hours after quitting time to get
charting done and they aren't paid overtime for it.
The food is getting worse. They know the State is on its way to
inspect. They are using up old stuff from the back of the
freezer. We had raspberries yesterday, of all things. They were
freezer-burned. I imagine they were saved for a fancy show-off
luncheon and no one came up with an excuse to parade the ponies.
They must be overstocked on ground turkey because I have seen
that at least once a day for a week. One good thing is we are
having fresh potatoes usually twice a day. The State must not be
the only thing having eyes... At least we are over frozen carrot
medallions. They overworked that hork last week.
Here it is Monday and they haven't found my canvas butt doily
yet. It's marked with my name and room number. They probably
gave it to some other tard. Yesterday I made them get the block
and tackle and haul my ass in and out of my chair. I won't do
that again. Their butt doily and my seat cushion locked up in
the Velcro Effect, too. Today I slid on my own without any aids
because it is the least of the evil choices. I want my canvas
back and I'm not above calling a tailor to bespeak one and send
the bill to this place. A hippy queen long years ago didn't call
me Miss Attitude on a Stick for nothing.
Bobby is acting up again. I swear, they forget to give him his
happyjuice and he gets _all_ upset. He roaring, GET AWAY FROM
ME! GO TO HELL, YOU DEVIL! I have to see this. I roll out to
the nurse's station and peer at him. He's probably seen this
gaze from more than one shrink. He looks at me and giggles in a
childish way. He holds up a stuffed toy and says, This is my
newest one. He means he's just had another baby. I politely
inquire who the father is. He twists his face into a grimace and
roars at me, IT SUREASHELL AIN'T _YOU_ CUZ YER A FUCKIN' _HOMO_!
I was almost cool about it. I smile a nervous grin. He
continues, GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU GODDAM FRUIT! The nurses are
skulking in embarrassment. I look at Kay, the charge nurse and
say, How did he find out? Kay says, Oh, don't worry about it;
yesterday _I_ was the homo! Bobby continues, I SAID GET AWAY
FROM ME, YOU FUCKIN' HOMO! YOU'RE A DEVIL! YOU'RE GONNA GO TO
HELL AND BURRRRRRRNNN! This makes me feel suddenly warm, so I
head back to my air-conditioned room to finish this tale.
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