Morgue: A Life in Death by Vincent Dimaio & Ron Franscell

Author:Vincent Dimaio & Ron Franscell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781250067142
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

Indeed, the Bexar County Hospital was worried. At least one nurse had come forward earlier with suspicions. At least one doctor expressed qualms about a baby death he couldn’t explain. The death rate in the pediatric ICU was higher than it should be. And whether this was anomalous or deliberate, it would all be an enormous embarrassment if it got out.

Two internal inquiries yielded no firm conclusions, but a common thread surfaced: Nurse Genene Jones’s name kept coming up. A dark portrait began to emerge.

Genene Jones was born in San Antonio on July 13, 1950, and was immediately given up for adoption. She grew up short and chubby, felt ugly, and had few friends because she was a drama queen who lied chronically, yelled a lot, and was unpleasant to be around. Throughout her life, she occasionally told stories of sexual and physical abuse as a child, although the stories were always a little fuzzy, and after an endless string of lies, nobody took her seriously anyway. She also began to feign sickness as a way to get attention.

At sixteen, her younger brother was killed when a homemade pipe bomb exploded in his face. A year later, her slightly shady father died of cancer. Acquaintances say she was devastated, even though Genene was fond of saying she grew up unwanted and unloved. Her adoptive mother became her sole supporter.

After high school, Genene reportedly pretended to be pregnant to force her slacker boyfriend to marry her. But within a few months, he joined the Navy, and between affairs with a string of married men, Genene took beauty school classes.

When her husband returned from the Navy, they had a child, but they divorced after only four years of marriage. Soon she was genuinely pregnant, so she began to look for a better job that would pay more than she was making as a beautician (and would salve her unnatural fear of getting cancer from hair chemicals).

She’d once worked in a hospital beauty salon, and she’d developed a special attraction to doctors. A lightbulb switched on. Genene dumped her son on her mother and enrolled in classes to become a licensed vocational nurse. Shortly after graduation in 1977, she had another child, who also was dumped in her mother’s care, and Genene began her new career.

Surprisingly, Genene proved to be a pretty good nurse, although she hated being just one cut above a candy striper. She believed deeply she should be in charge. She became obsessed with diagnosing people, even though it wasn’t her job.

Now twenty-seven, she lost her first job at San Antonio’s Methodist Hospital after only eight months when she was fired for being too bossy, too rough, and too eager to make decisions that were well above her pay grade. Her next job, at the small, private Community Hospital in San Antonio, was also brief.

In 1978, she was hired to work in the pediatric intensive care unit at Bexar County Hospital, a fairly new facility that largely served the poorest citizens in America’s seventh largest city.

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