by Maritza Nary

UNTOUCHABLE

I was the kind of person that didn’t like change. Go to college, graduate school, have a family. I rolled my eyes whenever people told me that “life isn’t certain”, or life is “unpredictable,” among many other cliché phrases that teachers would tell me. I had my life set out for me in my head, written like a book that I had already completed. And, in my book–my vision of life– nothing tragic would stand in the way of my future. No destructive events. No illness. No huge house fires. See, to me it felt like those things happened, but happened to people around me. I was untouchable of obstacles and imperceptible to change. But as hard as it was to admit, no life is ever predictable.

I come from a middle-class home. I always had food during mealtimes, heat in the winter, and a roof over my head. My parents, mother being an elementary teacher, and father being a lawyer, were supportive of my two siblings and I. We were comfortable. We were a happy family whose biggest argument was who’s turn it was to do the dishwasher. It was until my sophomore year of high school in which my make-believe force field that covered my entire life was shattered.

THE NEWS

Everyday I went home from high school to my house. Usually, after I got dropped off by the school bus, I’d have a couple of hours alone–just my house and I. We have this living room with a big couch that I used to flop my tired, high school body into everyday, and a TV that I would immediately turn on to watch Ellen DeGeneres make jokes through the air or a repeat of Keeping up with the Kardashians. However, on this specific day, I cannot recall the events of the school day that I had, nor can I recall how my bus trip home was. From this day, I can only recall the few seconds following the moment I walked into the door of my house. The first thing I remember is hearing my name called.

“Maritza.”

It was the voice of my little brother, yelling from my name as he was slowly coming down the stars. Shocked, realizing that I was not the only one home, I answered back. His skin was pale, and his eyes were wide. He looked different that day.

“Something happened”, he said. “Do you know what happened?”

“No, Donny, why are you home?”

“I don’t know if Mom wants me to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I don’t think I can tell you.”

I remember being so confused. My brother, only being age fourteen, was the bearer of knowledge that in some form I was restricted of. And it made me angry. In the next few minutes I heard another set of feet running down the stairs. This time, it was my older sister. Her facial expression was flat. I remember trying to read her to get a sense of what was going on, and I had a difficult time. But she is like that. She doesn’t often let emotions consume her, and when she does, she prevents others from seeing her become vulnerable.

“Donny,” Natasha said, taking a seat in the living room, walking past both my brother and I, who were still standing in the middle of the room staring at each other. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Should we tell her?” Donny said, facing his whole body towards Natasha, as to exclude me. “Should we tell her what happened to Dad?”

And here, before my sister replied, my heart sunk.

Standing there, I was staring at my sister, hoping that she would fix the worry that crossed my mind.

“Well,” I said blatantly, “is dad dead?”  It seemed like forever awaiting the response.

“No, Maritza,” Natasha said, still stoic, “but we’re going to the hospital to see him. Get yourself ready.”

DAD 

The previous afternoon I followed the same schedule; flopping my body onto the couch, blaring the television loud, and waiting for my family members, one by one, to come home. It was my dad’s turn to come home, and I could tell he was in pain the moment he walked through the door. But, he is just like my sister in the sense that his emotions are kept distant and he brushed it off. Maybe that’s where she gets it from.

My dad’s chair, which he owns, is in the living room right next to the couch in which I would lay on. However, the way I laid down made it so his feet were always near my face. He would always take his shoes off, flash a smile at me, and rub his dry scaly feet near my face. My father and I always had these playful fights. He’s also the type of guy who would start shaking his body seizure-like in his chair, or lay motionless with his eyes open, trying to convince my brother, sister, and I that he was dead. After a while, he couldn’t fool anyone, yet he kept up this act.

“Dads playing dead again.”

However, on that specific day,  I remember him sitting in his usual chair to join me as I watched TV. He told me that there was a burning sensation in his calf, and that he was curious as to why he suddenly got a burning sensation running through his leg. I remember brushing off his concern as well – just like he wanted me too. But now I wished I was a little more concerned about that mysterious pain that appeared in his right leg.

DALE

Within this tiny room, there were two chairs. One at the desk facing a computer that my guidance counselor occupied, the other was meant for me. As I walked over to my chair, Mrs. Schultz, my guidance counselor – a blonde, frisky woman- flashed me a bright smile and pulled out a large manila folder of everything she could ever know about me. She asked me what I wanted to take for classes in my junior year of high school. Sitting in that chair in the dim lit room was where I made the decision that changed my life–and I didn’t even know it.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be just like the doctors on the TV shows, so courageous, strong, and respected. I wanted to be somebody– and to be somebody meant that I was going to be a doctor.

“So, as for your schedule, what classes are you planning on taking for your junior year of high school?”Mrs. Schultz asked. She lightly tossed a course catalog to me, highlighted with the classes that I was able to take. One of them in particular lit up from the page. The title of the course was “Licensed Nursing Assisting,” and the description claimed that I would graduate the class with my very own certification.

“It will be perfect for you,” Mrs. Schultz said, as she was already writing that class into my Junior year schedule. I was excited, and I didn’t finish reading the long course description, rather I tossed her back the catalog.

Signing up for an LNA class, I had big expectations. It took me a while  for it to sink in that being an LNA meant exclusively working at nursing homes, washing old people, drying their snot, wiping their butts, and showering them. And those are the skills we learned. I felt like somehow I was above it all, like I didn’t deserve to be doing a job like that. It was all very gross to me. However something in the back of my mind told myself that it was too late not to quit, because I knew I wanted to be a doctor, and being an LNA is  a “stepping stone” I am forced to take to be someone, in my mind, that had actual respect.

The class was broken down into two aspects: one in the classroom where we would read the content from the textbook, the other was clinical, where we would practice our “skills” (changing bedpans, washing dentures, helping old people go to the bathroom). The first day of clinical was a scary one. I didn’t really know what to expect. Dressed up in my scrubs, I looked like a professional, but on the inside I was terrified. We first toured the facility. Walking around the building reminded me of being trapped in a jail that wreaked of dirty diapers. The other workers were all older, so we all felt out of place. I was assigned to follow around an LNA named Nancy. She was an older lady who was distant to me and made it clear that having me following her around was a serious burden.

“Well,” Nancy said, as she approached another worker, me following behind. “Did he pass?”

“Yes,” the other woman responded, not letting her eyes leave the clipboard she was reading.

I remember that whole day of being Nancy’s follower, just watching her get old people into the bathroom, then getting them back to their bed. Over, and over, and over again. But there was one thing I saw that stuck with me. I only saw his lower body as I followed Nancy past his room. His hands were one on top of the other resting peacefully. They were pale. I was staring at a dead man.

A few months later, after the class, I got a job at a beautiful facility, a facility that I was planning on spending many “patient care” hours at for my med-school resume. I had many first impressions of the facility. It was nicknamed “the dementia den.” Elders slowly spent the long days making loops around the hallways, and if they were not in the hallway, they were in their rooms, watching hours and hours of repeats of the Lawrence Welk Show, and The Golden Girls–two shows that a sixteen year old girl got too familiar with.

I met a resident named Dale. He was a quiet man, but had this laugh that was contagious. He had dementia, but the early stages but he could still understand what I was saying. He was a very tall, tall, man, and communicated with me through one word answers and playful facial expression. Over time, we developed our own way of communicating through laughter and silly facial expressions. Most days when times were tough, I would find myself in his room, laughing about the guys on the TV, or going through his family photos. He was my escape. I found myself excited to go to work, staying longer, just to be with Dale.

LASAGNA

I don’t remember the drive to the hospital. The only memory I have was the first day seeing my dad wrapped up in all of these monitors as I strolled into his room at the ICU. Seeing my dad–such a role model, someone I look up to as a strong, independent man–looking vulnerable, pale, and weak on the hospital bed left me uncomfortable. I looked at my dad, and he was laying there, but with twenty five percent of his body missing. Right above his knee was a large suction machine that made this obnoxious course sound that sounded like a kid sucking on the last few sips of his soda through a straw. I refused to look at the empty space below my dads right upper thigh. There was a large part of my dad that was gone forever.

The doctor then entered the room and said many words that I didn’t hear. But the few words I caught–Necrotizing Fasciitis, flesh eating, emergency surgery, amputation, unable to walk, unable to go back to work–those words felt as if they didn’t belong to our family. I stopped listening.

He stayed in the hospital for what seemed like months, but was really two weeks. Those two long weeks composed of hot lasagna meals gifted to us by other families who felt pity for us, and numerous is everything ok’s and let me know if you want to talk’s. Being at the house felt even more empty, and even though my father was never going to occupy his chair in the living room in the time that he was gone, we silently avoided it.

THE CORPSE

I went away for college for about six months, and came back to work for the summer. He wasn’t walking. He was transported in a “Geri chair,” a chair made especially for larger men. He now spent his days sitting in front of the TV watching reruns of “The Golden Girls,” which I knew he didn’t like. His eyes were emotionless, and he didn’t even speak. I spent an hour one night making faces at him and sticking my tongue out. It was like he was already gone.

It was a Tuesday morning, and although it was summer I remember this 6am shift was bone chilling. We stood around the nurses table to receive the report and the nurse said something I chose to ignore, but seeing my coworker next to me put a line through his name made that a difficult feat. I went to his room, Room 206, and I couldn’t help but peek in. His hands were one on top of the other resting peacefully. They were pale. I was staring at a dead man. And my heart dropped.

The nurse asked me kindly if I could assist her in post mortem care. And I agreed. I entered the room and didn’t see Dale. I saw a body, although peaceful, that wasn’t the Dale I knew. He no longer made funny faces at me, nor did he make fun of the the crazy people on the television, or stick out his tongue out. The body that laid there was no one I’d known. I ran some warm tap water and grazed it over his skin slowly to avoid hurting the lifeless body.

This corpse represented a whole entire human life; past dreams, aspiration, goals, motivations, heartbreak, and tragedies. A human life that was gone, and will never come back. It was now just skin, bones, and flesh laying on a bed in front of me.

In this moment the image of my dad laying on the hospital bed circled in my mind. My dad could have been like that. Like a lump of skin, bones and flesh lying on a hospital bed. But he wasn’t.

I went home from work that day to find my mother at the bottom of the stairs yelling up to my brother screaming to friends on his Xbox in his room, my sister in the kitchen making herself a post-lunch snack, and my dad, sitting in his usual chair in the living room flipping through the channels on the TV. I occupied my usual spot on the couch. I wanted to be in that moment forever–to pause time. But time goes on, and people age. It is within this short life that the tragedies, heartbreak, dreams, and small moments–like sitting in the couch watching your mother get increasingly mad at your brother, and your dad getting frustrated at the news lady–make life meaningful. As long as I was surrounded by the crazy people I loved in my life, I was ready for its unpredictability. I was ready to write another chapter of my unfinished book.

My father riding a bike for the first time after the surgery.