Margie, the Screamer

I was only in the rehab center long enough to get my left leg stronger but Margie must have been there way longer. Her room had a worn look and her wheelchair needed redone. She screamed almost constantly that she had to "go."

We all thought she was mentally off but the days when I stopped by her table at meals and talked to her, her screaming would almost stop.

On about the fifth day she began shouting for her "Momma" in the middle of the night and I got out of bed and walked down to her room. Her light was on and I retrieved her pillows from the floor and helped her sit up so we could get them back in behind her. I asked her if she could draw a picture for me, laying the art tablet and pencil on her bed table. She took them and said she would try.

A night nurse came in and shooed me out but the next morning the tablet was at my place at breakfast. It had one shakily written word on it, "Thanks." But Margie was not at breakfast and later the nurses told me her kidneys had finally failed completely.

One of them said even though I broke the rules to enter her room at night, I was the first and the last visitor she had had in the whole time she had been there. That evening I learned that Margie had died in route to the hospital.