I could hear the complaining all the way down the hall as I clocked in for my shift.
"Will somebody tell me again why we don't have air conditioning!?"
"Because the owner's too cheap to put it in."
"This is supposed to be the hottest day of the year. How're we supposed to get through it?"
"Ask Viva. She's weird. She actually LIKES the heat."
Yes, I'm known for being relatively heat-tolerant, but on that particular afternoon it was expected to reach well over 100 degrees in a locale where it never gets that hot, and I was already losing my happy thoughts. Then over the staff complaints I heard the unmistakable voice of the one resident whom I knew was going to plague me all night:
"DID THE DEVIL JUST SIT HIS BUTT ON TOP OF THE (blankety-blank) WORLD??!" bellowed the inimitable Delta Webster* (name changed to protect privacy). "Somebody get me a cold wet washrag and put it on my neck! I'm DYING here!!"
I'd better explain a bit about Delta. She was alert and oriented, a brittle diabetic, and somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds. She was also one of the loudest, crudest, and most profane human beings I've ever met, and she loved nothing more than to scoot around in her wheelchair and gripe about anything and everything. In fact, I'd worked at that facility for over a year at that time and never heard her say a single positive thing to anyone.
She also made a habit of hanging out at the nurses' station, so the day shift nurse and I went into the med room, which was even hotter than the hall, to do report. Oddly, Delta was wearing her customary white shawl, and as I passed by I suggested that she take it off so she could be cooler.
"ARE YOU (bleeping) KIDDING me??!" she yelled. "I don't go nowhere without my prayer shawl! How long you been working on this hall, woman?"
There would never be another afternoon as long as this one. Or as hot. Or as full of short-tempered residents and staff. Someone who had checked the weather report on break said the temperature outside was 108 degrees, which was a record-breaker. It felt like 300 degrees in the building. The swamp coolers were completely overwhelmed and circulated only hot air, making things even worse. Staff members were wearing wet towels around their shoulders, and even I got desperate enough to dunk my head in a sink and get my then-short hair completely soaked before I started my 1600 meds.
Despite the heat, the residents were refusing the extra fluids offered to them even in the face of repeated warnings about the danger of dehydration. Delta, of course, could always be counted on: "I hate water," she proclaimed. "All it does is make me pee like a racehorse. Why don't you do something useful for a change and go out and buy us some (bleep-bleep) Popsicles? And none of them sugar-free ones---I want the real thing!"
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her that I couldn't just run out to the store, but then it occurred to me that the Popsicle idea was actually a very good one. That would be a way to get fluids into the residents.....after all, who doesn't like a frozen treat on a hot day?
So I went to the administrator with a request for Popsicles, and he was only too willing to go fetch them because he was sick of hearing the griping too. He was back within the hour and brought down four Costco-sized boxes for our unit. No sooner had the first box been opened than Delta was breathing down my neck, demanding one. Of course I handed her the wrong kind. "I hate the orange ones! Don't you know I like the cherry ones? Stupid nurse, she don't even know what kinda Popsicle I like."
By this time, I was heartily sick of her attitude and wished I could tell her where to go, but then we were already in Hell, so it wouldn't have been far enough. She finished the first Popsicle in record time and told me to get her another. I didn't want to because I knew her blood sugar would spike, but I also knew her well enough not to argue with her on this point because she didn't CARE that her blood sugar would spike. The second Popsicle went down in a matter of two minutes, and of course she wanted a third. She got it.
Meanwhile, the aides were walking around eating Popsicles, as were the med aide and the residents, and you could almost feel the tension on the unit decrease as the tasty treats went down. It wasn't any cooler in the building, but even Delta subsided a bit after she'd had a couple more. Still, I was shocked when, toward the end of the shift when most of the residents were in bed, she wheeled up to me in the hallway and said begrudgingly, "You ain't the best nurse on the #&!%* planet, but thanks for the Popsicles."
It was the nicest thing she had ever said to me. She died unexpectedly a few weeks later, but in the days following the heat wave, she was just a little less hostile and uncooperative. Maybe she sensed death was coming and decided she didn't want to meet that old devil after all, but to this day, I suspect the Popsicles had something to do with the change.
I'm eating a root-beer Popsicle as I type this.....and I can't help but wonder if Delta would've liked it.
