Cleaning

Susan stared out the window of her father’s office.

“I’ve babied you kids too much, and you most of all, Susie.”  His voice was stern.  “I had to work to get to the top and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have to.  It builds character, you know.”

Susan had heard endless variations of this lecture all her life.

“But, Daddy, a janitor?  Couldn’t I do something else?”

Susan hated the whiny tone in her voice, but she hated more the idea of working as a janitor .  And she especially hated the thought her friends discovering it.

“If you really want to be a surgeon, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.  I want you to see what’s involved before I throw any more money into your education.”

Susan turned to face him for a moment, responding in the most pitiful tone she could muster, “But night shift at County?  Do you really want me around there in the dark?”

 “Damn it, Susan, the world is a tough place, and you’ve got to get tough or you’re not going to make it.”  After a pause, he added,  “It wasn’t easy to get you this job.  I suggest you either take the job, change your major or start paying your own way.”  He turned away from her and back toward his desk. 

“You’ve sold me into slavery,” Susan whispered.

Her father turned to looked at her, the ghost of a smile passing his face, but Susan didn’t see it. His face became grave again as he gathered up some papers and turned to leave the room.  “If you’ll excuse me, Susan, I have a lot to do.”

~

The mask made it hard to breath.

“Ironic,”  Susan thought,  “that something made to save lives makes me feel like I’m losing mine.”

She tugged on it as she entered the surgical unit.  Pausing, she wrinkled her nose at the smell — antiseptic and some unidentified odor.

“Death,” she thought, raising her eyebrows dramatically.

She laughed at herself as she continued down the long, steel-sink-lined hallway, passing countless steel doors with little round windows.  At the end of the hallway, an older, black woman was bent over, slowly mopping the floor and humming an old gospel song in a deep, rich voice.  The sound echoed eerily down the long hall.  Susan stopped a moment, listening, unwilling to let the moment pass. 

The woman stopped humming and straightened wearily. Susan bounced up to her.

“You must be Grace,”  Susan said breathlessly.  “They told me you’d show me what to do.  I’m Susan.  Susan Green.”

Susan smiled radiantly as she extended her hand.  Grace looked at the proffered hand skeptically and back up at her face.

“I’m s’posed to do what with you?”

Susan’s smile faded as she flushed to a bright red.

“I thought you were supposed to train me.”

Grace narrowed her eyes and gazed at the young girl.  Susan tried to read the older woman’s face, but the mask half covering it made it impossible.

 “How old’re you?”

 “Nineteen.”

Grace rolled her eyes, shook her head.

 “Ever work in surgery before?”

 “No.”

 “Work in a hospital before?”

Susan paused, flushing again.  “No.”

 “Don’t know why they sent you.  I need help.”  Grace glared at Susan significantly.  Susan stubbornly maintained her silence.  Grace resumed shaking her head, grabbed the mop and pulled it down the hallway.  Susan stood uncertainly, watching her go.

Grace spoke over her shoulder.  “Don’t s’pose you can help me out just standin’ there, do ya’?”

Susan followed tentatively behind as Grace rolled the bucket down the hallway.  Grace arrived at a closet, opened the door and handed Susan the dirty mop.

“Change the mop head and fill the bucket.”

Susan looked puzzled. 

Grace sighed.  “It’s not rocket science, you know.”

She snatched the mop from Susan, removed the mop head and tossed it into a container partially full of dirty rags and mop heads.  She grabbed a clean one, attached it to the end and handed it to Susan.

“You can, I presume, empty that bucket in the sink and fill it up again from this tap?”

“I’m not stupid, you know.  I don’t even know why I’m here.  I’m going to be a surgeon.”  Susan straightened and jutted out her chin as she said this.

Grace looked amused.  “Are you now?  Seem like this a good place to be, then.”

Grace reached down and turned on the water, picked up a bottle from the shelf and squirted some liquid in the basin.  Susan watched, dumbfounded, as the bucket filled with suds.  Her mind reeled.  “Who the hell does she think she is?”  Susan thought.  “The old, ignorant hag.  I can’t work for her.”  She had almost resolved on leaving Grace to finish the night alone, when the thought of her father stopped her short.  He would never understand.

Grace filled a small bucket and grabbed some rags.

“You bring the mop,” she said to Susan, then turned to enter the nearest operating room.  Susan followed.

“Blood is the enemy here,”  Grace said as she handed Susan the disinfectant.  “You got to get every drop.  And I mean every.”  Grace held Susan’s gaze for a moment before turning away.

Susan started wiping down equipment.  Grace wiped another piece of equipment, then returned to inspect Susan’s work.  As Susan watched Grace peer at the equipment, she had a passing sensation that there was some hideous deformity hiding behind Grace’s mask.  She shuddered slightly.

“You missed a spot,”  Grace announced in a tone that sounded triumphant to Susan.  Grace pointed out the spot.  Sure enough, there was dark brown circle of dried blood.

“Fine,”  Susan retorted.  She grabbed her rag and scrubbed it hard until the spot disappeared.

“Maybe you think I’m too picky, but I ain’t gonna have no patient die of an infection because my OR wasn’t cleaned right.  So do it right or go somewhere else.”  Grace turned and continued wiping down equipment.

Once again Susan felt like leaving and, once again, her father’s image interfered.  They continued cleaning and this time Susan was careful to remove every bit of blood.  She was doing it for the patients, not for Grace, she told herself.

This time she passed inspection, and they returned to the closet to silently replenish their supplies.

Suddenly the door to an operating room burst open and a doctor emerged.  A loud continuous beep could be heard through the door.  He threw his mask and gloves into a trash can and continued down to the men’s locker room.

“Damn, I love my job,”  a nurse said to another as the two exited the room.  They walked to the sink and began to undress and scrub.

“Lost one?”  Grace asked .

“Yeah.  The funny thing is, he should have made it,”  The nurse looked at Susan.  “Had one a few days ago that should be dead now, but he made it.  Now this one’s doing fine and we lose him out of nowhere.”

She shook her head and went back to scrubbing.  “Sixteen years old.  Damn kids.  Took a knife in the chest and shoulder.”

The two nurses finished scrubbing and exited the hallway.

Grace gathered her cleaning supplies in a small bucket and headed toward the recently vacated OR.

“Grab that,”  Grace called to Susan, indicating the mop bucket.

Susan followed Grace into the room, then stopped cold.  A young man, almost a boy, lay on the table with a bloody gauze pad on his shoulder and chest.  Blood oozed out from under the gauze, dripping down the side of the table and pooling on the floor.  She had never seen so much blood.  It was like some nightmarish movie scene.  The blood looked fake—a bright red.

Susan sank down into a crouch, staring at the blood. She counted eleven empty pints of blood abandoned on the floor. 

Grace glanced at the corpse and shook her head.

“Mmm-mmm-mm.  They gettin’ younger and younger.”

She pulled her mask down and let it hang below her chin.

“You can breathe a minute now, if you want.  We’re not givin’ this baby no infection.”

She turned and handed the broom to Susan.  “You take care o’ that,”  she said, indicating the blood puddle.  Grace began wiping down the equipment.

Susan stood up and walked over to the dead boy, gazing at his face, so peaceful, immobile as stone.

“Who are you?”  Susan thought.  “Where is your family?  Why am I here sharing this intimate moment with you?”

An orderly came to move the patient out of the room. Susan slowly began mopping.  The mop reddened quickly.

Susan felt a sudden rush of hopelessness.  What is life about anyway?  One minute you’re worrying about how to achieve your hopes and dreams and the next you’re gone.  Susan stopped mopping and just stood, staring at her reflection in the blood.  An entire life soaked up in a mop head.

“You loafin’?”  the harshness of Grace’s voice dispelled her reverie.  “Look, if I gotta keep my eye on you all the time—“  She stopped short as she met Susan’s forlorn gaze. A tear welled over and slid down Susan's face. They looked into one another’s eyes for a long moment.  Grace’s eyes softened.

“It’s break time now, honey,”  She said gently.  “You go on get a cup of coffee.  I’ll finish up here.”

Susan continued staring at Grace as the older woman came forward.  They stood face to face—young and old, light and dark, inexperienced and mature—and gazed at one another a long time.  Grace took the broom from Susan’s clinging grasp and gave her a gentle push.  “You go on, now.”

As Susan obeyed,  Grace stood looking pensively at the door for a few minutes.  Then she shook her head thoughtfully, and bent down to finish mopping.

Daring to care

by C.D. Walter
Staff Writer
Prism Magazine, Spring 1993

Like a raging fire, AIDS devastates its victims, relentlessly reducing lives to rubble. But amid those ashes, a human spirit glows like live coals, igniting love and compassion in those daring to draw near.

Social work senior Bryce Reed took that dare. He volunteers two or three days each month to cook dinner and clean for AIDS patient Terry Bailey.

Reed works on a 12-member care team through Tarrant County AIDS Interfaith Network (TCAIN), which provides non-medical services for AIDS patients with a six-month or less life expectancy.

"I’ve learned a lot, Reed said. "here he is—very sick—and still determined to live. I’ve learned a lot about life and how different people look at life differently."

Reed also received friendship from Bailey. Though TCAIN volunteer training advises maintaining a certain distance, Reed believes it’s impossible to avoid closeness in these circumstances.

He realizes this friendship will make Bailey’s death more painful, but he is preparing himself for the inevitable.

"I really haven’t lost anyone close to me yet, but I think I’ll be able to deal with it," Reed said. "I try to visualize things happening and then maybe I’ll be more prepared when it happens."

Since his diagnosis in 1987, Bailey has reflected greatly on the subject of death.

"If you’re HIV-positive, you may as well say you’ve got AIDS," he said. "You sure can’t take a pill for it or a shot. It’s like signing your own death warrant."

Bailey prepared his will—everything goes to his companion—and his living will. "I don’t care to have some machine breathing into me when I’m not even alive," he said.

Bailey has faced death several times, once with an accidental Phenobarbital overdose and another time during a bout with pneumonia during which he shrank to 110 pounds.

"He amazes me," Reed said of Bailey. "I thought we were going to lose him. Since then, he’s gained weight. He has no T-cells. It must be his determination to live. Because he’s been through a lot." 
 
Bailey isn’t sure what is keeping him alive, though he credits medication. But he feels sure that no AIDS cure will be found in his lifetime.

"I had a friend who died in Dallas," he said, his eyes filling with tears. "We went to see him and he looked like a skeleton. I had to walk out. I knew I’d say the wrong thing, and I did. ‘How you been doing?’ Stupidest damn question you could ever ask." Seeing friends die forces Bailey to confront his own mortality.
 
"I like life, and I don’t want to die," he said. "But that’s the way it is. I’m more or less ready. I believe in God and Jesus, so they’ll take care of me when my time comes."

"Terry’s pretty stubborn," Reed said. "He likes to fool the doctors. They told his family he wouldn’t see his next birthday. Now he’s past that one almost to the next one."

Bailey turns 40 in September.

Death is the most obvious result of the disease. Victims live to see their whole ways of life transformed. They are robbed of dignity in a thousand little ways — loss of means to support themselves, loss of strength and physical beauty, loss of memory.

The most tragic loss is family and friends.

After announcing that he had AIS during a television interview, some friends from his small West Texas hometown turned their backs on him.

"I think they act silly," Bailey said. "All people do, unless they’re gay or they have AIDS. I don’t like that, but that’s the way it is in this old world."

Bailey said his mother has been supportive through the ordeal.

"I hate that I have to put her through this," he said. "When my father died, it almost killed her."

His father died of Hodgkin’s disease in 1956, when Bailey was 3.

Though his mother is understanding, the rest of his family took time to recover from the shock. Bailey’s older brother, a Southern Baptists music minister, was cold until a 50-year-old lady in his church was diagnosed with AIDS.

"I think it hit him pretty hard then," Bailey said. "He turned out to be a pretty nice person."
 
Bailey believes most people turn harsh because they fear catching the disease. "They think it’s going to jump right off me onto them."

But Bailey has more cause to fear them. With a T-cell count of zero, the common cold becomes an emergency. Care team members stay away when they feel the slightest illness. Reed didn’t see Bailey for almost a month while battling a cold.

AIDS patients watch carefully for signs of infection, particularly in the bloodstream. Pneumonia kills many patients who have no immunities.

"I don’t think I’d live through another case of pneumonia," Bailey said.

Bailey experiences side effects of both the disease and the medication, including sluggishness, muscle weakness, sensitivity to smells, hair loss and teeth deterioration. Retinitis pigmentosa is causing him to lose his sight.
 
"If I went blind, I don’t think I’d want to live,’ he said. "I wouldn’t want someone to have to lead me around."

A recurring theme in his conversations is the loss of independence.

"I’m lucky to have AIDS and still be able to do things," he said. "But I can’t walk far before my legs give out."

When he recently tried to help move a washing machine, Bailey discovered how much the disease has changed him.

"It makes you so weak. I used to life weights, so it kind of hurts my pride. When you try to go back to what you were used to, it just don’t work that way."

He tried to return to his old ways a few months ago when a medication made him forgetful. He got up every day and prepared to go to work, forgetting he no longer has a job. His companion had to send him back to change.
"I miss getting up and going to my job," Bailey said. "I’ve been doing it all my life."

The disease also affects the brain and nervous system, causing the most disconcerting of consequences — forgetfulness and confusion. Bailey’s overdose occurred when he took the drug twice because he couldn’t remember taking it.

Now his companion, "D," who asked to remain unnamed, prepares Bailey’s dosage daily in a little black cup.
If he can’t remember taking it, he looks to see if the cup is empty.

Bailey said he didn’t know what he would do without his companion to care for him. Nursing care costs about $70-$120 a day, according to Nursefinder administrator Maureen Buergler. She said her agency charges roughly $35 an hour. Twenty-four hour care could cost $840.

"For that reason, we teach family members and volunteers as much as possible about medical care to reduce costs," Buergler said.

D, who tests HIV-negative, prepares Bailey’s IV catheter, shots and medications.

"People carry on about how courageous I am," D said. "I don’t know if it’s a compliment or if they’re telling me I’m crazy. We fight and carry on like anyone else, but it’s the commitment we made to each other. He gave me the option to leave when he first told me he was sick."

D discovered Bailey’s illness six months after diagnosis when a seizure sent him to the hospital. When he arrived at Bailey’s hospital room, the stickers plastering the door and the cart filled with masks, gowns and gloves revealed the situation clearly.

"I figured he’d leave and that would be the end of it," Bailey said. But five years later, D remains, caring for him in a way paid strangers never could.

D, showing maturity for his 28 years, said it hasn’t been easy. AIDS has become their whole life, dominating every conversation. He said many friends find it depressing and quit coming around.

"You know the saying goes, ‘I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy?’ This is one of those things. It’s awful—emotionally and physically. And I’m not even the one who’s sick," D said.

They lowered their standard of living, moving into a trailer and spending carefully.

"But it’s been worth it if we can keep him out of a shelter," D said.

D appreciates the help TCAIN offers through its care team program. Though they don’t help with medical needs, their cooking and cleaning up while D works has been helpful.

"We worried that, since it was a religious group, they would come preaching and Bible thumping," D said. "But they’ve been great."

Though Bailey later joined the church that produced this care team, he did so without team member coercion.

According to TCAIN Executive Director Duane Bidwell, many volunteers consider their work a mission, though the organization is not evangelical in nature. During training, instructors tell volunteers to share their beliefs only if clients request information.

The main focus of the respite-care program is to help AIDS patients who are nearing death and their loved ones.

"We do a little of everything," Bidwell said. "Volunteers cook, clean, feed, diaper — anything to keep them (clients) out of the hospital so they can die at home if they want to."

Bidwell said TCAIN currently cares for 62 clients with about 350 care team members. Clients waiting for a care team fill a long list. "Sometimes people die on the waiting list," he said. "The demand is much greater than we are able to fill."

The organization also offers an HIV wellness program for newly infected people, and volunteer chaplains staff HIV clinics and hospital floors.

"What I like about our program is that it’s a community program," Bidwell said. "It works at a very humane level. And it helps the volunteer sometimes more than the client. It can promote spiritual growth—and personal growth."

But care team volunteering is not for everyone.

"There’s no dishonor in trying it and saying, "I can’t stomach this. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened," Bidwell said.

Because Reed can handle it, he has the opportunity to know Bailey. "I think we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends," Reed said. "I’ve learned a lot about how people deal with things from Terry."

And Bailey has 12 new friends, including Reed.

"He’s a good person all around," Bailey said. "Me and Joyce (Palmer, another care team member) went down and heard him play. He sure can play them drums."


Author's Note: Terry Bailey died in October, 1993, about six months after this article was published.

An American passion: She's batty for baseball

by C.D. Walter

Staff Writer

The Shorthorn

April 16, 1995

"Batter up!"

In the game of life, Crista Tompkins has stepped up to the plate. She has gone back to school.

First pitch: strike one. As an older student returning to school, the interdisciplinary studies senior must deal with work, family and instructors who tolerate her unbridled passion for America’s pastime. Her enthusiasm for baseball, ignited in ’72 at an otherwise unmemorable Houston Astros game, gets her through.

"It’s my identity," says Tompkins, 45. "I’m the Baseball Lady."

She knows all the baseball trivia anyone would want to know. She loves the Rangers, Cubs and Red Sox, loves the game for its symmetry and drama.

"If I have to write a paper for school, I always try to write it on baseball if at all possible" she says. "I wrote two on baseball for astronomy, if you can believe it. They were like hopeful extra credit."

Another pitch: ball, high.

Baseball makes life bearable — even wonderful.

"When you’re there," Thompkins says, "there’s no place else you’re supposed to be. You just happen."

The third pitch is another ball.

Seeing two no-hitters have been highlights of her life. The first was when she was coaching her son’s team. The second was Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter.

"It was the most orgasmic experience," Tompkins says. "I hope it was as good for Nolan as it was for me."

Strike two: her husband had to decline a promotion in Tulsa.

"Not a big-league town," she says. "I won’t be sent down to the minors."

Another pitch: a foul ball. Not exactly a strike, just a temporary holdup.

She and her husband generally take separate vacations. She makes an annual pilgrimage to the shrine—Fenway Park in Boston. She once went on a six-day bus tour of seven games in five cities. Her fellow travelers—all baseball nuts—pitied her because her family all hates baseball.

"My husband was all for it (the trip)," Tompkins says. He thought it would cure me."

The couple recently took a vacation together and like it so much they decided they’ll probably do it again. Ironically, they owe the trip to baseball—Tompkins won free air fare to anywhere at a Rangers game. They went to Banff in Canada.

"No baseball (there)," Tompkins sniffs. "Just to prove I’m not addicted."

Aside from her family, everyone in her sphere (doctors, dentist, etc.) have to be baseball fans. The first question she asked her current boss was, "American or National league?"

Another pitch: a base hit! A roar fills the stadium.

Tompkins publishes baseball-related works in Spitball, The Washington Post and USA Today Baseball Weekly.

She steals second with strength and meaning derived from baseball.

"A guy at work said baseball is a metaphor for life, but I say it’s life that helps us understand baseball," she says. "I put everything in terms of baseball."

Tompkins steals third, risking all by quitting full-time work and dedicating herself to finishing school.

She waits on third base, poised to steal home. It will be the end of the game, but not of the series.

She’ll begin working on her master’s degree after graduation this spring.

She’s ready for her next game.