A cheerful greeting echoedthrough the sterile hallway as I walked past the nurses’ station.
“Morning, Gabe, how ya doing today?” Ginny, one of my favorite nurses, asked me as she poked her head over her computer.
“Doing good, and you?”
“Doing as well as I can these days. Feels like mercury is in permanent Gatorade for me.”
I chuckled at her silly joke. “And how’s Lily today?”
“She’s doing better than all of us, I think. Much better than this weekend. Thank you for coming on such short notice. Today, she had a big breakfast and then got to go on a field trip to Walmart. She was very excited about your visit today. She kept mentioning it on the shuttle ride.”
That made me happy to hear, especially with how upset my sister had been over the weekend. I’d gotten the call early in the morning from Ginny, saying that my sister was having another episode. Sometimes the medication could sedate her long enough for the spell to pass, but other times she fought right through it, spiraling and spiraling with herschizophrenic thoughts. When that happened, the only thing that could pull her out of it was me.
“Awesome. Do you know if she’s in her room or the TV room?”
“I think I saw her in her room.” Ginny smiled, twirling her finger around her ponytail. She batted her lashes a little extra hard in my direction. “You know, all the nurses here got some free tickets to the orchestra this weekend. Do you like classical music?”
I could tell where this was headed. I politely shook my head. “Never really my thing. I’m more of an alt-rock kind of guy.”
“Oh, okay, okay. Well, if you’re bored on Saturday and looking for something to do, let me know. Maybe you’ll like it.” There was a flirty tone to her words. This wasn’t the first time I had to dodge a woman’s advances. Over the years of being a professional hockey player, there were plenty of girls who tried their luck at getting me to sink my puck in their net while having no idea I played for the other team. It didn’t make me feel good doing it, but I certainly wasn’t going to string someone along just to sell the fact that I was “straight.”
So I became a pro at coming up with excuses and politely declining the advances. “Thank you, Ginny. I’ve got a busy weekend with some home projects I want to wrap up, but if anything changes, I’ll let you know.” I gave a gentle knock on the desk and left the nurses’ station, grateful that my sister had such kindhearted and friendly nurses taking good care of her. It helped ease a lot of the stress I felt over needing to leave her here in the first place. If I could, I would have moved her into my home and taken care of her there. But my sister needed around-the-clock care, and that wasn’t something I was physically able toprovide. I couldn’t leave her alone without worrying she would have an episode and hurt herself or someone else.
At least here, I knew she couldn’t run out into a busy street because she was sure an alien invasion was coming or that someone was spying on her through the television.
I walked down the hall, passing a couple of residents in their wheelchairs either being taken to the common areas or wheeling themselves to their rooms. The smell of bleach and cleaning product was strong in the air. A door to one of the rooms opened, and a familiar face appeared, surprised to see me.
“Whoa, hey there, Gabe.”
It was Harrison, our GM. “Hey,” I said, surprised as he was. I’d never seen him around here, and we’d never really talked too deeply about our personal lives before. “I’m just headed to see my sister.”
“Oh, I had no idea. My mother’s here. She was at Ridgewood, but her unit flooded, so they temporarily moved her here.”
That made sense. Ridgewood was where the families with money went. Its nickname was Ritz-wood. I wanted to move my sister there, but the price was just unfeasible for me. It would be nice for her to have an actual bedroom and bathroom that felt more like a home than a hospital room, and their rehabilitation and recreational facilities were out of this world. They had a VR room, a hydrotherapy spa, a gym equipped with only light weights and mobility machines, and a round-the-clock gourmet kitchen.
Still, my sister was in great hands here, and that’s what mattered most. “It’s not as fancy around here, but the nurses are absolutely incredible.”
“I picked up on that.” He looked a little off to me without his suit on. Like I had stumbled on a turtle withouta shell. “Well, I’ll be at practice tomorrow, so I’ll see you then.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said. Harrison was never a conversationalist, and it looked like he was busy by the way he glanced at his phone like he was checking the time. He gave me a smile and left, still checking his phone on the way out.
I reached my sister’s room and looked inside. Her bed was made with a row of stuffed Disney characters sitting up against the pillows. She sat in her wheelchair next to the window, staring out at the trees that lined the property. She held a pink unicorn plushie to her chest.
“Hey, Lils, brought you some snacks.” I lifted the plastic bag I was holding. My sister looked at me and smiled so widely her glasses almost fell off.
She was happy to see me, but I couldn’t avoid the sting of sadness I felt at seeing her. Not because I was upset that she was happy, of course, but that she had to be here in the first place. My sister was twelve years older than me and had always had some learning difficulties and issues growing up. My parents had done their best to try and get her help, but both of them were working-class folk with shitty medical insurance and a weak grasp of science. She was always well cared for and even had some independence as she got older. She’d watch me sometimes if my parents were busy working, and she loved to play board games with me. Jumanji was her favorite. On days we weren’t playing games, we were dancing in the living room to some of her favorite music, almost always salsa.
Then our father passed away from a heart attack, right in front of her. That moment completely broke her. Her mind became warped, thoughts turned dangerous. She started to think people were poisoning her water or thatsomeone was coming for her in the middle of the night. Sometimes my mom and I would find her standing outside the house with a kitchen knife in her hand, still wearing her pajamas, saying she was keeping watch.
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and early-onset dementia shortly after, triggered by our dad’s death. This was around the time I was a freshman in college. I was staying in a dorm that was a thirty-minute drive away, and my mom was getting older, and her arthritis was getting worse. She couldn’t take care of Lily on her own, so she had to make the decision.
At first, my sister was on a heavy cocktail of drugs that turned her into a husk of herself. She didn’t even understand she wasn’t at home anymore. I remember the first days of seeing her like that, knowing that my sister would never be the same, that our lives would never go back to the simpler days of board games and loud laughter. I nearly got into an accident driving away from the care facility because of how badly I was crying.
It killed me. It felt like we were abandoning her. It took me a while to accept the fact that this was necessary. That the sister I’d grown up with was fading away right in front of my eyes, and there was nothing I could do but stand by.
The first year or so was extra difficult. There were multiple trips to the hospital, different specialists and medical concoctions, all meant to sedate and numb her. She started losing weight from hardly eating and developed multiple different gastric and lung issues that required more intense care.
Things got relatively easier as time passed. The doctors found a good mix of drugs that didn’t knock her out completely, and she began to feel more comfortable at the nursing home. She made friends with the nurses and acouple of other residents, and I could see that she was doing better. But some days, all the progress would seem to disappear, and she’d fall into spells of angry rage. She weighed a total of six wet shih tzus on a good day and couldn’t harm a fly, but she could end up hurting herself.
