Hazel is 97 years old. That means she was born in 1898. If you ask her how old she is, she says she's 93. I wouldn't dare ask her myself; I overheard a nurse ask her once. But honestly, she doesn't look a day over 70.
Hazel's bed is in the same room as my mom's. Hazel is said to be in Room 4B while my mom is in Room 4A, but the only thing that separates them is a thin curtain.
Hazel is in the Los Gatos Community Hospital Rehabilitation Center because she broke her hip. She had surgery on it about three weeks ago. It causes her a great amount of pain. When the nurses move her from her wheelchair to her bed or vice versa, or when they change her bandage, Hazel screams out loud in agony. "What are you doing? Help! Help!" she yells when this happens.
Hazel used to live in a different state. I think she said Massachusetts. It's not her who doesn't remember, it's me who doesn't remember. Maybe it was Connecticut or North Dakota. Anyway, her son, Dick, lives in San Jose and moved her here a few years ago so that he could take care of her. Then she fell and broke her hip and had to have surgery and now she's in Rehab.
I don't know if the nurses expect her to actually rehabilitate or not. Most of the other patients have Physical Therapy every day, where they have to lift weights or try to stand up, but I've never seen Hazel in the PT gym. Maybe they are waiting for her to recover more strength. It might be that they are treating her gently and expect that she will die here in the hospital.
But Hazel doesn't seem even close to death: She's very strong and healthy. (Aside from the pain in her hip.) Her voice is very loud, not quiet like my grandmother's is. Hazel's hearing is going though. You have to speak loudly to get her to hear you because her hearing aid is not very effective at all.
Hazel doesn't need to sleep much. Most of the time, she calls out for help at seven o'clock in the morning and the nurses put her in her wheelchair. This wheelchair weighs 63 kilograms (it says so on the back so that the nurses can put the wheelchair on a giant set of scales with Hazel in it, and then they subtract the weight of the wheelchair and can find out if Hazel is losing weight or gaining weight).
Hazel doesn't like lying in bed by herself. Her hearing is so bad that she often won't hear me or my family when we're talking to my mom. She can't see us because of the curtain. If somebody says something loud enough that she can hear, Hazel will ask, "Who's there? Where am I? Oh, won't you please help me?"
None of us can ignore Hazel when she asks for help. The fear in her voice is too much.
When my dad or I talk to Hazel, we try to calm her down, although that's difficult to do. Mostly I just repeat things that I've heard the nurses and her son say to her. You're okay. You're just confused because you're waking up from a nap. You're in the hospital. Everything will be all right. Your son will be here to visit you soon.
Her son, Dick, has a bright red face and a jolly manner. His face is covered in sores because he just had a treatment to remove skin cancer from his nose, cheeks and forehead. Dick knows how to calm down Hazel right away, because of his reassuring phrasing. "Now you know why you're in the hospital. You remember how you broke your hip." He doesn't leave her any room for doubt or argument.
His wife mostly reads while Dick talks to her. The two of them hold hands when they wheel Hazel around the hospital. They don't visit every day; maybe once every three days.
Sometimes, a few hours after he leaves, Hazel will call out and ask to see her son. "Does he know I'm here?" is one of the questions she asks.
The nurses will leave Hazel in her wheelchair and put her in the middle of the corridor of the hospital. Often they'll give her a vanilla milkshake to drink. Hazel sits up and can see all the people going by. She sees people dressed like doctors and nurses and remembers that she is in a hospital. If she were in a room by herself she wouldn't remember.
The nurses only put Hazel to bed when she's actually going to sleep. They're tired of explaining to her that she's in the hospital and how she got here.
Anytime Hazel goes to sleep, she forgets where she is. She wakes up by herself in an unfamiliar bed with a pain in her side. Once she woke and called out asking if she was dead and if this was heaven.
There are two pictures by Hazel's bed. One is of her son and daughter-in-law. The other is of a large family: seven or eight people and a dog. I think these people are her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The youngest child in the picture looks to be about 18 years old.
I once wrote a story about a man losing his memory. It always seemed to me that the saddest, most frustrating thing in the world would be to realize that you can't remember basic, critical things -- like where you are and how you got there and the names of your friends and family. It seems to me that you'd lose all hope when you understood how much you'd lost. Hazel has said to me more than once, after I explain to her what's going on, "You must think I'm going crazy."
I say, "Hazel, you're just a little confused right now. You're 97 years old, so it's natural that your memory isn't as good now as it used to be. Don't worry, everything will be okay."
I would really like to see a picture of Hazel when she was a young woman. Photographs in the 1920's used to have a soft focus, like the subject was surrounded by mist.
I never know if I'm lying to Hazel when I say that everything will be okay.
The nurses don't know where Hazel is. As far as I know, I will never see her again.