Nobody Told Me

*names and details changed to protect privacy*

His wrists were tied down in restraints to protect him. He wore absolutely nothing but an adult diaper. He was so thin he weighed as much as an average 11-year-old. You could see all his ribs and even the xyphoid process, that little pointy tip to the sternum.

He had been slowly starving himself to death for the past three months.

It’s an awful way to die. Not only do you get progressively weaker, your skin starts to break down and you get painful sores. The sores he got on his legs had gotten infected and were now swollen and draining large amounts of fluid. The infection had spread to his bloodstream and now he was delirious. He’d tried quicker methods of killing himself before, but every time someone caught him. He wanted to die so bad.

“I brought you some food Mr. Gilmore,” I told him. I set the tray down on the side table and untied the restraints. Earlier that day he had tried to hit me when I got him cleaned up – and he was surprisingly strong - but it was only because the infection was extremely painful and for no good reason the doctor did not have any orders for pain medicine.

He didn’t remember though. He smiled at me.

I made him a cup of coffee the way he liked it and sat down beside him. In a couple of minutes, I got him talking, telling me about his life story. He’d grown up on a farm, he’d been a pilot in the Air Force for a number of years, he’d traveled all over the world, he’d watched his wife die. As he talked, as sane and normally as anyone, my mind wandered to the duties I had for my other 5 patients and I knew I was caught up enough that I could afford to sit here with him for a while. Talking to someone is medicine in itself.

“My son died when he was 25 from cancer,” he said, piercing me with his deep brown eyes. “I ain’t get to keep him long.”

My heart broke for him. When he went back to talking about his Air Force career, he said he’d fought in 2 wars.

“Did you fight in Vietnam and Korea?”

“Yeah,” he looked away like he could see the battles before his eyes. His voice broke. “The governments of the world send normal people out to fight each other, and all we are is normal people, killing other normal people under the lie that we are enemies. I don’t like wars,”

The gentle conviction in his voice brought tears to my eyes, beyes, but I don’t cry at work. I sat with him for a full 45 minutes. He’d hardly eaten anything despite of any of my old CNA tricks. His mind was already made up to die even if his body was going to fight it to the last. I did get him to drink a whole protein shake though, and I could literally see his neglected stomach start to work on digesting it.

“I got to go now,” I talked to him gently as I tied his restraints again. I was praying he wouldn’t be aware of what I was doing, and God answered my prayer. “but I’ll come back to see you in a little while. Okay?”

“Thank you,” he said, “for listening to me go on and on like that.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” I smiled, “You tell good stories.”

I would check on him throughout the day and find him writhing in pain. I fought for 7 hours to get a hold of the doctor and finally managed to get him some Percocet. The pain medicine and the protein shake made him feel noticeably better. His delirium was getting worse though, and when I walked in before I left that night he was trying to weasel his way out of the restraints.

“It’s you.” He smiled when he saw me, “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, we have. You were telling me all kinds of good stories this morning.”

“I’ve lost my ticket. Have you seen it anywhere?”

“Your ticket?” My heart sank. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at the train station in Chicago. My train leaves soon, do you want to come with me?”

Maybe he was closer to death than I’d thought. “Right now you’re not strong enough, you’re really sick.”

“I’m really sick?”

“Very sick. Look at your legs.”

His poor swollen legs were bandaged up in several layers of gauze.

He looked at them and laughed. “Oh, I must have done that playing ball with my friends. Nothing to worry about.” I realized by the change in his voice that he thought he was a young man again. All older people are is the young person with more life on them anyway.

“You have a good heart. You sure you don’t want to come with me? The place I’m going to is real beautiful.”

The tears flooded my eyes for real this time. I washed his face with a warm washcloth and did my best to make him feel better. Before I left, I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. “Mr. Gilmore, I’m glad I got to meet you. You have a good night, ok?”

And I walked out of there crying while I finished the shift, praying that he wouldn’t have to suffer any more. Sometimes I think about if there are good ghosts or not, not like I’m scared of ghosts or anything, but because if there are then I got a whole gang of good ones watching over me.

Still though, sometimes I feel like I can’t do the job I do too long because the only way to survive is by getting hardened. I would hate to become that and I pray all the time that I never do.