Death in Sunset Grove by Minna Lindgren

Author:Minna Lindgren [Lindgren, Minna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447289302
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter 30

Anna-Liisa and Siiri sat on the number 3 tram heading towards the handsome apartment blocks of Eira. Siiri tried to tell Anna-Liisa about her experiences in the Group Home, but her explanations were rather confused. After the shock of her longed-for first visit she had been back to see Irma at least twice a week, sometimes three times.

‘Irma still hasn’t recognized me once. I can’t take her outside and she can’t be taken for walks.’

‘Is she always in a wheelchair? She isn’t paralysed.’

All the patients were kept tied to a bed or a wheelchair, because it made it easier to take care of them. At mealtimes the patients were brought one at a time to the table to eat. They were offered a couple of spoonfuls of watery mashed potatoes with one nurse feeding twelve patients. And if one of them wasn’t lucid enough to eat them, the nurse concluded that the person wasn’t hungry and wheeled them back to their room to stare at the wall. When Siiri had tried to feed Irma, they quickly intervened. Feeding was a task for a trained nurse; they couldn’t let just anyone do it. If Siiri fed Irma, they told her, it would interfere with her rehabilitation process.

‘Rehabilitation process? How dare they!’ Anna-Liisa snapped. ‘Nobody in that dementia ward is trying to rehabilitate anyone. They’re just storing them there until it’s time to send them to the crematorium.’

Every day there was a different nurse on duty, and always only one, often a refugee who spoke little Finnish. Usually, the nurse just sat in the break room drinking coffee and reading the paper. Not once had Siiri seen anyone in the Group Home spend any time with the patients.

She’d often read in the paper about retirement homes where they rubbed the old people’s shoulders, manicured their nails, curled their hair, and drank coffee with them out of pretty cups. The closed unit at Sunset Grove was something quite different. Siiri was the only visitor – but who would want to visit old ladies like these? It just made a person feel guilty. Even Irma’s daughter Tuula thought that her mother was too out of it to miss her. But could that possibly be true? There was always someone shouting ‘help’ or ‘I need you’, but the nurses didn’t seem to pay any attention. And they talked about the patients as if they were numbers.

‘Bed seven? She always yells, don’t let it bother you. Her incontinence pad will be changed in the morning.’

Anna-Liisa and Siiri rode through Eira without speaking. Siiri wondered whether they should switch to the number 1A at some point and take it to Käpylä. It was the world’s northernmost tram route, after all, and she hadn’t ridden it in years. They could admire the old wooden houses. It would almost be like going out to the country. A trip to Käpylä was all the communing with nature that Siiri needed. She had never been a country girl like Irma,

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