Beatrice

           The first time I saw her, I was swimming in an outdoor pool on a glorious summer afternoon. The sun beamed a steady warmth, and there was a gentle wind that made the air feel tinged with cold on my exposed skin. The sight of this small framed woman tending to a man in a wheelchair captivated me.

            I tried not to stare.  I tried not to be “one of those people that stares at people with disabilities thinking they are "freaks from another planet," Or, as is typical, has a push pull response as a result of feeling some degree of fear that they might actually "catch" whatever the person they are staring at has that got them in the wheelchair in the first place. "They" remind me that it could happen to me; I feel uncomfortable.

            So I did the sidestroke.  Besides, they were too busy fussing with the lifeguard, who was trying to figure out how the lift worked to get him in the water. It’s called a Hoyer lift, and the idea is to get someone’s body from point A (the wheelchair) to point B (in the pool) without dropping them.

            That part I couldn’t watch.  To this day, I have no idea how one can trust another human being to suspend you in midair for any length of time.  God willing, I never will.  But then we do what we’ve gotta do, don’t we? Which in his case, was a good half hour of watching him being assembled, hoisted, rotated, repositioned lifted, and finally lowered and released into the womb of water.

            She hopped right in and swiftly positioned various floatation devices under his legs, arms and neck, the idea being not to let him drown.  Again, I couldn’t watch.  Such heroic efforts being made to have a chance to float, I thought.  I wondered if they were lovers.  I wondered if they did this regularly, and if it was always such an ordeal.

             Once his head was securely positioned, she kissed him. Not with lips closed, but a full throttle deep tongue-action kiss that rendered me feeling a pang of envy. I thought of how fortunate he was to have her.  To be treated with such endearment and tenderness. I also wondered how many others were observing this uncommon behavior in our local town community pool.  Then I let it go, figuring it was nobody’s business, really.  What people will do for love.   

When B. answered an ad I posted for a personal care attendant (PCA), I emphasized that being on time was very important to me in the initial phone interview. She was 20 min. late; but for some reason, I didn't stick to my own guidelines, and hired her. I was intrigued by how, by nature, she was charming, delightful and upbeat. She had the kind of energy I wanted to be around

            With the exception of her being consistently late . . . half an hour to two hours once in a while; even half a day once, I believe I endured having her in my employ partially as a personal research project on her personality.  There’s a saying – if you’re early, you’re anxious, if you’re on time, you’re compulsive, and if you’re late, you’re hostile.

            In her case, I think she thought (and probably still does) that she is so needed and so important where she is that she never leaves, which was also my experience when she worked with me.  I didn’t have much of a life back then, so her coming in late wasn’t as much of a source of stress as it would be now.  When she did arrive, I had to listen to a litany of excuses, rationales and apologies, whereupon at least 15 minutes would have gone by.  When she left, she had to double and triple check all the jobs she had done to make sure that everything was in order.   Clearly, she had an obsessive-compulsive "issue." At the time, (and to this day, to some degree) I wasn't aware of such a thing; nor was I into labels, per se.)

She shared stories about how she was her boyfriend’s live-in PCA. How it was the best of both worlds because she "lived there rent-free and got paid to tend to his needs."  He was a qudraplegic (he only had use of his body from the neck up as a result of a motorcycle accident) and needed to be fed, changed, bathed, and have every basic need tended to 24/7.  Sex was a big part of their relationship.  She would sometimes arrive late report how exhausted she was, the reason being her boyfriend had popped a Viagra, and she had spent many many hours hours assuming all kinds of positions to satisfy his needs. (She claims to have learned how to satisfy her own needs at the same time, which was too much information for me.)  I find it curious that scientifically, we can’t solve problems like menstrual cramps or a wide variety of medical issues, but we can give a man a pill that makes him stay hard for hours. 

            I once gave her the task of dusting shelves in my bedroom, only to find, an hour later that she hadn’t gotten beyond the first set because she was in the bathroom running tap water gently over each individual figurines.  When I asked her what she was doing and why she was not just picking them up and dusting them with a damp cloth (“like a normal person would have” I thought but didn’t say) her answer was a confident “these are so delicate that I want to treat them accordingly”. 
           I reassigned her to another task.  

            Once a week B. would drive me for an hour and a half to see an acupuncturist near Boston.  I would ride in the front passenger seat on the way there and I would sleep in the back seat on the way home after my treatment.  At the time, I could walk with forearm canes and his office was on the second floor of a brick building that housed huge lofts. 

            On one particular trip, she chose to gun it in order to pass two tractor-trailer rigs and we were pulled over by a cop who had clocked her going 84mph in a 55mph zone.  Her immediate response was to get out of the car.  The cop was parked at least 50 yards behind us, got out of the car with a bullhorn and said, very firmly “get back in the car."  B. got back in the car for about 5 seconds and immediately got back out again; she stared at him with her hands on her hips. Needless to say, he repeated his announcement even louder, adding “put your hands in the air where I can see them."

            I chose to have a sense of humor about it and observe rather than intervene and possibly make a bad situation worse.  When he finally sidled up to the car, without  solicitation, B. began to emphatically explain that I, pointing at me, had multiple sclerosis and chemical sensitivities, and that B. was "driving fast to get me out of harm’s way from the fumes. " He whipped out his pad and instructed her that she was going 84 mph in a 55 mph zone.  After reviewing her license and my registration, he went back to his car to so whatever they do when that happens.  B. told me that she could not afford to get another ticket, and that if she got one, I would have to pay for it because it was my fault that she was driving so fast.  (Apparently, she had run a red light a few months earlier, and if she got this ticket, it would increase her insurance, which, she added, she wanted me to pay as well if she got the ticket. ) This was a side of her I had yet to meet, and under the circumstances; I wasn’t interested in investing any energy in discussing the matter. 

            Sure enough, she got a $300 ticket.  I had to endure listening to her repeat her victim story the rest of the trip.  She became unhinged, unraveled, and impossible to be around.  And I was paying her for this?  I remember her taking her sweet time getting the back seat of the car organized for me after the treatment; I was tired and needed to climb in, recline and sleep. When I asked her what she was doing, she snapped at me, clearly being passive aggressive.  I don’t believe I slept during that ride home; I was clearly upset, as was she.

            In an attempt to be kind, I accompanied her to the court date where she tried to appeal the ticket.  She thought my presence, me being in a wheelchair and all, would make the court magistrate take pity on her – I was her token of victimhood.  He did, as he did with everybody else, reduce the ticket by 50%, which didn’t satisfy B..  She went on, as she had with the police officer, to reiterate my being chemically sensitive because of the MS, blah blah blah.  Her antics only gave rise to his impatience, and he told her that she "needed to learn some respect and take responsibility for her behavior."

            I was doomed, and so was she, for this was the straw that broke the camels back in having B. as an employee.  I can’t believe I actually contributed $100 towards the cost of her ticket , and when she  continued to push the point that she wanted me to pay for the increase in her car insurance, I finally l fired her.