Dangerous Women (90 page)

After a week, I couldn’t stand it anymore and called in one of my temps. Gloria raised her eyebrows—it wasn’t the first half of April—but didn’t ask. In fact, she didn’t say a word on the drive in.

“Are you picking me up or should I get a ride with Lily?” she asked as I pulled into an empty space in the visitor’s lot.

I made an exasperated noise. “You’re gaslighting me, aren’t you?”

“What is that?” Gloria looked genuinely baffled.

“Okay, not a fan of old movies. You’re trying to drive me crazy,” I said.

“And what happened to make you think that?” she asked politely. The strong urge I had to smack her must have been obvious. “Come on, seriously,” she added. “You’re the one who’s gotten all weird, working all night so you can be here every day—”

“And you’ve never asked me why. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, like she’d never heard a stupider question. “But I figured I’d just be wasting my breath. You don’t tell me a goddam thing till you feel like it. If you ever do.”

I felt my face getting hot again.

“What’s the matter?” she said, a little impatient now. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

I gave up. “Okay, okay. I’m nervous about Mom. Finding out how many times you’d done CPR kinda …” I shrugged. “It kinda freaked me out, I guess.”

“Really.” My sister gave me the skeptical Eyebrow. “When? After you considered the legal ramifications of my possibly keeping Mom alive?”

“I never did CPR on anyone—I don’t even know how—so it took a while for the reality to sink in, that Mom could … you know. Die.” I barely managed not to choke on the word.

My sister let out a long breath, staring through the windshield at nothing in particular. Then: “If it makes you feel any better, Mom isn’t too likely to have a coronary anytime real soon. Her heart’s in pretty good shape. To be honest, I worried more about her falling—the dizzy spells. Fortunately, she doesn’t fight using the wheelchair as much as she did, so it’s less of a worry than it was. But if you want to keep coming every day, I’m not gonna stop you,” she added with a sudden smile. “Because it really seems to help her stay clear.”

“What about the sundowning?”

“That’s what I mean.” Gloria’s smile grew even brighter. “Some days, I can barely tell it’s happening.”

“New medication?” I asked.

“Nope, same stuff, same dose. Some of the other residents take a lot more and don’t do as well.”

“Maybe it’s because she’s eating better?” I said.

Gloria shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt. Now, are we going in, or do you want to sit here and, as Mom says when she thinks no one’s listening, fret like a motherfucker all day?”

She was right—Mom
was
better. But Dr. Li had warned me that these periods of near recovery, when patients somehow seemed to shake off the fog that had been rolling in, weren’t signs of genuine improvement, only the erratic nature of the disease showing itself—one of dementia’s special cruelties.

But it didn’t make Mom any less lucid. She started telling me to go on vacation again and was annoyed when I refused, occasionally getting so agitated with me that I had to leave so she’d calm down.

“You want to know the truth,” Lily Romano said as she walked me out one afternoon, “she’s kinda scared that you’re coming every day. She’s afraid maybe it means that she’s dying and the doctor won’t tell her.”

“Really?” I was shocked. “I’d never have thought of that. Gloria never said anything.”

Lily Romano shrugged. “She doesn’t know. Residents don’t always tell their families everything. Sometimes it’s easier for them to confide in someone they aren’t so close to, especially when–”

“When …?” I prodded after a moment.

She winced. “When it’s something where they think their family will, like, just say they’re being silly or paranoid.”

When the family doesn’t take them seriously, I thought, wincing a little myself. “So does my mother confide in you a lot?” She looked so uncomfortable, I went on quickly, “Forget I asked, it’s not important. How’re your headaches?”

She looked blank for a moment. “Oh, yeah, fine—I haven’t had any in a while.”

I might have mentioned finding the pill in my shoe just for the hell of it, but we were nearly at the entry gate and she was making gotta-get-back-to-work noises. I made a mental note to talk to Gloria later about Mom’s possible anxieties. Then the day got busy; Gloria was getting a lift home with another aide, so I did the grocery shopping, and somewhere between the deli counter and the perennial choice between paper or plastic, a gust of tedium blew all the mental notes off the front of my mental refrigerator.

Only much later, after several hours into another night at the computer, did it come back to me. My work ethic said it could wait; my procrastinator said it was a golden opportunity. For once, I went with the latter.

I opened the door to find Gloria standing there with one hand raised, about to knock. “I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to interrupt you—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m off tonight. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a dilemma,” she said, her face troubled, “and I need some advice.”

“I’ll get the Shiraz, you save me a seat on the couch.”

“You’ll probably think it’s silly,” she said as I poured wine into her glass.

“Apparently that’s going around. Never mind,” I added when she looked bewildered. “Just tell me. We’ll decide if it’s silly later.”

She hesitated, gazing at me with uncertainty. Then she took a deep breath. “Okay, there are certain things that everybody at Brightside has to do—certain rules, I mean, that everybody has to obey, no matter what, or get terminated. Even the nurses. Even the janitorial staff. Even the gardening service people.”

I nodded.

“Those are the strictest rules, and if you see an
infraction
”—she made a face at the word—“you’re supposed to report it. Which is, like”—she rolled her eyes—“who wants to be a snitch? I mean, if I ever saw someone
hurt
a resident, I’d yell at the top of my lungs. But—”

“Did you see something?” I asked gently.

She nodded. “It was one of those things you can actually get away with if you’re careful. And probably everyone there’s done it at least once, but they’ll fire you on the spot for it, even if nothing bad happens.”

I shook my head. “What is this incredibly evil thing?”

“Having any unauthorized medication on you during your shift.” She frowned. “I thought I told you that. We can’t even have aspirin in our pants pocket.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it’s a hazard to the residents.”

“Only if they get into your pants pockets,” I said, laughing a little.

“They don’t care.” Gloria was shaking her head. “Zero tolerance. The only way to be absolutely certain a resident doesn’t take anything they’re not supposed to is if there
isn’t
anything.”

“That’s even stricter than a hospital, isn’t it?” I said, thinking out loud.

“Beats me. And it doesn’t matter anyway—it’s their policy.”

“So you saw someone—” I cut off, already knowing who it would be.

“Lily Romano,” she said with a mournful sigh. “I caught her so red-handed, I couldn’t even pretend that I didn’t see anything. She was doing the rounds with water pitchers–”

I put up a hand. “Been there, sis.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, unsure again and about to get angry.

“I caught Lily Romano with pills,” I said sadly. I gave her a quick run-down of our encounter in Mom’s room, adding, “I can’t remember if you told me about the no-drugs rule. If you did, I forgot it that day.”

“Did she beg you not to tell?” Gloria asked, still unhappy.

“Yes, but not about that.” I told her the rest.

“That’s weird. Why would she ask you to keep quiet about her having to change the bed but not about the pills?”

I thought for a moment. “Because she realized that I didn’t know the rule and she didn’t want to tip me off. Making me think I was just saving her some embarrassment was pretty clever. Really clever.”

“She kind of took a chance, though,” Gloria said.

I shook my head. “I didn’t even tell
you,
did I?”

Gloria sighed again. “She made me go with her to her locker and watch her put the pills in her purse, all the time begging me not to tell and promising she’d never do it again. I feel bad for her—cluster headaches really are murder—”

“Yeah, that’s what she told me,” I said. “But when I asked her this afternoon, she said she hadn’t had any lately.” I fetched the pill from my room. “It got stuck in my shoe,” I explained, holding it out to her on a fingertip. “Is it the same as what you saw?”

“I didn’t actually see the pills, just the bottle,” she said, picking it up between thumb and forefinger. “This isn’t a headache pill. It’s methylphenidate.”

I frowned. “Is that meth as in
meth
?” I asked, uneasy now.

“Methylphenidate as in Ritalin,” she said. “You know, ADHD? No, you don’t. Pardon me for saying so, Val, but you’re too old. You grew up before they started trying to cure childhood. At least half the kids I went to school with were on Ritalin or Adderall or whatever.”

I was aghast. “Did Mom and Dad—”

“Oh, hell, no.” Gloria laughed. “But plenty of kids supplemented their allowance by selling anything they didn’t need to kids without prescriptions. They’d buy it to lose weight or study all night before a test, and I heard that a sixth-grader was supplying a couple of teachers.” She frowned. “You’d never take this for a headache. It would
give
you one.”

“Okay, pointing out the obvious now: Lily Romano isn’t a schoolkid. So why would she take it?” I asked.

“Adult ADHD, I guess?”

“Never mind, I think we’d better go back to the home right now and talk to whoever’s on duty.”

Gloria caught my arm as I stood up. “Okay, but what do we tell them?”

“We’ll start with what we know and let them figure it out.”

Gloria was as surprised as I was to find Jill Franklyn in charge of the graveyard shift. I supposed it figured: unremarkable but competent enough that no one would lose any sleep. Jill Franklyn was a hell of a lot more surprised to see us. We were heading down the main corridor in the residential area toward the nurses’ station when a door on the left opened suddenly but very quietly and she stepped into the dim, shadowy hallway. She had her back to us but I knew that thin silhouette and ballerinaesque posture. She paused with her back to us. Gloria and I stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other. I shrugged, then cleared my throat.

Jill Franklyn whirled and snapped on her flashlight, blinding both of us. “Omigod!” The word came out in a screechy whisper. The light went off again, leaving me and Gloria no less blind as Jill came toward us, her shoes making tiny squeak-squeak-squeak sounds. “What are you two
doing
here at this hour? It must be after midnight. Are you out of your minds?”

“Which question should we answer first?” I gave a nervous laugh and Jill Franklyn shushed me. She herded us down the hall toward the nurses’ station, I thought, but before we reached it, she shoved us through a door on the right, hurriedly and with a strength I’d never imagined she had in those skinny ballerina arms. Gloria seemed equally taken aback; she was rubbing her upper arm.

“Sorry about that,” Jill Franklyn said, not sounding very apologetic. “If anyone else sees you, they’ll call Akintola and we’ll all be in trouble. What are you doing here?”

I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision, and saw we were in Celeste Akintola’s office. Jill Franklyn surprised me by sitting down behind her desk and motioned for us to take the chairs on the other side. Gloria and I traded looks as we sat down; she gave me a
you-first
nod.

Jill Franklyn sat straight up in the high-backed chair, listening to me with a troubled expression, nodding from time to time but saying nothing. I finished and turned to Gloria, who hesitated, waiting for some kind of response, but the nurse remained silent, not even looking at my sister.

Gloria spoke in a small, uncertain voice, occasionally pausing to look at me. Each time I made a small, keep-going gesture. She did, but any confidence she’d had had deserted her, and I had no idea why. Maybe she was having trouble with the whole snitching thing, I thought. Except this wasn’t just tattling to teacher—Lily Romano was carrying around more pills than she needed. A
lot
more.

When Gloria was done, I sat forward in my chair and said, “What would happen if someone gave that stuff to a patient here?”

Jill Franklyn finally lifted her gaze to meet mine. “It would depend on the patient,” she said, sounding calm and logical, like we were discussing the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee. “And the dosage. And, of course, what other medications they might be on at the time. Someone taking vasopressin, for example, might be less drowsy. Depending on the dosage. It would probably have to be twenty or thirty milligrams, I think.

“Dementia patients respond best, though. Early dementia, I mean. Dexedrine’s a lot better than methylphenidate but you have to work with what you’ve got.” She sighed. “I don’t suppose either of you have access to Dexedrine? It’s practically impossible to get nowadays.”

Gloria and I looked at each other. “Did you hear anything we just told you?” I asked.

Jill Franklyn wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, Lily Romano’s screwed. And so am I, right?” She sat forward, putting her arms on the desk. “Or instead of being Girl Scouts, you could be part of advancing medicine and making life better for dementia patients everywhere.”

“How?” I asked, wondering why her eyes weren’t crazy.

“By going home and catching up on your sleep, and when you get up tomorrow, we’ll all just have business as usual. You”—she pointed at Gloria with one hand—“can volunteer as much as you want, whenever you want; I’ll get Akintola to sign off on it. I don’t see why she wouldn’t, considering you’re four for five. That was pretty nice, wasn’t it—getting to be a hero? Heroine, whatever. It was too bad about Mrs. Boudreau, but that’ll happen—every so often, one of them won’t come back for you, no matter how healthy they look. And you”—she pointed at me and frowned—“I can’t remember what you do, but I remember your mother’s always talking about how you never take a vacation. So take one. She won’t lose much ground while you’re away. Maybe none.”