Even Witches Lose Their Way

Now and again, a day at work will try and break my heart.

It started with the usual suspects - arriving anywhere from an hour and a half early to two hours late and being totally unconcerned either way - some are at the mercy of Medicaid transportation and are powerless to be punctual, some depend on resentful relatives and are lucky to get there at all, and some feel entitled and simply don't care one way or another.  By mid-morning we have three new patients petulantly filling out the required paperwork - two are stumped by the "Marital Status?" box and one sits glassy eyed, unable to figure out which end of the pencil to use.  It's then that the first call comes in from The Lost Woman.

She is breathless, testy, clearly aggravated and speaks only Walmart so it takes several minutes before I can calm her down enough to determine where she is.  She interrupts my every sentence but doesn't know what street she's on or which direction she's headed so I throw courtesy and patience out the window and sharply tell her to pull over.

WHERE AT? she screeches.

IT DOESN'T MATTER!  I screech back, JUST PULL OVER AND STOP!

Another few minutes pass and finally she comes back to the telephone, cussing a blue streak and not knowing or caring that I can hear her every word.

Now, I say deliberately, Just tell me what you see.

Credit union, she mutters, some kinda restaurant with a stupid name, one a dem Holiday Inns and a bank.

You're across the road from us, I tell her with a sigh, Just drive across the street and park in front of the building.  Come in under the covered walkway.

Another curse and an abrupt dial tone.

Some twenty minutes later she makes her second call, if anything louder and more irritated.  We repeat our little variation of Where's Waldo until I realize that somehow she's managed to put several miles - in the wrong direction - between us.  Twenty minutes after that there's a third call, this time she's in full melt down and profoundly incoherent - I can only understand every third word or so and none them would pass for polite conversation - so I pass the receiver to an unsuspecting nurse.  It takes another hour but finally she comes crashing through the door - a two ton Tessie of a woman in hot pink stretch pants, a bulging, black tank top and a bright green, sweat stained Hello, Kitty bandana tied across her forehead.  She's breathing so heavily I wonder if cardiac arrest can be far behind and for the 100th or time, I try and remember why exactly I left retail.  

She thunder-steps to the window and glares at me, the nurses, the entire waiting room.

Dis be da place?  she demands.

All I can think of is Evillene from "The Wiz", flouncing down the aisle between her slave workers and singing a lusty, gravel-voiced rendition of "Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News". (Google it if you missed the movie....)

Somehow, I manage to keep a straight face but I can't resist just a little sass.

Oh, yeah, I tell her, Dis be da place!

The last patient of the morning is a quiet, withdrawn, and failing fast gentlemen we've seen for years.  On this day, he's unshaven and in serious need of a haircut, his clothes hang on him like a scarecrow, his hands shake as he signs in and he's distressed that he can't remember his telephone number or what day it is.  His son has dropped him off but after his appointment he forgets to ask us to call him and nobody notices him slip out the door.  We discover him on our way to lunch, standing in the suffocating heat, disheveled and confused and a little lost.  The nurses lead him gently back inside while I call his son and we wait with him, making cheerful, useless conversation and trying to pretend that everything is fine.  It's not - we know it, and worse, so does he.

It strikes me that old age is a sad, wasted place to be - a fragile place with thin walls where lonely, old men carry heavy burdens while dementia sucks their minds dry, a place where even witches in Hello, Kitty bandanas sometimes lose their way.