Auntie Jenny

 

One disturbing incident happened when we had Auntie Jenny with us.  She was a wispy little person with a halo of white hair, wide apprehensive eyes and a need for someone to whom she could cling.  She quickly found herself a young man to whom she attached herself with a limpet like tenacity.  The two had become twin souls and it became apparent that the relationship was turning into a ratio of one holidaymaker to one helper so we had to prise Auntie Jenny loose and attach her to some other tower of strength.  She was introduced to another helper who would insist on a more tenuous reliance.  At bedtime, Auntie Jenny had been taken to her chalet and told to get herself ready for bed and her new companion would come eventually.  But this assurance did nothing for Auntie Jenny’s confidence.  When this new companion, weary and ready for sleep, opened the door, there was Auntie Jenny sitting upright in bed and quite alert.

 

“I was waiting for you to bring me my hot-water-bottle”, she announced, and, in the slight pause which followed “…for my back”, she explained, holding her renal region in a dramatic gesture.

 

“Oh, you were”, said the patient companion, and went off in search of hot water.  The night watchman obliged by filling the bottle with water from the appliance in the snack bar and the tired helper trudged back to the chalet and soon had her charge and herself ready for bed.  Auntie Jenny was shooed into the ‘loo’, in spite of protests that she was ‘all right’.  The lights were switched off, but it was apparent that all was not well.  From Auntie Jenny’s bed the rustling and creaking continued for some minutes.  Then, “I think I had better go to the toilet again”, announced Auntie Jenny.  “I didn’t do it last time”.  No reply.  After another ten seconds of restless fidgeting, padding footsteps gave evidence of the expressed intention.  The footsteps returned, and stopped just inside the door.  Light flooded in the room.  The weary head on the bed raised itself.  “Now what?”.  “I must wash my hands”, said Auntie Jenny.  Resignedly came the response “Be quick then”.  Water trickled into the basin by the wall.  “Which is my towel?”, queried Auntie Jenny.  “It doesn’t matter”.  “Oh, if you don’t mind”, said Auntie Jenny happily, “I’ll use yours”!

 

Again the light went out and after twisting and turning around several times, the creaking stopped.  But Auntie Jenny was still wide awake.  “I have to have a hot-water-bottle for my back”, she informed her companion.  “Go to sleep” came the response.  “The doctor says a hot-water-bottle…”.  “Go to sleep”, in a determined voice.  “…would stop my back aching”, finished the tormentor.  “GO TO SLEEP”.  “Did you say, go to sleep?”, enquired the persistent conversationalist.  “YES “– this in a voice which must have reached the ears of the occupants in two or three adjacent chalets.  “All right”, said Auntie Jenny obligingly.  And she did.

 

The following evening, Dorothy had an attack.  She was turning blue and her breathing became distressed.  It was about 9 p.m. in the crowded ballroom.  We grabbed a wheelchair, and moved her as quickly as possible into the open air.  She continued to gasp for air, so without more hesitation, we too her to her chalet and sat her, almost unconscious, on her bed.  We sent for a doctor, and while someone argued with him (poor man – he was so used to frantic calls from the Camp to attend to minor ailments), we sat Dorothy up against a wall of pillows, opened the window and door, and waited anxiously, watching Dorothy’s distress.

 

At last – in actual fact, after only a few minutes – the doctor arrived and assessed the condition with barely a cursory examination.  Left ventricular failure, he diagnosed, and immediately set to work.  He rapidly prepared a syringe of some massive acting drug which he plunged into the plump upper part of Dorothy’s leg and then he sat on the end of the bed with us and we waited.  Dorothy, by this time quite unconscious, was still gasping for breath, the fluid accumulating in her ankles, her colour an alarming pallid grey and her skin a damp chill texture as her temperature plummeted.  The doctor explained.  The injection, he said, would either kill or cure, but she would, had he not taken any action, have died within hours.  Watching our unconscious patient, we believed him and his prognosis, we were convinced, was accurate.  Dorothy was dying.

 

No-one who had ever watched somebody slipping away can do so without emotion.  “Cheyne stokes” breathing is a nerve racking complication of deep coma.  Dorothy’s gasping gradually eased, and then we noticed that she had stopped breathing.  There was no sound, but a small pulse in Dorothy’s neck was beating regularly.  The blue around her lips and eyes had disappeared.  She was pallid, but otherwise her condition seemed static.  Still the tiny pulse quivered in her neck and then we noticed a small in drawing of breath – then another breath, this time slightly deeper – and gradually her breathing accelerated until she was drawing in great lungs full of air.  Then, just as suddenly, it all stopped, but her colour had improved and the small pulse under the skin of her neck continued.  For two more minutes Dorothy did not breathe and then the pattern was repeated.  For more than an hour the “cheyne stokes” breathing continued.

 

The nursing helper glanced at her watch.  Nearly midnight.  She turned to the waiting doctor sitting beside her.  “Is there any need for you to wait any longer?”, she enquired.  With apparent relief he stood, grateful that his moral support seemed no longer to be necessary.  “No”, he agreed, “I can do not more.  You will not leave her tonight, will you?”.  “Someone will be her until she goes”, was the calm reply.  “Do you want me to ring you if there is any change, or shall I report to you in the morning?”.  “Not really.  You can ring me early tomorrow and let me know at what time she died, or what is her condition”.  So he left, and the nurse and her patient were alone in the quiet chalet.  In the early hours of the morning, Dorothy’s hot-water-bottles were refilled, she was raised again to an upright position by her wall of pillows, and the blanket tucked around her shoulders and under her chin.  A small pink flush began to replace the grey pallor in her face.  She was still deeply unconscious but hope began to replace the feeling of hopelessness in the minds of the people watching.  They took turns, dozing on the empty bed in cat naps, and as dawn crept over the tall trees behind the dark chalets opposite, Dorothy looked alive, her quiet breathing was normal, and her pulse strong and regular.  She was still unconscious.

 

The doctor arrived shortly after eight, and wanted to know why no-one had rung him.  “No need”, said the jubilant nurse.  “She is still with us”.  He looked at his patient, now rosy and warm.  He felt her pulse and gazed at her for several moments.  “You certainly had me fooled”, he commented.  “Thank you, doctor”, said the grateful helper.  “You did a great job”.  He took her outstretched hand, and looked down at her face.  “I wasn’t the only one”, he announced gravely.

 

For the first three hours of that momentous night, half-a-dozen of the helpers were trying to cope with another problem.  Auntie Jenny, who had been allocated the twin bed in the chalet of the nurse in charge, was anxious about what had happened to her companion.  The assurance that she would have this security, given in all good faith, led to a verbal struggle which continued for some hours.  She needed someone to tell her when to sleep, when to go to the ‘loo’, when to wake and dress ready for breakfast and she did not intend to go to bed and sleep until she was sure that all the arrangements were being implemented according to what she had been told.  In vain did one after the other plead with her, cajole her and bully her, she would not be moved.  She sat on the side of her bed like a small stone statue, and would not be persuaded.  “I will wait till she come”, she told them.  “She slept here last night, and she will expect me to wait for her”.

 

For two hours they struggled until, almost exhausted, she was persuaded to get undressed and to wait in her dressing-gown and nightie, so as to be quite ready, she was assured.  It too only another twenty minutes for the chill midnight air to penetrate her thin clothing, and it was easy to persuade her that she might as well be warm while she waited.  She allowed herself to be put under the bedclothes and tucked into cosiness with her hot-water-bottle (as she explained, ad infinitum, for her back).  Her alert little eyes remained open for another four or five minutes, and then her lids began to droop.  She jerked them open, but within minutes weariness conquered obstinacy and she was asleep.  Thankfully, the watchers murmured their goodnights, hardly daring to whisper, and Doris, slipping out of what clothing she still wore, crawled thankfully into the other bed.

 

But the incident had shattered Auntie Jenny’s confidence.  She reverted to clinging again.  In desperation she had captured another young man energetically pushing wheelchairs to the dining-room, one by one.  Auntie Jenny, her white halo of hair fluffed by the breeze, her small stooped figure bustling with urgent energy, trotted restlessly beside the chair, clinging to the handle or to a convenient arm, until her inhibiting fraternising became intolerable to her long-suffering sanctuary image.  So Aunt Jenny found herself apprehensive and desolate, seated on a low wall opposite the dining-room, with strict instructions to stay there until she was called in to breakfast.

 

Although Aunt Jenny was on holiday, it was, to her confused brain, a mixed blessing.  She had a soft warm bed, three ample meals each day, a game of Bingo every evening, and a Bar at which she could buy her regular bedtime nightcap.  But her stroke had left her, mercifully in one respect, as physically active as ever.  She was wholly lacking in confidence.  At the holiday camp, she had recognised only vaguely one or two familiar faces.  Now seated on a hard concrete wall, apprehensive and desolate, she gazed in vain for some sanctuary to which she could cling.

 

Maud, like Auntie Jenny, had a brain which had suffered the ravages of time and, perhaps, from the ravages of intemperate living, to some extent.  But, unlike Auntie Jenny, Maud had a consuming wanderlust.  She would wander off on her own and, oblivious of time, hunger, weariness or surroundings, would tour the paths, the alleys between the chalets, and behind the communal buildings.  Umpteen times daily she had to be sought and escorted back to her meals, and often to her bed.  She was noticed traipsing towards a copse at the further end of the Camp and had been dragged back protesting and was not sitting at the further end of the wall on which Auntie Jenny was seated, having been warned of the dire consequences which would befall her if she moved away before the imminent mealtime.

 

So, the two old ladies sat some ten feet apart within full view of the queue of waiting diners, like a flock of anticipatory sheep, ready for the breakfast being prepared for them.

 

Maud had been sitting obediently for almost a minute and was looking around to find a pathway ripe for exploration and had decided on her next jaunt.  Before she could raise her bulky form from her hard seat, a small quivering hand was slipped under her elbow.  She looked down at Auntie Jenny’s small anxious face, the eyes wide and appealing and, her attention now riveted on this fresh interest, she remained seated.  The crown round the door began to move, queued into a line which filed slowly through the opening.  A voice called to the tow ladies sitting close together on the wall and, after a second summons, they rose like a pair of Siamese twins and joined the end of the crocodile winding its way towards the door.  Arms still linked, they sat together at a table just inside the door.  With some reluctance Auntie Jenny was persuaded to relinquish her grip on Maud’s arm.

 

Possibly the most useful attribute which a helper engaged in caring for a large group of vulnerable people can have is an instinct for opportunism.  The sudden companionship of Auntie Jenny and Maud was noticed and discussed, and a plan evolved.  With a little manoeuvring, a small twin bedded room was vacated, the two small beds remade with clean sheets, and the two inseparable friends were shown their fresh accommodation.  Standing side by side in the doorway, they surveyed their domain with delight.  Half-an-hour later their cases, with clothes piled high in untidy heaps on top, were carried to the little room, and willing hands carefully laid the underclothes into the chest of drawers and the dresses and coats were hung in the wardrobe.  The nighties were tucked under the yellow counterpanes and the dressing-gowns draped over the ends of the beds all ready for bedtime.

 

But Maud had only taken the few garments from the top of her case, and the rest of her apparel was still folded in the bottom.

 

The helper who had collected her baggage from her former chalet was complaining.  “This thing must have a cooker or a body in here”, he gasped.  “It weighs almost a ton”.  He heaved it on to the bed, and Maud looked at it dubiously.  “Is it mine?”  He picked up the label and read it.  “Yes”, he assured her, “it is yours”.  They opened the lid, and Maud lifted out the towel on top.  “It looks like mine”, she agreed, doubtfully.  She fished out an unused tablet of soap and smelt it.  “It is mine”, she decided.  He clothes were taken out layer by layer and put into the two bottom drawers of the chest between the two beds.  Nylon slips, thick knitted cardigans, crimplene dresses and voluminous old-fashioned bloomers and vests were all tidied away.  Under this, the group of helpers found a glass dish covered with foil.  Inside was a lump of butter.  On further investigation, a collection of containers was uncovered – a small beetroot in a miniature basin, half a packet of biscuits, the end of a loaf of bread, half a bottle of orange squash and three eggs in a plastic container.  We gazed fascinated at this curious collection.  Maud was just as puzzled: her forehead wrinkled in perplexity.  “What the ----?”, started one onlooker.  “Why did you bring all this?” enquired another.  Everyone looked at Maud who was still cudgelling her brain for a glimpse of memory.  Suddenly she brightened.  “The warden told me to”, she informed them.  “She helped me to pack, and then she told me not to leave anything in my fridge, so I took it out”.  “--- and brought it with you?  But why?”.  Maud look pained.  What else could she have done with it, she wanted to know.  We could have told her, but we are patient people.

 

Bingo was over for the evening.  The high windows in the crowded ballroom were dark and lifeless.  The small bank was playing a dreamy waltz and twenty pairs of dancers twirled around the shiny parquet floor.  Many of the wheelchair people had had a tiring day.  Some, normally permanently resident in hospital, were used to an early bedtime and yearned for their small comfortable beds.  One by one, from the lines of spectators, each with a pusher, they were wheeled out through the double doors and into the dark, chilly night.

 

Auntie Jenny and Maud, without a word to each other, rose and dragged their coats from the back of the seat in front of them and, still in silent agreement, followed one of the wheelchair pushers out of the ballroom and down the path towards their chalet.  As they approached the door the helper leading them paused and wished them goodnight.  “There is your chalet”, he reminded them.  “You have the key in the pocket of your coat, Auntie Jenny”.  Then he continued down the path with his passenger, leaving the two companions to put themselves to bed.  On his return, the light in their window was out and all was quiet within.

 

What happened after he left them at the door of their small room has to be a matter of conjecture.  Auntie Jenny probably rummaged in the big pocket of her coat anxiously.  Maybe it was because one arm was clinging limpet like to Maud that she could not find it.  It may have been in the ‘wrong’ pocket.

 

The conjuror kept his audience puzzled and entranced for more than forty minutes, so it was an hour later before a few more watchers made their way leisurely along the path and dispersed to their separate rooms.  Then some of them returned to the ballroom and sought out the helpers scattered around.  Mystified and concerned, they explained their predicament.  The keys left in some of the doors to allow for the distribution of extra blankets, pillows and other required items, were missing and the doors locked.  Bags and pockets were ransacked.  Torch lights illuminated the doorsteps but all to no avail.  The keys were gone.  For half a minute, everyone stood searching for a clue; then came inspiration.  “Auntie Jenny”

 

A little group wended is way to the chalet allocated to the two little old ladies. Whispering excitedly, they conferred; better not to wake the two if it could be avoided.  Just take a look into the room with a torch, as a preliminary investigation.  The straight beam of light revealed another mystery.  The bed farthest from the window was unoccupied.  The yellow counterpane was straight and smooth and covered the mound of pillows as it draped over the back of the chair was Maud’s dress.  The pencil of light moved slightly again and fell on the edge of the bed under the window.  Sure enough, there was a glimpse of a lump which must be Maud.  Far too big and bulky to be Auntie Jenny, so where was she?

 

The search parties went out in twos and threes.  Around the grounds; into the dark dining room; a look into the busy snack bar; through the public bar, around the corner and behind the tall broad silvered columns.  While three people scouted around the ballroom seeking clues, the minibus was started and driven down the road towards the jetty and back again past the entrance to the Camp for another mile in the opposite direction.  Imagination ran riot.  Every fleck of white in the tall weeds by the roadside was investigated; was it Auntie Jenny’s white head?  Every dark patch beside the road or in the ditch was examined.  Might it be Auntie Jenny collapsed and cold, or worse?  But no sign of the missing guest came to light.  Time and time again the torch was flashed into the window of the chalet but always the bed beside the wall was untouched.  Finally, the night watchman was summoned and the waiting guests, more than ready for their beds, were let into their chalets with warnings not to leave their accommodation to be locked until the keys were found and returned.

 

A council of war was held in the snack bar.  Worry had given way to anxiety and then to near panic.  Each imagined a different tragedy.  Auntie Jenny lying cold and stiff somewhere no one had looked.  Or maybe at the local police station unable to explain where she belonged and possibly too petrified and bewildered to remember her name.  Or might she, utterly weary, have found her way into another chalet and was now asleep somewhere else in the Camp?  More puzzling still was that anything could have happened to clinging, companionable Auntie Jenny.  If it had been the nomadic Maud, it would have been less surprising.

 

It was only half and hour to midnight.  Everyone was exhausted and spent of fresh ideas.  Finally it was decided that the help of the police must be recruited but first we must get all the information to give them that could be found.  If Maud was disturbed, would she settle down again or would she start on another tour round the territory?  The risk had to be faced.  Auntie Jenny, poor little scrap, had to be found and her companion might be able to give the vital clue to her whereabouts.  So, with purposeful determination the little group of helpers made its way back to the night watchman and then on to the chalet.  The master key was thrust into the lock and turned and the light switch just inside the door pressed down.

 

From the bed under the window, two grey heads raised themselves, four grey eyes surveyed the faces peering in through the door.  For five seconds, no one spoke.  Then somebody stepped between the two beds and scooped up the pile of keys lying on top of the chest of drawers and stepped back again.  “Goodnight!”, said somebody and the light went out; the door clicked behind several very relieved helpers.

 

For fully five minutes the group stood some distance from the door.  They listened, they whispered and then, decided that there was no further move from inside the door of the quiet chalet, they crept away to their own beds.