DeepDyve eBooks - The Room at the End of the Hall

The Home

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 5 –9

[The Home is a former corporate office building, and it is huge. The lobby still has a businesslike vibe, brisk, and modern, with a circular reception desk in the center, where visitors sign in: Name, Affiliation, Person You Are Visiting. I put down my name, and next to it “Ombudsman,” but I...

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Summer, Thursday Morning

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 10 –13

[We are supposed to give it four hours a week but in the beginning, I am barely managing two. Dee doesn’t check on me, and I feel guilty all the time. The senior ombudsman and I plan our visits at different times. We are supposed to visit randomly, so the staff does not know when we are coming.]

LitStream

The Case of Oliver and the Wheelchair

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 14 –16

[A call came in from the parents of Oliver, asking if an ombudsman could attend a meeting concerning him.1 (Dee takes the calls and complaints at the local Office for Aging, so we don’t have to give out our home phone numbers.)]

LitStream

Fall, Thursday Morning

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 17 –20

[Now, I not only have a routine, I have a path. I park, stow my pocketbook under the front seat of the car so I am hands free, tuck my car keys and a small pad and pen in my coat pocket, head for the front door, sign in, head straight down the center corridor, take the stairs on the left up, walk...

LitStream

The Case of the Man who Would not Budge

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 21 –22

[It was a hot Indian summer morning. I had just arrived in the parking lot of the Home and I was hanging my badge around my neck and shoving my handbag under the car seat. A small crowd was gathered around a man I recognized as a resident. He was in a wheelchair under the green canopy over the...

LitStream

Late Fall, Thursday Morning

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 23 –25

[As I begin to recover from the shock of the extreme nature of this Home, I realize more and more ways besides having no locks on the doors, in which it is not much different from other nursing homes.]

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The Case of the Suffocated Man

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 26 –27

[I was losing my outsider status, but still playing catch-up. Something was always going on, and I felt as though I was always the last to know. I missed the incident when a brain-injured resident wandered all the way to the railroad tracks before someone realized he was gone, and I missed the...

LitStream

Thanksgiving, Thursday Morning

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 28 –28

[I have a lot of cooking to do, but Dee has asked me to come in, to see Mr. Otis, who has called urgently to report that the Home is stealing his money. Or won’t give him an accounting of his funds. He was not clear which. I stop at the business office, and get a copy of his most recent...

LitStream

Myra, Leading Citizen

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 29 –30

[She was spread out on the bench in the lobby. She covered the length of it, her thick legs wide apart, taking up space on either side with her knees. A lot of residents at the Home gained weight being there. The dead hours stuck to them. Stillborn plans of other lives were in their bellies.]

LitStream

Early Winter, Thursday Morning

Moskowitz, Bette Ann

Pages: 31 –32

[I am here to visit Miss Jones, a young college student who has a brain injury because of drug abuse. She is alert and anxious for my help. She is aphasic and though she knows what she is thinking, her words are hard to understand. I don’t think it affects her ability to read and understand. She...

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The Room at the End of the Hall

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The Room at the End of the Hall

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