A few years ago I worked as a domiciliary care assistant. I didn’t really know what I was doing. The company I worked for hired just about anyone. Most of us had no training or experience, least of all me. If I had known what they were going to get me into I would have kept well away. But at the time, minimum wage was an enticing prospect for me.
It started out with heating up a microwave meal for an old lady here; emptying a catheter bag there. A few weeks passed and then I had a phone call from my boss. They needed cover for a night shift tonight. Would I mind doing some end of life care?
‘Yeah, okay.’ I agreed. I wanted the money. I wanted to be helpful and impress my boss. I wanted to save up enough to move out of my step-dad’s house. I still think about this moment every day. I should have said no, but I had no way of knowing that. If I had listened to the creeping dread that was whispering in my gut, things would have turned out very different.
‘The gentleman is expected to pass soon. Give us a call if you need anything.’ She said.
They sent me a text with the man’s address. At 6:30 pm I caught an empty bus to the suburbs and buzzed into the quiet block of flats. I walked up two flights of stairs and down a brown corridor in my sensible, black closed-toe shoes. A pale, blotchy woman with dark circles under her eyes opened the door. She introduced herself as the elderly gentleman’s daughter, Debbie.
Debbie tucked her unwashed hair behind her ears and rubbed her hands over her puffy face and said ‘I ain’t had much sleep love, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s been horrible’. She showed me an overstuffed cupboard where I could hang up my coat. Then she showed me to the living room where an old television stood (showing Sky News) in the opposite corner to her father’s deathbed.
This man was on a morphine drip to alleviate his pain. I was supposed to give him a whole mug full of pills. He was too weak to swallow so much as sip of water so I wet his lips with a damp swab and filled in his medication chart with a column of crosses. I can’t tell you much more about the gentleman or the care that I gave him because of confidentiality, and because I am supposed to respect his dignity. Debbie told me a lot about him, though. She was proud of her dad.
At 9pm Debbie’s brother Rod was due to take over the duty of vigil. Rod stank of cigarettes and beer. He greeted his father, then asked his sister ‘Who’s she?’.
‘I’m *** from ****(care agency)’ I said, although my name badge and blue smock with the embroidered logo could have told him as much.
‘Now they fucking send a carer do they? I’ve been asking them for fucking weeks’ Rod said. ‘I’m making a cup of tea Debs. Do you want one?’
‘No thanks, I’m off.’ Debbie answered, picking up her handbag. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ She shed a quick, quiet tear as she kissed her father goodbye for what turned out to be the last time. I knew that I needed to stop her. But how could I? I opened my mouth and stood up from my chair, the front door closing behind her as I tried to find the words to say. I sat back down. My stomach was tight and my shoulders started to ache. I could hear Rod making phone calls in the kitchen now. I looked into the foggy eyes of the sick gentleman and held his still purple hand.
Rod came back into the room a few times that evening to complain about all the ways that he and his father had been let down. I was pretty speechless to be honest. Under the circumstances I thought it best to just nod and agree with him. At midnight he said he was going to sleep and went behind a closed door. I was so relieved that he was no longer near me. I turned my attention to the palliative patient, writing his respiration rate down in his chart every half hour.
At 3:30am as I was signing my name on the chart, I heard a metallic clunk-clunk. Black ink stabbed a line on the paper as the pen fell from my hand. It was the sound of a dead lock closing. I went to the hall and Rod was standing, hunched & swaying, between me and the front door. A wave of fear like a bucket of ice water poured over my whole body, making my heart pound hard. I saw that he had a kitchen knife in his hand.
‘No.’ I tried to speak but it came as whisper. ’Let me out’.
‘No mate I don’t fucking think so. You hurt my Dad didn’t you? He twitched. ‘Spiders. Get down on the floor.’ He said.
I started to scream. I thought of my phone on the table in the living room and at the same moment spotted a landline on the wall. I lunged to grab the handset and felt big arms closing around me and pinning me down to the brown carpet. I realised that my life probably depended on the neighbours hearing something calling the police. ‘Help! Atta..’ I was winded by a gut punch. I couldn’t breathe and my eyes were blinded by tears.
Rod started to slash at my face with the knife. All I could feel was terror but I knew that I must have been hurt because blood was pouring over my cheeks and soaking into my hair. He held me by the cheeks and laughed. He swatted at his leg and muttered to himself. He was crazy. He was hallucinating. The lights started to flicker. I thought then that the old man was dead. I think Rod knew it too because he told me to stand up and walked me to the living room with the knife poked into my back.
The old man was no longer pink and slowly breathing. He was yellow, waxy and unblinking. As Rod took in the sight of his late father’s body, I silently picked up my phone off the table. I unlocked it and started to press the emergency call button. The battery had been full but now the screen turned empty and lifeless. A sob escaped from me. I picked up a vase from the mantelpiece and ran back towards the hallway, towards the front door. I threw the vase at my captor and held my hands up to shield myself from the table lamp that swung itself up at my bleeding face. An armchair had pulled itself in front of the exit, barricading it. The lights were flickering so hard now that it was like a strobe. The flat was freezing cold and wind was howling outside. Rod tried to grab at me, he drunkenly stumbled. I turned left into the kitchen, opened the window and threw myself out.
I guess the neighbours had called the police after all because when I came back to consciousness lying in a bush, they were there. They arrested Rod. They charged him with kidnapping and grievous bodily harm (for disfiguring my face) but he died in prison before it went to trial.
I want to put it behind me but the old man is still following me. I was good to him. Why won’t he let me go? Every time I am alone things fall off shelves and the lights flicker. Especially at 3:30am. Lately he sends spiders. I’m so scared. How do I get him to stop? Please help.