- Joined
- Jul 10, 2015
- Messages
- 12
There were three floors of corridors that consisted of eight separate rooms – four either side. The corridors were dimly lit by faulty lightbulbs, which gave the bright red laundry boxes I’d placed outside each room two hours beforehand a stuttering glow.
The two o’ clock round was my favourite. The fresh waft created as I pushed the laundry-laden trolley along the corridors provided temporary respite from the otherwise omnipresent scent of urine, faeces and death.
When I had started the job, aged seventeen, I was assured I would grow accustomed to these smells. I was now nineteen. I was also told I would become used to undertaking the ‘personal care’.
I’m not sure what kind of monster becomes accustomed to the cowering shame in an old man’s eyes as he farts and follows through whilst you lift him from his wheelchair to the toilet; his face perennially flecked with picked scratches in various stages of healing, destined to be inflicted fortnightly with the razor of an inept careless assistant on the minimum wage.
A wealth of humiliation already. And that’s before you’ve pulled his stained pants down, stood and watched him strain through piles for fifteen minutes, then listened to him stoically gasp through the stings of your tentative dabbing / jabbing of his raw and tender testicles with a jay cloth.
All of this backed by a soundtrack of clicking dentures, rattling Zimmer frames and the agonised laments of his fellow banshees of burden wailing their surreal, senile nonsense.
Hell is the place on the precipice of death.
Anyway, I digress.
The pot pourri pleasantries gradually diminished from the trolley with each delivery of clean laundry.
As I neatly placed the folded clothes into the final box, I squinted in the dingy light.
As I slowly straightened up, out of the corner of my eye, through the glass of the door at the end of the corridor, I spied an old woman I didn’t recognise.
She was rotund. She wore a tight-fitting pale blue dress patterned with multi-coloured flowers. And she was smiling.
I blinked. She disappeared.
I shook my head. I was tired. I returned to the office.
The following night, I returned to work for my next shift. The evening staff were finishing up. Except for one, a near-retirement nurse who stood outside the entrance having a cigarette.
“Good shift?” I enquired.
“Bit weird, actually. Don’t be surprised if someone dies tonight.”
“Oh? How come?”
“I think we’re due a collection.”
I blinked at her, nonplussed.
“I think I saw a ghost.” She explained.
I blinked at her, incredulous.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, though. She seemed friendly enough… she was very colourful.”
I hadn’t breathed a word of what I'd seen to anyone.
Yet what she then described was precisely the same as I'd seen the night before.
The two o’ clock round was my favourite. The fresh waft created as I pushed the laundry-laden trolley along the corridors provided temporary respite from the otherwise omnipresent scent of urine, faeces and death.
When I had started the job, aged seventeen, I was assured I would grow accustomed to these smells. I was now nineteen. I was also told I would become used to undertaking the ‘personal care’.
I’m not sure what kind of monster becomes accustomed to the cowering shame in an old man’s eyes as he farts and follows through whilst you lift him from his wheelchair to the toilet; his face perennially flecked with picked scratches in various stages of healing, destined to be inflicted fortnightly with the razor of an inept careless assistant on the minimum wage.
A wealth of humiliation already. And that’s before you’ve pulled his stained pants down, stood and watched him strain through piles for fifteen minutes, then listened to him stoically gasp through the stings of your tentative dabbing / jabbing of his raw and tender testicles with a jay cloth.
All of this backed by a soundtrack of clicking dentures, rattling Zimmer frames and the agonised laments of his fellow banshees of burden wailing their surreal, senile nonsense.
Hell is the place on the precipice of death.
Anyway, I digress.
The pot pourri pleasantries gradually diminished from the trolley with each delivery of clean laundry.
As I neatly placed the folded clothes into the final box, I squinted in the dingy light.
As I slowly straightened up, out of the corner of my eye, through the glass of the door at the end of the corridor, I spied an old woman I didn’t recognise.
She was rotund. She wore a tight-fitting pale blue dress patterned with multi-coloured flowers. And she was smiling.
I blinked. She disappeared.
I shook my head. I was tired. I returned to the office.
The following night, I returned to work for my next shift. The evening staff were finishing up. Except for one, a near-retirement nurse who stood outside the entrance having a cigarette.
“Good shift?” I enquired.
“Bit weird, actually. Don’t be surprised if someone dies tonight.”
“Oh? How come?”
“I think we’re due a collection.”
I blinked at her, nonplussed.
“I think I saw a ghost.” She explained.
I blinked at her, incredulous.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, though. She seemed friendly enough… she was very colourful.”
I hadn’t breathed a word of what I'd seen to anyone.
Yet what she then described was precisely the same as I'd seen the night before.
