Mrs. McDonald

Non-Fiction
Location - Adelaide, South Australia
Written - December 2005
[This piece marks a bit of a shift in my style. It’s told in the present tense, in the experience rather than recalling it. I prefer this style, it feels more intimate - the reader learns things as I do.]


Mrs. McDonald is no prisoner to her fate. I watch as she makes another escape attempt in slow, shuffling footsteps. Held upright by her walking frame. Her slippers make no sound upon the floor. The duty nurse isn’t paying attention; she leafs through a copy of New Idea and sips coffee from a thermos. Mrs. McDonald slips right past her. The nurse looks up with pregnant Philippine eyes, and the expression on her face is resigned. I can tell she doesn’t want to be here, either. In another world she’d be in the first flushes of love, out in her boyfriend’s car with the windows down, the R&B tunes flowing through her hair. When she spots Mrs. MacDonald she alerts the other nurses.

The doors to the ward are locked. Electronically controlled from the front desk so you have to be buzzed in or out. South Ground Ward is where they put the ‘Wanderers.’ The Alzheimers patients who cannot be relied upon to stay put. And every time Mrs. McDonald sets off upon a meandering quest for freedom, two or three nurses stop her at the doors, and try persuading her to return to bed.

“Come on Mrs. McDonald,” says a male nurse. “Come and have a sit down in your chair.”

“I want to go home!” she screams, and her rage is ageless.

Her wrinkled limbs flail to push the nurses away with preternatural strength. As I watch, she becomes locked in this epic altercation half a dozen times in an hour. Her ancient eyes look as if they’ve seen through time, her face is locked in a grimace of bewilderment and disgust.

The older nurse returns with a forced smile and a roll of the eyes.

“You’re lucky to have a mother like you do. She’s no trouble at all.”

Most of the nurses seem to like my brother and I. We’ve coined a term for the look they give us, the W.N.Y.B. look. What Nice Young Boys. Not the Philippine. She sees right through us, as we see through her nursing uniform to the exotic treasures beneath.

Mrs. McDonald is brought back to her bed and takes a seat, breathing deep gusts of exhaustion. The older nurse turns to us, and says within earshot of Mrs. McDonald, “she’s been difficult from the first day she came in.”

Mrs. McDonald says nothing. She sits and blinks at her surroundings, her mouth hanging open.

When we came to the Alzheimers ward this morning, we entered our mother’s room to find an old man asleep in it, his body rumbling from a hawking snore. We were told Ma had been moved to one of the four-bed rooms, which are less private, and more hectic. That’s where we met Mrs. McDonald.

Her name was written on a whiteboard above her bed, scrawled in black texta. Ma’s whiteboard was blank. I found a texta and carefully wrote ‘Brenda Jacobs’ on it. Mrs. McDonald doesn’t have so many visitors. Earlier in the day I saw her daughter come in, and the two argued the entire time. The daughter repeated, “no you can’t go back home. There’s no-one to look after you there. Who’s going to look after you there?”

When Mrs. McDonald isn’t looking we take our mother to Lizzy’s Café. We’re buzzed through the electronic doors and out into the sunshine. I wear my sunglasses as we sit at an outside table, and chain-smoke. Ma talks of the Great Apes. A couple of days earlier we’d brought her in a few books to read, just to provide a counterpoint to the women’s magazines the nurses stack by the side of every table. The books have reignited Ma’s passion. She talks of how terrible it is that gorillas and chimpanzees are caged for medical experiments, or for the entertainment of humans.

“I wish they could all be released back into the wild,” she says.

When we were kids Ma took us to see Gorillas in the Mist at the Morwell cinema, the true story of Dianne Fossey’s time in Rwanda with the mountain gorillas. Even with gray hair, Ma looks just like Dianne Fossey.

Back on the ward Ma has her dinner there, waiting. My brother and I filled her full of roast beef, so she doesn’t eat. Mrs. McDonald doesn’t eat either. The nurse is trying to sit her down with the tray.

“No, I don’t want to eat that, I have to get home. I need to catch to bus on Trimmer Parade, people are expecting me.”

And then, when she is sedated, Mrs. McDonald speaks with calm.

“No, that’s okay dear. I don’t think I’ll eat here. I might as well be heading off now, I’ll catch the bus back to my place. Can you show me the way out of here, dear?”

The nurses face creases with irritation. She sits on Mrs. McDonald’s bed, with a spoon hanging impotently in the air.

“But it’s so late, Mrs. McDonald. Perhaps you can go home tomorrow.”

Lies.

I turn to Ma. We have only hours left together. My brother and I are catching the bus back to Melbourne. Exhausted, I sprawl out on the hospital bed while Ma sits in the bedside chair. I know how sensitive the topic of a Home is to her. I don’t want to upset her. But I can’t lie to her.

“Ma, Mike and I have been doing a lot of thinking, about how we can get you out of hospital.”

Mike sits by her side, takes her hand into his. “But we aren’t going to make any decisions you aren’t happy with.”

I play with my pair of broken sunglasses. I’d bought them only days before, and then one of the plastic arms on them snapped this morning. I almost cried when it happened. I bandaged them up with medical tape to hold them together.

“We’ve been looking into an Aged Care Hostel for you Ma,” I say. “But we’re not sure. We’re also looking at ways that we can get you back to your home. The main reason the doctors won’t let you go is because they’re worried that you’ll wander off, and get yourself into trouble.”

“It’s all very silly really,” she says. “I just tried to go to Centrelink, but I caught the wrong bus and got lost.”

I notice I’m fidgeting with the sunglasses, and place them on her bedside table.

“I know it’s silly Ma,” I say. “But if it means getting you home then maybe you could play along, and not go off walking by yourself. Maybe you could walk with Pat from down the road.”

Mrs. McDonald is off again. She’s yelling something that I can’t make out.

I get up off the bed and kneel on the floor, next to Mike. Each holding one of our mother’s hands in our own. “The honest truth is that we don’t know what to do, Ma. But we’re doing our best to get you home.”

“It’s nice to know there are people who love me.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, Ma.”

The nurses are leading Mrs. McDonald back to her bed, but she struggles when they try to sit her down. Ma gets up and walks over. She sits down on the bed, and Mrs. McDonald eases her own brittle frame onto the bed, next to her. They’ve never met before, and yet they beam like old friends. An alarm sounds and the nurses leave.

Mrs. McDonald smiles. “Oh it’s you dear. I remember you. We met down at the bowls club didn’t we? You used to play bowls?”