Grey eyes.

When I first met her, I thought, "I hope I look like her at that age". 
She was in her eighties, sitting up in her bed, peering at me with bright grey eyes. 
She wore a barette in her stylishly cut chin length hair.
She smiled gently, her unlined hands folded neatly in her lap. 


She'd come in with a "change in mental status".  When I received report that night, I laughed out loud as the story unfolded about her trying to hit her husband with a cane at their assisted living facility.  As I looked at the pleasant, pretty older lady sitting before me, I wondered to myself whether perhaps he deserved it.
Upon examination, I found her to be confused as to where she was, but largely appropriate in her answers to my questions.  She was pleasant, with an easy laugh and a sharp wit.  She was startled by my cold hands as I felt for her pulse and kindly rubbed my hands in hers to "warm them up".  An hour later, she was asleep, and I saw the faintest of smiles play on her lips as she dreamt. 

Six hours later, a disheveled, half-dressed woman emerged from her room, blood dripping from her arm, carrying her bed alarm, crying out for her husband.  I rushed over to her, donning gloves as I ran, and pulled her gown around her shoulders as I clamped a hand over the bloody mess where she had torn through her IV tubing.  She looked at my like I'd killed her cat.  "Get me a telephone, I will not be held prisoner here!" she spat at me.  After 15 minutes of back-and-forth, I managed to calm her down enough to pull out her mutilated IV and tape some gauze over the site.

I placed a call to her husband as she demanded she speak with him.  She made him tell her his mother's name, as she didn't believe it was actually him on the phone.  Then, she stood at the nurse's station, staring at the elevators down the hall, refusing to return to her room until her husband arrived.  I waited with her, all other tasks delegated to coworkers, as she would let no one else near her.  She spoke with me, about the weather, and about the upcoming holiday picnic planned at their retirement community... but she was guarded, and eyed me with suspicion as I asked questions as innocent as, "what dish are you planning to prepare?" 

When her husband arrived, he walked her back into her room, and I sat with them for a good while.  She sat on the bed, with her arms crossed, bright grey eyes shooting daggers at her husband of sixty-odd years whenever he divulged a bit of information to me.  He explained to me that over the past year she'd only had minor forgetfulness, such as putting water on the stove for coffee, then forgetting to make the coffee at all.  "Nothing like this, not in all the years we've been married," he said, the concern and love he felt for her obvious in his voice.

Over the next week, we both watched this bright, beautiful woman die.

In a matter of a day, she was moaning like an injured animal.  Her eyes were dull, and looked inward... seeing nothing of the world around her.  She was edematous, the extra fluid leaking from her skin and soaking the bedding.  Her hair was tangled, the barrette long gone now.  A nurse's aide had to sit with her 24 hours/day to keep her from pulling at her IV, her heart monitor, her gown.  No amount of morphine, Ativan, Haldol, or hydromorphone assuaged the pain, anxiety, and fear.  When the drugs failed, I put the business of the night out of my mind and went back to basics.  I combed her hair.  I turned off the television and placed my hands on her back, focusing all of the soothing, healing energy I could find within myself, letting it flow into her.
 
Her breathing relaxed.  Her moaning ceased.  She slept, perhaps for 10 minutes.  Then, a noise.  Somewhere on the unit, someone dropped something.  And so the moaning and writhing resumed.  I sighed, looked at the clock, and knew that I had a time critical cardiac drug to give to another person who needed me. 
I left the room, and when I left the hospital that day, I thought about her.  I thought about her husband, who'd known and loved her for over 60 years, and who woke up a week ago to find that his lover and best friend was a different person.  I thought about the mystery of it... all of her tests were normal, no signs of a stroke or heart attack... but her mind had deteriorated over a matter of days, her body simply giving out as her kidneys, liver and heart failed suddenly and quickly. 

This woman was elegant.  She was tall, and self-posessed.  She'd lived a life that I'm sure was full of stories, full of humor and adventure.  I had the honor of seeing a glimpse of that, the very first night we'd met.   I learned the next week that ultimately, her family decided to make her a hospice patient, and she was sent to another unit of the hospital.  I silently prayed, to no one in particular, that she would die soon, that the cruel indignity of her descent would end quickly.  I prayed that the nurses on that floor would keep her hair tidy, and wash her neatly manicured hands. 

She haunts me still, and my eyes sting each time I think of her calling out for her husband on her last lucid night of life.