What Lies Beneath

Keeping to the nursing home theme from yesterdays post, I would like to share yet another tale of nursing home days long ago.

I had just started picking up some night shifts for overtime. I loved working with the night shift girls. It is no secret in nursing that night shift is a breed all its own. The girls began to tell me of the "ghost stories" of this facility. How they would see things, hear things, call light going off in rooms that had no one living in them, etc. This in turned totally freaked me out. Everyone knew if there was a call light going off, we were going to work in tandum. I hated going into rooms alone, just because I never knew what I was going to find. I sure didn't want to come face to face with that black figure they had all seen lurking around.

On one particular night, I was working with some of my best friends. We were all pretty tired because we were all on overtime. It was the middle of a bed check and we were at the far end of a long long hall. All of the sudden we hear a call light going off. I told the girl I was with that I would go and get it. I didn't really want to but I was trying really hard to overcome the fear, and be a big girl. In essence it was high time I "put my big girl panties" on. I needed to prove to them that I wasn't the "scaredy cat" they all thought I was.

I went down the long hallway that was poorly lit (we turned the hall lights down at night), and turned the corner to the short hallway that finished off this unit. There it was, the call light that needed answered. I found it a little odd that the call light was on in this particular room. The lady living in that room was very old, bed ridden, deaf, and demented. She had no idea what the call light was let alone how to use it. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe she accidently hit the call button or something. I was determined not to be afraid. There was no one really close so no one would know that I turned on the room light just to walk in and turn the call light off. The reset button was right next to this lady's bed. I turned off the call light then I reached over and pulled this sweet lady's cover back over her, she had kicked most of them off. Just as I was reaching into her bed to grab the covers. . . . .

something grabbed my ankles!!!!! There was a tight grip on BOTH of my ankles. I couldn't move. All I could do was scream at the top of my lungs and before I knew it I was standing in a nice warm puddle.

Thank goodness this lady was deaf. She had no idea what was going on around her! The hands that gripped my ankles let loose, I am sure because they were now quiet wet. And all I could hear was giggling coming from below the bed.

Two of my "dear friends" who knew my fears, had planned this all night. They had been the ones to push that call button. What was so funny is that one of them was sure I wouldn't be able to scream. We had talked about fearful times before and every time I had been in a situation where I should have been scared enough to scream, my mouth would come open but nothing would come out. So they felt it pretty safe that no noise would come from me.

It was terrible!! However now it makes for a great story when we are reminiscing of days gone by. Everyone remembers the day I had to borrow a pair of sweat pants from the unclaimed clothes in the laundry department.

Let me assure you that pay back for those people was OH SO SWEET!!!

(that is a tale for another time . . . .)