Mara vs Ruby: Round 2

Mara and Ruby were two of our more assertive residents, and if you don't remember them from the newspaper clash, well, let's just say that they were never destined to be friends.

Round two were the courtyards. Mara and Ruby lived side-by-side, and Mara began finding mandarin peels and apple cores in her courtyard all the time. No prizes for guessing who was throwing rubbish over the fence. Never caught in the act, mind you. This was shaping up better than a daytime soap.

Next, a trademan's van was parked in the area, and people started walking in and out of Mara's apartment. She explained to me that she was having new curtains fitted. Apparently Ruby had been spying on her. Holy Mackerel, this was getting ridiculous. But it wasn't over by a longshot. When I took breakfast to Ruby one morning, she had the television on. Loud. At 7am. I wondered if it was bothering neighbours, and then remembered that Mara was the only one not deaf, and she was already awake by 7, so I let it go.

But another morning it wasn't the tv, it was a language tape. At blaring volume a French man was enquiring about directions to get to the train station. It was one of the ones where you're supposed to listen and repeat what they say. It wasn't beginner level - I know enough French that I could tell this was an intermediate lesson. I smiled at Ruby, and instead of repeating what the man had said, I told her in French, "take the second street on the left and then go down the first street on the right, and the station is right there." She stared at me in total disbelief and had obviously not understood a single word I said. I asked her why she had such a difficult tape if she was just learning. She stammered something about having finished the learner tape already. Sure you have, I thought. Strange behaviour going on here.

At lunch, Ruby wasn't in, but the tables were discussing her. Anne thought she had found herself a man! This was hot gossip indeed. Anne reported that she had definitely heard a man in the room talking to Ruby. So she must have a gentleman friend, and at such an early time he must have slept overnight in her apartment, and wasn't that just disgusting!? The tablemates were horrified, all except for Mara. "There isn't any man!" she exclaimed in disgust. "She borrowed a tape from Ransa. It's a language tape." The others took that in and began to laugh at their mistake. Mara was not impressed. I took the opportunity to ask Mara why she had borrowed something so difficult, and recounted the morning's exchange with Ruby not understanding me.

"Because she isn't learning French, that's why!" she near-shouted. This stopped all conversation and the attention was back on Mara. "She's trying to get back at me for the newspaper. Every morning for two weeks she's blasted me with something noisy. This tape is loud enough for me to learn it myself. 'OO-SUH-TROOVE-LE-STADE-SI-VOO-PLAY-MESSURE.' It makes me furious!"

It was all I could do not to laugh. I really, really hoped that Mara had learned some French at school somewhere, because she had just asked a correct question on where she would find the sports stadium. It was beyond disturbing for someone to learn French through a solid double-brick wall.

Alas, the triumphant final battle was not to be. Ruby began telling people that she was leaving. Leaving? People don't move out of here to somewhere else, unless it's to more appropriate care. But Ruby had found an apartment in a cheaper complex and decided to make the shift. I asked Mara, tongue-in-cheek, if she was sad about her best friend leaving.

"Well, she's been out on the bus every day this week," she said, "and I know that because she has to walk past my window each time. So I always know when she is out." I really pushed my luck then, when I jokingly asked if she stood at the curtains peeking out, and was astoundingly rewarded with a laugh. Mara laughing with me! She must be extremely relieved to get rid of her arch-nemesis, if she could tolerate a lowly kitchen staffer poking fun at her.

"Yes, that's me, one eye to the gap in my brand new curtains," she said with a grin. "I won't be shedding tears when she leaves for the last time, let me tell you. I'm just keeping sentry duty there to make sure I don't miss it when it finally happens. And then I'm bringing wine to dinner that night. I might even dance."

The rest of my shift had me trying to imagine the cranky old stick-in-the-mud dancing. Try as I might, I failed to conjure that image.

Mara vs Ruby

Now Mara, as I have indicated, is a Bitch. Some might simply call her "wealthy and discerning". The thing is, she doesn't carry that air of royalty about her. She rarely seems to be happy though, with the service provided, and she is always the one to mobilise her neighbours and make a complaint. She is about 85, and does everything for herself, but is slow and purposeful and watchful, almost as if she wants something to be wrong so that she can make another complaint. One of those people who seem to enjoy being miserable.

Mara has a newspaper delivered every day. The newsagent writes the resident's name on each one and puts the papers in the Royale's lounge area, because it's the closest room to the street that he can access at 5am each morning. Most of the residents are in there fairly early to collect them, and only a couple of papers are still waiting for their owners by 9am.

In a village with this many people, things don't always run perfectly. Sometimes the pharmacy is late delivering headache tablets. Sometimes the caterer brings an extra container of cranberry sauce. Sometimes, a paper would be missing. These things happen. We paid little attention to it and just advised the owners of the missing papers to get in touch with the newsagent.

But over time it became just one person's paper missing - Mara's. And she was Not Happy, complaining that the papers were being left in an unsecure area, and that the newsagent insisted it was being delivered, so that it must be being stolen. I believed the newsagent - one phone call from Mara would have been memorable enough for him to check specifically for her paper as he delivered each morning. So being fairly active, she began staking out the lounge room, and whom should she catch trying to return her paper at 7am but Ruby, thinking nobody would find out she'd been reading it.

Ruby and Mara are next-door neighbours. This was not going to be pretty.

Mara confronted Ruby and said, "If you want to share my paper, you can pay half the cost of it." This, I thought, was very generous and accomodating of Mara. It was quite unlike her. The Mara I knew should have simply boiled over in fury for the theft. But Ruby was indignant and not having any of this idea, claiming that she hadn't been stealing the paper, but that she had only accidentally taken the wrong paper that day. Funny, someone had accidentally taken Mara's paper every day for weeks. I wonder whom it could have been! Silly Ruby. A half price newspaper was a good deal. Apparently that was still more than "free" and so not of interest for her at all.

And so it began. Ruby had a habit of collecting the unwanted cakes, biscuits and fruit from other tables' serving plates at each mealtime, wrapping them in a napkin and taking them to her room. Mara dug her heels in, and began telling her entire table to either eat them or put them on their own plates, simply to stop Ruby getting them. Her tablemates did as she asked. Ruby scowled a lot in that direction. A great deal of food ended up in the rubbish while Mara kept her smirk in place.

I was sure that the next round could happen at any time. And I sincerely hoped that when the proverbial **** hit the fan, that I was somewhere nearby in a ringside seat.

Lola's Holiday

You may recall Lola's last appearance in regards to copious amounts of Tim Tam chocolate biscuits. A few weeks later Lola had a fall in the dining room. She hit her head and was bleeding, so an ambulance took her to hospital. We then didn't see Lola for about two months. I wondered what could have been wrong. (I never did find out, but then, elderly people tend to get kept in hospital for extra days just because. Doctors probably assume that they don't get any care once they leave.) It's relatively common for a resident to go to hospital on an emergency trip and then just never return - not that they die, but they either stay on for months there or go to rehabilitation to relearn to walk, or go to respite care in a nursing home until they get their strength back, or they get a permanent nursing home bed. Their dinner-table seat sits there, empty, with the kitchen staff vaguely aware that they've gone for good. And Lola was gone for so long that she became one of the ones we sorta didn't expect to return.

So one day as I did the rounds, I got a huge shock to find Lola sitting quietly and expectantly in her chair, waiting for her soup. "Oh, Lola!" I exclaimed, "it's so good to see you! You look great!"

She smiled demurely and nodded her thanks, and said, "It's good to see you too!" And we were just smiling at each other for a moment, and I thought everything was good again, since people returning from hospital usually seem to be in better shape than when they left. And she really did look well. Her skin was glowing and she looked more alert, she had a nice outfit on, and a little makeup, and she looked infinitely more healthy than I could remember her ever looking. The time in hospital had been very good to her. And then suddenly she added, "Where have I been that you haven't seen me?"

It took me a second to recover, and realise that she didn't remember two months in hospital. I managed to mumble that I'd been busy and had time off work. Beside her, Mara was smirking a self-satisfied grin at my expense. Lola finished her food in record time and was gone before dessert. As I handed out jelly and ice-cream, Mara had a conspiratory whisper ready for me. "Dennis told her earlier that he was glad she was back from hospital," she began. "Lola thanked him for his concern, then politely told him she hadn't been to the hospital and she was quite fine, thank you." Before I could react, she had started her next bit of news. "And her son has been to visit her," she intoned.

"He brought her a bunch of flowers, and a packet of Tim Tams."

The Tim Tam queen

Lola at first glance seems to be a quite proper lady. She never makes any demands and is always very polite. We tend to think of the undemanding ones as the ones that are all ok in the head. But Lola isn't quite all there, and I have forgotten this a couple of times. Really, someone who looks very intelligent, who nods in understanding at everything you say, can fool a lot of people.

A few months back Lola stopped coming to lunch. This wasn't completely unusual, since Lola is terrible with awareness of time. If she hadn't come to lunch I had just assumed the carers would take her a sandwich later on. But then they started telling me that Lola had called in advance. "Lola says she isn't hungry today. She'll have a cup of coffee in her room instead." And it became more and more frequent.

At lunch time I remarked to her tablemate, Mara (bitch extraordinaire) that we wouldn't be seeing Lola today at the table. Mara looked at me as if she were the headmistress holding the cane over an unruly child's buttocks. "She's up there with three packets of Tim Tams," she sneered disdainfully. "She eats nothing but blasted Tim Tams when her son has been for a visit."

I didn't quite know how to take this. These people are grown adults. Are we supposed to tell someone they're not allowed to eat three packets of chocolate-covered, chocolate-cream filled biscuits for lunch? I asked Maria, the carer on duty.

"Oh dear," she said, "that isn't good. I'll go up and see her now." Maria accordingly went up to visit, and sure enough, there was Lola in front of the TV with a plate of Tim Tams and a cup of coffee. When Maria asked what was going on with all the biscuits, Lola exclaimed in surprise that she was just having a little bit of late morning tea. The rubbish bin revealed two more empty king-size packets, so in reality Lola had eaten more than 50 Tim Tams. As to when she'd started, we weren't sure, but she may have lived on them for three days. Lola was still clueless as to what she'd done that had got people so upset. She couldn't remember whether she had any breakfast and couldn't tell us if she'd eaten anything else lately.

Maria called each of her children and asked them to limit the gifts to one packet at a time. From then on she began attending every meal again with regularity. Never on time, but always there, sauntering in half an hour late and sitting placidly in her chair, waiting for someone to notice her and place a meal on the table.

Ted and the night visits

Most people here are really, really nice. Unfortunately we have a few residents that are, well, bitches. They come in either gender, it's just a very apt description of their attidude. The Royale has more than its fair share of bitches. One of them is Mara, who will serve you an earful if her breakfast is not precisely on time. (I must remember to tell you more about her later.)

Another is Ted. Ted has caught the "I am Entitled" disease. He is Entitled to call the carers "honkies" (as in Hong Kong people, and he might as well call them chinks or chongs with that kind of racism), He is Entitled to have his food brought to him on a tray an hour after meal time, just because he cannot be bothered attending the dining room; he is Entitled to extra dessert "because the residents paid for it all, don't you know, girly" etc, etc etc. And Ted even uses the word a lot.

Ted is extremely proper and dignified (while busy calling Arabella a honkie), carries a handkerchief and walking stick all the time, puts his best suit on every Sunday and walks over to the church across the road, because he is a good Anglican (who calls Arabella a honkie, but not on Sundays). He writes letters with a fancy pen and listens to classical music on his "wireless" and it is certainly not a stereo, it's a wireless, thank you very much, and his father worked for His Master's Voice back in 1781 or something and he should most Certainly know.

It is Ted's Entitlement to 24 hour nursing care that I write about today. We have two carers on site during the days between 5am and 7pm. They do things like take lunch trays to people who unwell (as opposed to Ted who cannot be bothered). They also shower the amputee lady Doris, and maybe change a bandage for anyone who's recuperating from hospital. Then there are general things, like the fact that Lola will still be sitting in pyjamas at 1pm if nobody goes in at 11 and tells her it's time to dress for lunch. They also distribute all the prescriptions that residents' doctors have prescribed. Virtually every single dinner place has a small paper cup of tablets sitting there, belonging to the occupant, waiting to be swallowed with lunch.

The overnight carer, however, is asleep, not sitting and waiting for someone to buzz or call. As they get a bonus for each callout, it costs the village quite a lot - and annoys the tired carers, who are difficult to convince into doing that shift in the first place. The manager sent a letter to all residents, asking them not to "bother" the SLEEPING carers if it can wait till morning. (That kind of embarrassment works wonders.) From that point on, callouts rarely happened at all. Unfortunately the exception was Ted, who called them 5 or so times per night, almost every night.

Ted's nighttime urinary continence has been going downhill a bit. When he first experienced problems he was given a bunch of options. One was to do Kegel exercises to strengthen things - apparently he thought that was hogwash and refused. He was also advised to cut down coffee, not to drink alcohol after mid-afternoon, told to drink MORE water to practice and strengthen things - what a waste of time. He would refuse to drink anything but coffee at meals, and I saw him with a glass of red almost every evening in the study of his apartment. The doctor also tried, and failed, to have him limit his sugar intake. I mentioned the extra dessert here earlier, so that advice went down like a lead balloon. When he wasn't drinking coffee he was drinking Fanta, and I can't think of a soft drink with more sugar than that sticky, bladder-killing stuff.

And so, the result was he got worse, often wetting himself only an hour after going to bed. Each time he would call the carer to come and clean him up. He refused rubber sheets and he refused to wear an incontinence pad. Sometimes he would wake in time to get to the toilet, and then call the carer simply because he couldn't get back to sleep.

The carers' supervisor sought him one day and said that he ought to consider the incontinence pads and rubber sheets since he was really being a little unfair with the attention he was demanding, not to mention the fact that the carers had to be paid extra for each visit. And Ted replied, "Well, the 24hour care is a substantial part of the reason I purchased such an expensive piece of real estate. We do pay for it, you know, so we do have an entitlement to such care." And that is exactly how he speaks, too. Incredibly refined.

But Celia was having none of this. Celia is one of the loveliest bosses I've ever had, but she is so incredibly businesslike. Everyone trusts her. There is just something about her confidence that people know she can deal with just about anything.

Celia called Ted into the office. "Ted, sit down. We've got a bit of a problem and perhaps you and I can sort it out. The supervisor tells me that the poor carers are being called out half a dozen times a night to assist you. Is this right?"

Ted, amazingly, wasn't ashamed to admit it was true. "Unfortunately, Celia, I've taken to having accidents throughout the night, and I do need assistance to tidy up when it happens, so yes, I've been buzzing the girls when it happens." Celia then asked why he refused the options offered to him, and he replied that he felt it below his dignity, and that he was entitled to refuse such ghastly things.

"Well Ted," Celia said, readying the punch, "we are a self-care facility here, and it's been suggested that someone unable to care for themselves overnight might require a more... substantial level of care, perhaps a nursing home."

Bang. I cannot believe she could say that. She can't actually ask anyone to leave and it's almost beyond belief that she played that card. But my aunt swears it's true. And Ted just sat there flabbergasted, realising his assertiveness had boxed him straight into a corner from which there was only one way out.

"I've had a chat to the nurse," Celia was saying, and she went on to describe Ted's Last Hope, spelling out the details and ending with, "...maybe it'd give you a good nights' sleep and we'd all be a bit happier, what do you think? Will you give it a go?" And he agreed, since there was little other option.

So I was working in the kitchen that day, when the phone rang and the supervisor was on the line wanting to talk with Preethi, one of the carers. And since the phone is in the kitchen there are no private conversations. Preethi did a lot of listening, a lot of exclamations of surprise, a bit of a laugh, and I was dying to know what was so funny. Preethi is loud, outgoing and just great fun all round. "The supervisor will be at work tomorrow," she said, "and wanted to ask me how to fit a Uridom. She needs to teach Caroline how to do it."

The first thing I asked is what a Uridom is, since I'm just a lowly kitchenhand and don't know what any of the medical contraptions are. It's what it sounds like. It's a condom-shaped thing with a tube attached to the bottom, which leads to a bag, and it's to catch urine for people with continence problems. Now you see, that isn't especially funny, even when you consider that silly old Ted deserved to have to wear one. Ok, that was funny, but only about him having to need help to fit it.

But the plot thickens. Consider that Caroline is one of the mice here. Tiny little thing that giggles and blushes a huge amount and who was too embarrassed to shower the men in her first week at the place. She, one of the honkies he hates, is now going to have to be face-to-face with Ted's penis, to fit this thing. Damn, wouldn't you like to have a microphone in there, just to find out whether he can insult her while she is busy staring at his penis?

BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE. No, not a free set of steak knives. Better than that. He has to be erect while it is put on. I told you it got better. Preethi commented that she just "marches straight in, tells him he's got five minutes to get himself hard, and then it will be time for the Uridom" then leaves, and that he does as she asks. I want to know what Caroline says to him. "Um, mister, um, please can you please get... up please?" And I can just imagine Ted staring at her in disbelief. I don't really want to think about Ted masturbating to erection, but it would be just too funny not to know whether she left the room or helped him. Actually, no, I don't think I want to know either way. Some things are just never meant to be known.