Arriving in Montreal as desert strangers to help my mother’s aged and hospitalized friendꟷa fellow retired nurse from Englandꟷit wasn’t long before we sorted roles (refer backstory: https://carolinmparadis.com/desert-grace/2024/02/18/). My sister-in-law Dorothée’s first language was French and, as a retired Canadian Airforce Physician Assistant, made her role a natural choice. As Pam’s primary visitor, she would advocate with the medical staff at the rehabilitation hospital once we figured out the COVID visitation policy.
In hospital care for two months, Pam’s affairs had been dangling. I would do the driving, sorting of bills, phone calls, and errands. But my biggest job became looking after my sister-in-law at the end of the hospital visits. The rehab visitations were a nightmare.
But the nightmare started before Dorothée put a first foot over the rehab hospital threshold.
Desert Obstacles
We couldn’t gain visitation rights at the rehabilitation hospital. Thick with COVID protocols, the hospital bureaucracy was strict and unyielding. We weren’t on the assigned visitor’s list. The hospital appointment coordinator, at least, offered the names of Pam’s permitted visitor friends which were restricted to two. Only a single person was permitted to visit. Only at a specified time. If removed from the list, the hospital would not reinstate the dropped visitor.
How was Dorothée to get on the list?
This was the first of many challenges that kept us praying daily. For door’s soundly shut, we needed God’s grace. We were desert strangers, in a strange land, during a strange time.
Equally strange, the evening after our arrival in Montreal was the ire of the pizza delivery guy when he expressed his displeasure at having to wait for someone else to give him access to the apartment building. Why had I not rung him in when he called?
Ah, so that was the earlier telephone call. Suspecting a telemarketer, I had not picked up Pam’s telephone presuming the pizza guy had Dorothée’s cell number because she had placed the order and he would call her when he arrived.
Embarrassed, I accepted the pizza box. Apologizing in rusty French, I handed over the money, all the while thinking I should add a larger tip for his inconvenience. Digging in my wallet, by the time I looked up he had whirled away in a huff and disappeared down the hallway.
Returning to the dining room with the pizza box, I said to Dorothée, “Pizza’s here, but the pizza guy wasn’t too happy.”
How to buzz through main door visitors we never figured out. The odd contraption mounted on Pam’s apartment wall wasn’t what we thought; another mystery later clarified by a helpful neighbour.
The current mystery was more pressing. As we decompressed with pizza and wine, trying to assess the lay of the land, Dorothée noticed a bunch of papers on a side table. As we talked and ate, she idly thumbed through the pile. Suddenly stopping, she looked up. In her right hand was a booklet. Bingo, it was Pam’s address book! Flicking through the pages, she found the names and, hallelujah, the telephone numbers of the two listed visitor friends provided by the hospital coordinator.
In a later telephone call, we learned one visitor friend was a professional colleague, a retired head nurse. Prior to COVID, a group of retired head nurses from the Montreal General Hospital had gathered monthly to lunch together. Pam had been part of that collegial group. They supported each other when able, but most were advancing in age. This colleague lived within walking distance of the rehab hospital. That is what she explained on the telephone call. She had been visiting Pam but didn’t know how else to help her. Pam’s needs were greater than her group of aging friends could support.
We later learned that Pam had kept much of her life segmented. Her Montreal friends and colleagues never knew of her nursing friends in Toronto and their families. They knew she had distant nieces and nephews in England, but nothing of her “adopted” family in Toronto. They had thought she was alone. Glad to help, the second friend withdrew, making space for Dorothée’s name. Rather than including my name, we decided the first friend should stay. Once we returned home, who would visit Pam then?
Desert Hospital
Dorothée endured those hospital visits alone. Encased in personal protective equipment (PPE), she lived in a sauna-like outfit for hours. The claustrophobic conditions weren’t exclusive to the PPE. The hospital room housed two patient stations, each with a bed, chair, and meal table crammed so closely together there was hardly space to stand. Confined to their hospital rooms, nowhere could patients walk, not even in the hallways because of COVID restrictions. Inmates in prison had more freedom.
Later, on a walk, when describing her first visit with Pam, Dorothée exclaimed, “I swear to God, in the five hours I was there, I saw one nurse, and I only saw her once.”
My sister-in-law couldn’t fathom the conditions and lack of patient attention.
Eager for fresh air, we had ventured outdoors. Despite the four-inch gap between our heights with Dorothée bearing the handicap, she strode the icy Montreal streets like a giant. I sensed her need to shake off the daytime claustrophobia. The wintry roads were no match for her determination as she clearly sighted her path.
In her wake, I scurried in a breathy fog, having not yet discovered the trick of taping a pandemic mask to the bridge of my nose. With a path obscured by fogged prescription glasses, and terrified each footfall would land on an undetected ice-patch, or worse, descend into one of Montreal’s notorious pot holes, keeping up was a challenge. I was in good shape, but Dorothée was clearly agitating to outrun an interior angst. Perhaps with a growing inclination, as desert strangers, our trip to Montreal might also end in a bottomless pot hole.
To be continued…