Tales from the Cooinda Cycle: Memory Eight

“Did you give her these lollies?” asked one of the centre admins abruptly without any other form of question first. She threw the bag of liquorice down on the bench and stared at me.

It took me a few seconds from looking up from the cupboard I was clearing out and seeing who was there to actually realise what she was talking about. Earlier in the day I sold one of the residents a bag of lollies, because she wanted them with her coffee.

“Um, yeah,” I said. “I took them to her room with a coffee earlier.”

“Why did you let her have them?”

“What do you mean?”

“She can’t have lollies, she’s diabetic.”

“No one told me tha-”

“Don’t give her any lollies! She isn’t allowed to have them!”

Oooohh, the thermometer of rage inside just spiked a bit.

“Since when?” I asked, seeing as she had a bag of liquorice last week, also wondering why anyone in this place is restricted from any of life’s niceties, I mean, they are all slowly dying here… let them enjoy the little things I say.

“Since she got back from the hospital, you can’t give her any of these things!” she said with a raised voice, right on the cusp of yelling.

“Well, no one told me-”

“You should know better,” she said, interrupting me one to many times.

There it goes, the mercury has shattered the thermometer…

I raised my hand with my index finger raised to signal it was time for her to be quiet. I was going to speak now, and she was going to damn well listen.

“Look. I went by the information sheet provided in the cafe, I read all the special diet sheets for residents carefully and took note. Her’s says she can have ONE bag of lollies a week with coffee, if you had let me talk I could have said.”

As I spoke I retrieved the sheet in question, a laminated single A4 document with a photo of The Large Lady, and the relevant information for what she could and could not have.

“Here,” I said very sternly, as if talking to a child I was reprimanding. “It says she can have one bag of liquorice per week. I only let her have one bag last week, and that one bag this week.”

She took the sheet and looked at it slowly.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, this should have been updated already.”

“Well it wasn’t and I didn’t know, I can only go by what I’m told.” I said, hoping against hope for an apology for her earlier tone.

“I’ll fix this and bring it back.” she said, and left with the sheet.

I am really sick of this place, if I don’t get out soon I may just throttle someone and then myself…

That was a week or so ago, I now have a new shiny laminated sheet with all The Large Lady’s updated information, and have needed to explain to her multiple times now that I cannot give her any liquorice or other lollies, and only one coffee per day, but no sugar.

I felt sorry for The Large Lady, some of the staff treated her poorly due to her size and seemed to blame her for all her health problems. She was out at the hospital once again for a few days, and was expected back within the week. Little did I know just how much empathy I was about to gain for her.

The centre’s manager approached the cafe. She was pleasant and nice to me when we talked. I do think she genuinely liked what I was doing with the cafe and my interactions with residents. A few weeks ago she gave me a warning that one of the lady residents I had grown fond of was heading to hospital, and it might be best that I, “Say goodbye now…” in case she didn’t return.

That was harder than I thought, all my grandparents were long dead, I didn’t know how to say goodbye to an elderly person I cared for anymore…

Of course in the end, she actually recovered fine and was back at the centre within a week and back to normal. So I grieved for nothing…

But now she was asking if I could do them a favour, and come help them test out some new equipment as they needed a body to practice moving with a new bed lifter.

“Uh, sure,” I said, figuring it made sense that the nurses needed to be the ones practising with the equipment, but I’m not sure why they just can’t take it in turns? “I’ll be right there.”

So a few minutes later, there I was, laying in a new bed in The Large Lady’s room being hoisted off the bed and rolled in all sorts of ways, turned and swung and at one stage just left dangling in the air while they discussed storage options.

Soon enough they had finished with their practise and I was lowered back down to the bed and disconnected from the straps and equipment. I had actually nearly fallen asleep while in the air it was relaxing in a way.

“Thanks for that,” said the manager. “We just needed to test with someone who isn’t fragile in case we dropped you.” she added with a small laugh.

Oh, actually that makes sense now I think about it, and some of these nurses could break if they hit an air-bag too hard, and the residents were all mostly just shell and bone china held together with tape and Voltaren.

“Yeah, no worries,” I said, about to walk out and back to the cafe.

“Plus we needed someone the same size as The Large Lady,” said the centre admin from the great liquorice debacle of 2020.

There were some awkward laughs and giggles from most in the room, the manager had a look of shock on her face, and they all just waited for me to respond. I know I’m big, but The Large Lady would easily be twice my width.

Did she say it because of the liquorice incident? Did she think it was a joke? I really do hate this place, it slowly eats at your soul, trapping you in its never ending cycle of despair until you wither away or become hardened to the point of no return.

“Glad to help,” I said and returned to the cafe where I could see The Chess Man waiting for our afternoon game and coffee.

Here we go again… nothing changes here.

Well except the permissible amounts of liquorice…