The Lakes

The lakes is everything you imagine when you think of a Nursing home. The break room is littered with scattered pizza boxes from a near nonexistent attempt from management to say thank you for working hard and not bitching to much. Of course this is only reserved for the precious few that work day shift. Having management step in the door after 5 pm is nothing short of a miracle unless the building is on fire.

The Place reeks of piss, despair and dying. The kind of place that people warehouse their "Loved ones" until the die because they no longer can take care of their Nana, mother, father, or Papaw. Screaming can be heard throughout the facility any time of day or night as the elderly slowly lose their mind while the watch their body die. The old people ( as we call them) Take so many pills each day that it is amazing that they can still have an appetite. But who needs an appetite. Once the old people stop eating the family will have some unscrupulous doctor put a tube in their stomach and all the medications and nourishment will be forced into them. See, the longer we keep these people alive the more money the company , Doctor, and pharmaceutical companies make. But, most of all we allow the families the satisfaction of knowing that they did all they could've before the darkness that eventually comes for all of us.

See these places aren't so much about caring for the elderly as they are about sparing someones feelings and money. I know this is supposed to be a fictional story. However, the first two paragraphs are not fiction at all. They are how things are in the real world.

Willow Lakes ( or the Lakes as we call it) is on a sprawling 10 acre compound in the middle of no where America. The outside of compound are single family homes. At the age of 65 or so you can rent one of these houses for an unGodly amount of money. As you progress or (digress depending on how you look at it ) you then move into an assisted living apartment where a Nurse gives you your pills and you can go to a dining room with wait staff. And when the time comes and you can no longer take care or yourself you move into the Nursing home. The staff is out numbered 30 to 2 if your lucky. That two consist of a Nurse and a CNA. It is pure chaos from the time you clock in until the time you clock out. You give your life over to the facility and they just want more. One year there is a Nursing shortage and you're forced to work sixteen hour shifts four or five times a week. The next year there are to many Nurses in the field so they cut your hours and you have a hard time paying your bills. CNA's there is always a shortage of CNA and why shouldn't there be. CNA's make a little over minimum wage and are asked to do some heroic things every day. There are plenty of CNA's who work full time and still requires state assistance. These are the people taking care of your love ones. Most do it with a smile, they become attached to the old people , they know the quirks and habits of their patients more than most families.

I am one of those people who chooses to work night shift always have in the 20 + years of doing this. My family jokes and tells people I'm a vampire. The truth is a lot more scarier. The truth is I hate most people. Family gatherings and crowds of five or more people make me very anxious. I am very introverted. Anyone who knows an introvert will tell you that they seem standoffish, they are called stuck up, Bitch, asshole and any number of things. People like to label things they don't understand. I will say that once I open up to you and consider you my friend we are friends for life and you can expect nothing but honesty and openness from me. I wont fill your days with idle chit chat and bullshit just to make the time go by. When I speak I generally have something important to say.

So is the case with my CNA Tomi. The first three months that I worked with Tomi I only spoke to her when I wanted her to do something. Tomi is a petite girl of the ripe old age of eighteen. She's not been in the Nursing business long enough to become jaded and resentful. She approaches every shift with a smile and enthusiasm . She loves the old people and they love her. Tomi is quite the polar opposite of myself. Like I said I've been doing this for over twenty years there is very little that would shock me or rattle me. When Tomi was first assigned to unit she was very uneasy about me. She would spend most of her shift sitting in the hallway as far away from me as possible. Which was fine by me. Over the next several months we began to have short conversations again, only about relative things no filler bullshit you get from other people.

Tomi had just moved back to the state after a failed relationship with some low life loser who beat her. Because of this and the fact that she took me as being standoffish is probably why at first she stayed as far away from me as possible. Over time I began to see her in a fatherly way since I had a daughter close to her age. Some nights I would pick her brain trying to get some insight into what my daughter might be thinking in certain situations. Tomi and I became quite the team. We worked really well together and even would have little spats like fathers and daughters do. Of course the rumors started flying about how we were having an affair and I was leaving my wife for her. Seriously? what would an eighteen year old girl want with a middle aged , overweight, and broke man? Oh well, I guess I should be flattered that people thought I had it like that.