Head Swirls and Twists of Fate

He stared at the swirls in the white sand painted ceiling. It felt like just yesterday that he and his wife were choosing Bryce Canyon Red walls reminiscent of their most recent hiking trip. It was hard to believe that more than fifteen years had passed since that trip and almost as many since they had repainted the den. He smiled to think about the rocks resting on the mantle. They had taken so many trips, adventures, and road trips. They liked to tackle home renovation projects together too. 

Tearing out the kitchen, oh that was a summer to remember! Washing dishes in the bathroom sink and cooking every meal on the grill in the back yard had been great fun for their kids, but so much work for his wife. And she took it all in stride and with a smile. He was a lucky man indeed. He didn’t like the idea of hiring out for something that he could easily learn to do himself with a bit of hard work and reading. It might take him longer, years longer, but he would get the job done himself. 

He had them tear out both bathrooms, every tile, including the floor, until the bathrooms were bare bones. And then he started the recreation. It took him ten years for the half bath and twenty years for the master bathroom, but they are beautiful bathrooms. Sometimes you can’t rush things. Maybe, if he had to do things over again, he would have asked for help. He would have spent more time with his wife and kids just playing rather than working on projects or learning how to work on projects. But this was how he thought he was spending time with them. Oh, to be able to live life backwards. 

The air mattress heaves a deep breath in as it reinflates beneath him. He never notices as it deflates, flattens like a pancake beneath his useless legs and motionless body on the bed. A constant hum from the pump keeps him company along with the hiss from the c-pap machine. The hose has slipped during the night and no longer has a snug fit. He would have called or texted his wife to ask her to fix it, but he hates to bother her during the night. She needs her sleep. And sometimes she is grumpy when she comes downstairs. No, not grumpy, scared. He scares her when he calls. She always thinks it is an emergency. She is in a constant state of anxiety and waiting for the next 911 call. He can’t really blame her. They are on a first name basis with most of the EMTs and rescue squad people around here. If it’s not a blood pressure scare, it’s something else these days. 

Here she comes again. Her feet stomp through the front door and she calls out, “Good morning!” She pushes the door shut with a bit more force than is necessary. If only she would turn the knob, it would close easily and quietly. She thumps her feet exactly five times on the door mat. Five. Who thumps five times? Which foot does she leave out each morning? He can’t see to find out. Her feet pound down the front hallway towards the kitchen. He can hear the brown paper bag rustling in her paws as she shouts, “I picked you up a bagel this morning with your favorite cream cheese. I’ll whip you up an egg sandwich in a jiffy!”

She enters his bedroom just off the kitchen, “I saw yesterday when I was here that there weren’t any more eggs, and you were low on butter too. So I brought that. You know when I was taking care of my aunt, I used to do all of her grocery shopping too. Maybe I should start doing that for you. It seems like it might make things easier and then you wouldn’t run out of things all the time.”

As she was talking she was taking the c-pap machine off his face, fluffing pillows, adjusting the bed to her liking, and turning on the lights. “They were calling for snow last night. It really only snowed a dusting. But it is snowing a little bit right now. Your wife might want to leave early for work so she doesn’t get caught up in the snow. She will also need to clean her car off as I noticed that there was some ice and snow on her windshield when I came in. Oh, and the driveway is slippery and your steps too. I’ll go out later to shovel and throw down some salt. Is the shovel still in the garage? Did your wife leave the salt in the garage or do you think she moved it somewhere else?”

Holy shit woman, he thought, shut the fuck up. It is five am. Just stop talking. This aide that he and his wife hired several months ago, the one that they thought would be a dream, has turned into a nightmare. Here he thought the day he was told he was a quadraplegic was the nightmare. Now every morning has turned into a wash, lather, repeat cycle he’d rather escape. 

She has started to set her own hours. She comes and goes as she pleases. She criticizes everything and judges everyone. Worst of all, she has created a war zone in his home. He is paralyzed and he is unable to do anything to stop this. He needs the help and good help is hard to find these days. Health care is a tough field anytime, but especially during a pandemic. Maybe he should have settled for the tobacco breathing wheezy asthmatic that had applied for the job prior to this nut job. 

“So I saw when I was coming here that the old Sapley house is finally up for sale. It’s about time. That’s been an eyesore in your neighborhood for years now. I can’t believe no one has done anything about it. I wouldn’t have let it go like that. I would have given those Sapleys a piece of my mind moving out and leaving the house in that condition.”

“They…” he started before she interrupted.

“And the way the grass got to be as tall as a hay field before anyone even cut it. Then again, at least then it covered up the broken garage door, peeling paint, sagging porch steps, and missing shutters. What color is that house supposed to be anyway? Was it blue? It’s faded to such a depressing shade of grey. Didn’t the Tafts own the house before them? I bet if they saw their house now they would weep. I know I would have to buy it back and fix it. Or make them fix it. How could anyone just walk away from a house? How can they think they can just walk away? Don’t they need that mortgage to pay for the next mortgage? How did they buy their next house anyway? Did the bank look at what they did? Do the Sapleys just go from town to town and live in a house long enough to destroy it and then leave? Who can afford to do that? How do they afford to do that? I bet they are drug dealers.”

He laid staring at the ceiling praying that the fan would fall. That the fan would fall on top of the aide to make her incessant chatter pause. Just stop talking. Who the hell cares who the former neighbors were or what they did or didn’t do. Maybe they were using, growing, making, and selling crack cocaine in their house. It was none of his - or her, business. Her job was to get him washed, dressed, and out of bed. That’s all she was hired to do. Washed, dressed, and out of bed. His wife was able to accomplish this in under two hours. This aide should be able to do this much more efficiently and quickly than that. Get in and get out. 

“My cousin’s wife saw your wife in the store the other day,” the aide stops to inhale as she bends over to steer the electric wheelchair closer to the bed.

“That’s nice. I’d like to wear the blue shirt today, with long sleeves,” he interjects.

“Oh, no, no, no. You will wear the red one. I like the red one so much better. And you wore blue two days ago. You must wear red today. That’s the order: blue, green, red, grey.” The aide continues, “So, my cousin’s wife said she saw that your wife wasn’t using those bags that I gave her and I just couldn’t think why she wouldn’t be using them. Then I thought well, maybe she left them in the washing machine. You know how she leaves loads in there all the time to get funky. I’m constantly having to re-run the loads in that machine. So, in case she needs more bags, I brought more over for her today. You can never have too many recyclable bags!” 

She swings him up into the hoyer lift and settles him in the wheelchair. Her rough hands have washed his face, stretched his socks and pants on, rolled him from side to side like a sack of potatoes, and stuffed his feet inside his sneakers to prepare him for another day of sitting in his chair. He feels like a Barbie doll. Unyielding and difficult to pry the clothes onto as his limbs don’t bend at all. And he is unable to help in any way. He just has to lie there and be washed and dressed. And he has to wear whatever clothes are offered to him. The aide could at least let him choose what he would like to wear. He has made sure, along with this wife, that everything is stretchy and easy to put on and pull off. He should be allowed to make choices. Instead, he has to lie there and accept it. He has to lie there and listen to the constant talk, all the talk, all the time. 

His wife asks him, does she ever stop talking? Does he think she could come at a different time? Does he think she could not sit at the bottom of the stairs and prattle on and on in the early hours of the morning? Does he think he could fire her? Does he think he could cope without her? All answers are no. He needs this aide. As annoying and irritating as she is. As much as she talks and controls, he has to have her. She is the aide who gets things done. She is the aide. 

“So I was talking to my friend Tracy the other day, you know the one. The one I told you about with all the cats? She was telling me about this lady she heard about who was cheating on her husband. She would tell him that she was going to the grocery store, or to the gym, or even to the post office sometimes! When it turns out, she is really actually sneaking out to see her man. He’s not even all that good looking. She’s not much to look at either really. But they say there’s a Jack for every Jill. Ha. Well, in this case, I guess there’s two Jacks for that Jill, you know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh, there’s my phone, I need to answer it. I told my daughter she could call me anytime, that you wouldn’t mind at all if she called me when I was here at work. You don’t mind, do you?”

“If you could please set me up with breakfast before you…” he started. He watched her retreating form trod through the archway out of the bedroom/den and back into the kitchen. She was a solid piece of humanity, he thought. It was a good thing, as he was a pretty hefty size for her to be lifting and pulling every day. He wouldn’t want to mess with her. That being said, his wife could be blown away with a strong breeze and she was able to heft him around with ease and a gentleness that no one else could compare to. His beautiful wife always joked that it wasn’t the size or the muscle, it was all in the technique. He still hated to have to ask her to step in to be a caregiver ever. But then he needed to rely on aides like old ironsides here who never shut up.

Was she crying? What is this new twist? And, why isn’t she talking? The aide, red faced and silent plunked into the room carrying her phone in her hand. She held the tiny screen up to his face. “Does this picture look like anyone you know?”

“Not without my glasses. Nope. Looks like a sea monster to me,” he thanked the myopic gods that he was as farsighted as a horse. He couldn’t tell the difference between a tube of toothpaste and a tube of hemorrhoid cream these days. He could sense he needed to buy as much time as possible between looking at that image and answering her question.

She forced his bifocals on his nose and ears. “Do you think you could clean my glasses off? There’s a big smudge on the left lens…” he started before she exploded.

“Someone just sent me a text. I don’t know the number. But it has this picture.” She shoved the image of a man with a blond woman, standing outside what looked like the post office. They were holding hands and kissing. “Just tell me if you think this is my husband!”