"Grey's ANatomy Lied to me"
The first time I touched a naked man, I was 16 years old, and i did it for a grade. Now, at 20 years old, I wash my hands after i high five every one of my friends, scrubbing my skin until it’s dry and red. I have trouble sharing clothes, beds, or even Chapstick with my sisters. And I haven’t visited my grandmother in her nursing home for years. But, hey, that’s the price i paid for applying to a vocational highschool.
As a preteen both obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy and the fear of being unsuccessful, I was convinced that i was meant to be a brain surgeon, or a neonatal specialist. Anything to impress my parents, really. I remember how long it took my wrist to glide the mouse across the table and to check off the box labeled “Medical Arts.” Almost as if something told me to stop for a moment. But with the weight of the world on my shoulders and my mother right behind it, I shut out those intrusive, rightful thoughts and pressed send.
However, no amount life training or grey’s anatomy, for that matter, could have prepared me for my junior year of high school. While most people would assume that it’s because of the obvious stresses of college application and SAT preparation, which it was, there was a small indiscretion about my graduation requirement that was brought to me on a silver platter, way too late in my highschool career. I couldn’t send it back. I couldn’t request another meal. I was stuck with the cards my school had dealt to me, or the cards that I had chosen myself. And there was no way out.
I was forced to get certified as a nursing assistant, which again, i didn’t hate the idea of at first. For the next year I would get dropped off at school where i would then get back onto a bus, and work for free at a local nursing home until 3pm. It was a dream come true, for day 1. I met the lovely, eccentric patients of the Alzheimers floor, and the nurses who were oh so excited to look down upon the children who were brought there to do their job without pay.
From September until March, instead of sitting in classes like every other kid my age, I scrubbed the feet of over 60 patients, spoon fed them by hand, dressed them, changed their soiled bed sheets every hour, all while doing my best to convince them that i wasn’t their late wife, young mistress, daughter, sister, or the woman who stole their husband easily 40 years ago.
There was a woman who looked exactly like my grandmother, who i’d bring breakfast to each morning. I’d put on gloves and feed her. She’d spit the food back into my hand like a child would, and i’d hold back the vomit that so desperately wanted to make an appearance on her bed. But when my teacher saw my gloved hands she said, “Olivia, take those damn gloves off. It’s against protocal. That’s a 0 for the day.”
So I took those gloves off and continued to feed the woman. And when she spat back into my gloveless hands, i remember the tears that betrayed me, but the patient didn’t notice. She thought I was her mother.
One day I brought in her tray, and she was laying on top of her arm. If i didn’t reposition her off her arm her limb could turn black and die. And as i placed her food tray down and slipped my hand beneath her body, i felt warmth. She had soiled the bed, and in turn my hands. I remember how hard i scrubbed and for how long. I remember how my hands bled. I returned her food tray back to the cart where I got it from, and left the job for someone else. No one noticed, but i felt as if i had just left my grandmother to die.
There was one woman on the Alzheimers floor, who didn’t have alzheimers at all. Her name was mary, and she had MS, or multiple sclerosis. Her brain refused to communicate with the rest of her body, but her heart spoke to me. She grabbed my arm and rubbed my north star tattoo, claiming her sister used to have the same one. She was completely lucid, she was a dentist, and she was beautiful. Mary saved me from the rest of my duties, always requesting me to come into her room and feed her, paint her nails this sexy red i would bring her from home. She had a roomate who believed she was Cinderalla. She would interrupt and walk over to Mary’s end of the room, gossiping about her evil stepmother and her rotten step sisters. Mary would give this half grin, and I imagine that it was her way of rolling her eyes.
But in the end of february, I got off the bus, entered the nursing home, hit with that smell of missing memories and stale bath water, and I was given a different assignment. I even stopped by Mary’s room, but she wasn’t there.
“Um, excuse me,” I asked the nurse’s desk, if they would even bother to pause their conversation and look my way. “Where’s Mary?”
They cracked a giggle, before straightening their posture and stating blankly, “she isn’t here anymore. But room 207 needs a bed bath,” she pointed down the hall with her tomato sauced fork.
It turned out that Cinderella had found the dial of the air conditioning unit beside Mary’s bed and turned it down to 50 degrees. Mary froze to death in her sleep. And she couldnt save me anymore.
As I walke d to room 207, it was the smell that hit me first. The smell of neglect, the smell of pain, the smell of being stuck in a building where no one cares if you live or die. And this man, who also didn’t have Alzheimers, still haunts my dreams to this day. As a 4’11 100 pound 16 year old, I saw this 400 pound man and I immediately excused myself to his bathroom to grab the soap, the towels, and the linens, but in truth, I excused myself to cry. I excused myself to pray for someone or something to come and save me. I feared the 0 I would get on my transcript, rather than the fact that what my school was having me do must have been illegal on some level.
As I struggled to roll him onto his side to undo his diaper, he’d call me an idiot, a whore, a useless waste of space. And when I finished, he asked for the remote in the drawer across the room, which was an odd place for a remote since this man was completely bed ridden. He must have made more enemies than I had thought. And beside the remote I saw not one, not two, but three bottles of viagra. Which i proceeded to shove into the deep pockets of my scrubs. When I returned to school that day, I tossed the viagra in the trash can, and I skipped the next week of clinical work. And in March of my Junior year, Covid over took the world. It destroyed lives, it ended careers. But in my eyes, it saved me from having to step foot in that nursing home ever again. And I haven’t been able to watch Grey’s Anatomy ever since.