Interconnected Lives

Kayce Popejoy

Day1

Eventhough I have a regular diary, I'm going to use this to log about theweird crap happening at work.

Asan explanation, I work at a nursing home in Little Rock, Arkansas.It's a three floor facility with a maximum capacity of five-hundredresidents in their own private rooms. I won't state the name of theplace since it would break my HIPPA contract, but I'll give as muchinfo as I can.

Normallyeverything is really average. Lots of beeping, old people crying,staff talking, all the awful smells you can expect from anestablishment filled with incontinent adults. It's a far cry fromglamorous on a good day, and downright nasty on a bad one, butgenerally the atmosphere hovers in the middle. Usually you can tuneout the background noise and you become nose-blind to the regularsmell of antiseptic and full adult briefs.

Theweird comes in the form of most of the staff thinking thefifty-year-old building is haunted. To be fair, hundreds of peoplehave died in there. Many of those were depressed, unloved, andunwanted elderly people. I could see where a few of those peoplewould hang around. A few of the highly religious among staff evenbelieve there are demons roaming the halls.

Personally,I'm not sure. I've been there about two months as a part timehousekeeper on the first floor, which is the floor for peoplerecovering before going home. None of those residents are permanent.Not too many have up and died on that floor. Not much goes on. Thingshave gone missing or shown up in weird places, but I feel prettysafe.

Floortwo is for long term residents who have no mental problems. They'reas average as you can expect. I haven't gotten to spend much timethere, so I can only report what others have told me. Staff on thesecond floor talk about seeing residents who passed away walking thehalls, sometimes showing up at the nurses station asking the ChargeNurse questions. It's freaky, but no one ever seems to feelthreatened.

That'swhere the top floor comes in. The third floor is reserved exclusivelyfor residents with diseases like Alzheimer's, late-formingpersonality disorders, violent outbursts, etc. I was only up thereonce, but it wasn't fun. In Arkansas, residents have the right toscream and hit themselves or even throw themselves to the floor. Aslong as they don't injure other residents the nurses aren't allowedto stop them unless they're really hurting themselves.

Soimagine walking onto a ward that's nearly dead silent except forperiodic screaming from far off down the halls. You don't even hearany TV's because 90%of the elderly are loopy from theiranti-psychotic meds and don't care about anything. The nursing staffis so jaded they don't look like they even hear it anymore.

Ihate going up there, and am always glad to not be there when I hearall the stories of residents suddenly choking to death on nothing.Sometimes the nurses talk about seeing shapes like white shadowsmoving across walls in the middle of the day. The shadow slips intopatient rooms, then the door will slam shut and the resident insidestarts screaming. By the time the CNA's get in the poor old personwill be splayed out on the floor covered in bruises and very muchdead.

Iwouldn't be nearly as bothered by all this, but I've been offered afull time position to work on the third floor. As much as it freaksme out, I have to accept it. Right now I'm only part time on thefirst floor. Switching will give me a $1 raise per hour, 15 morehours a week, and medical benefits. I can't afford to turn down thatkind of offer.

So,I thought it may be fun to keep a catalog of anythingcrazy/creepy/weird that may go on. Wish me luck!

Day3

Onlymy first day in the ACU (Alzheimer care unit for all you luck enoughto not work in a medical establishment) and there's already been adeath. I doubt it can be connected to the stories I heard though. Ioverheard that it was a diabetic seizure, but maybe it was one of thewhite shadow's victims (so spook!)?