SHORTSTORIES

HOW

DID THIS PATIENT SURVIVE? PART II When

I was young I picked up shifts at a nearby skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility. I worked there maybe twice a month for about 2 years. It was not your typical nursing home. The residents ranged in age from 14 to very old. Most had either a spinal cord injury or a head injury. Many of them were wards of New York state, which had a contract to send patients to this facility in Massachusetts. There were a lot of cool people there. Some people can’t cope with their physical limitations. Some people had injuries so severe they needed constant care. Most of them simply didn’t have anyone to care for them.

There was a patient, a teenage girl age 16 when she arrived. She was there because she shot herself in the head with her father’s gun. The bullet passed through her brain, but she could walk and talk. She could feed herself. But she was like a 6-year-old child, mentally and emotionally. She loved to play checkers, even though she wasn’t very good at it. I played with her many times and I lost most games. Win or lose, she loved to play, but she really loved to win.

I wondered how she was alive. I wondered why she was alive. Mostly I wondered why she was there. Why didn’t her family keep her home and take care of her? I don’t know the answer. But I hated her parents for it. I never met them, but honestly, all these years later I still hate them.

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