tapped on the half-open door. “Mother, it’s me, Ellie,” she said as she nudged the door open.
Straight ahead, wearing the aqua dress she had worn to the doctor’s office, her mother sat in a wheelchair with her hands clutching her handbag and her lips set in a forlorn frown. A large plastic bag sat on the floor at the foot of the freshly made bed. The heavy smell of disinfectant filled the air.
Her mother’s bottom lip quivered. “You took your sweet time getting here. I was afraid you’d changed your mind and decided to send me to a nursing home.”
Ellie put the suitcase on the floor, laid her purse and the visitor’s pass on the overbed table, and moved a chair to sit down next to her mother. “I told you that I had to go into work today, but that I’d be here by five o’clock. Why are you dressed to go home? The doctor said you wouldn’t be discharged until tomorrow, and I took the day off to bring you home with me,” she said gently, concerned that her mother seemed to be getting more forgetful.
“I got discharged right after breakfast this morning,” her mother countered. She opened her purse and pulled out a wad of papers. “See for yourself. I’ve been cleared to go home for hours and hours, but I guess you were too busy at work to leave. I would have called Phyllis’s daughter, but she took her mother to New York City today to see a Broadway show. The nurses were awfully nice to me, though. They gave me lunch and dinner, even though I wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Ellie skimmed the paperwork and sighed with frustration. “No one called me. Why didn’t anyone call to tell me you’d been discharged early?” she asked, more upset with the hospital than with her mother.
“They probably left a message for you at school. You just never called them back, which doesn’t surprise me. You never seem to call me back before I leave five or six messages.”
Ellie gritted her teeth. “I gave the hospital my cell phone number so I could be reached immediately,” she argued. “Can I take you home with me now, or am I supposed to let someone know you’re leaving?” she asked as she skimmed through the discharge orders, the diet plan her mother had to follow, more prescriptions than Ellie had ever seen at one time and a stapled set of papers that included information about the nurse who would be coming to the house.
“I think you’re supposed to tell someone. I don’t think you’re allowed to take me downstairs by yourself,” her mother said. “But do hurry. I’m getting sore from sitting in one spot all day.”
Ellie handed the papers back to her mother. “Keep these for now. I’ll check about what to do, and be right back.” She retraced her steps to the nurses’ station. Not recognizing either of the two nurses on duty, she kept her anger in check. “My name is Ellie Waters. My mother is Rose Hutchinson, in room four seventeen. I understand she’s been discharged, and I can take her home now. Is that correct?”
The younger nurse, who looked like she might have skipped high school and graduated from nursing school yesterday, at age sixteen, wore a badge that read, Cindy Morgan, R.N. Without speaking, she pulled out a chart and bounced over to the counter where Ellie was standing. “Your mother was discharged hours ago,” she said, frowning, “It’s too bad she had to wait all this time for you to pick her up, but at least you’re here now. Unless you’d like to go over her discharge instructions or her new prescriptions, all I need to do is call an aide to take your mother downstairs and wait with her while you get your car.”
Ellie drew in a long, deep breath. “I can look the papers over when I get home, but I would have come to the hospital immediately if I’d known she’d been released. Is there any reason I wasn’t called?”
The nurse flipped open the chart again and skimmed the paperwork. “I see they tried to reach you three times this morning. I tried once when I came on shift a few hours ago, but no one answered.”
Ellie let out a sigh. “Our phone system is down, but I specifically asked to be called on my cell phone. Do you see that listed anywhere?” she asked, using her assertive teacher voice, which kept all but the most defiant students in line.
Cindy the child nurse skimmed the paperwork again and had the decency to blush. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Oops,” Ellie repeated, shook her head and decided that incompetence was quickly overtaking obesity as a major health concern in America.
Any doubts she might have had about bringing her mother home with her rather than sending her to a care facility of some kind quickly vanished. “I’ll be waiting with my mother in her room. How long do you think it will be before an aide can come?”
“Ten minutes,” the nurse promised, her cheeks still pink with embarrassment.
Ellie checked her watch, smiled and marched back to her mother.
Precisely six minutes later, the aide arrived, stood right in front of the wheelchair and put his hands on his hips. “You see now, Miss Rosie, I told you that you’d be going home today before I did!”
“If someone had bothered to tell me, we’d all have had a better day,” Ellie grumbled to herself as she left for the elevator carrying her purse, her mother’s suitcase and the plastic bag with all the disposable whatnots her mother had collected during her stay.
Forty-five minutes later, Ellie had her mother resting on the sofa in the living room with the TV remote in one hand and the cordless telephone in the other. “I won’t be long,” she promised. “I have to go to the pharmacy, make a quick stop at the store to get a few groceries, and get some of your things from your house for you.”
“Don’t forget to turn out the lights before you leave my house,” her mother cautioned before a yawn interrupted her. “You never did have any consideration for the electric bill.”
“I won’t forget. If you need me while I’m gone, just hit the seven on the telephone. I have it programmed to call my cell phone.”
Her mother yawned again, turned on the TV with the remote and adjusted the sound. “I’ll be fine. I’ll watch the news,” she said, but Ellie could barely hear her over the high volume of the TV.
Thirty-five minutes later, Ellie emerged from the pharmacy with nine prescriptions, four over-the-counter drugs and pill organizers in different colors. She also had acquired the sincere belief that only someone with a master’s degree in science would be able to read the paperwork for each medication and organize the pills her mother would be taking three times every day.
She fared better at the grocery store. She was not a health-food purist, but she did prefer fresh fruits and vegetables when she cooked, and had no trouble finding a nice selection of produce. She picked up some lean, skinless chicken breasts and fresh tuna to add to the lean beef and pork already in her freezer, and a few low-fat dairy products, all in accordance with the dietary guidelines she had been given at the hospital.
Last stop: her mother’s house.
Ellie pulled into the driveway next to the darkened house, and turned off the ignition and headlights. She sat in the car for a moment, recalling childhood memories that were still painful. The tiny bungalow where she had grown up as an only child had always been her father’s house. After his death nearly a dozen years ago, it had become her mother’s house, but Ellie had never, ever thought of it as home, then or now.
She twisted the slim gold wedding band she still wore on her left hand. Home was where she had lived with her husband, Joe, and experienced
