The Two Amys by Esther Minskoff

THE TWO AMYS

By
Esther Minskoff

© Copyright Esther Minskoff 2021

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Prologue

Many people, especially cynics, would view Amy as a simple, sweet
woman, one of the faceless, working masses who make our world run smoothly.
They would focus on her limited education (an associate college degree), her
health care job (licensed practical nurse), and her personal life (a happily married
wife, mother, and grandmother). However, they would be mistaken. Behind the
façade of averageness lies a complex woman who focuses on being kind to others
in a sometimes unkind world and doing the right thing when that choice may be the
most difficult. Her pretty face, plump body, and nurse’s uniform camouflage a
reflective woman who searches to understand good and evil, especially after a
tragedy makes her question good and evil within herself. She realizes that she is
two Amys – one good and one evil, even an Amy capable of killing. Perhaps we
are all two Amys. Perhaps we are all capable of killing under certain
circumstances.

In a way, the good Amy is a rarity, like the 22 endangered Gobi bears or the
55 endangered Maui dolphins still in existence, because she is kind, empathic, and
unselfish. She feels that she was born to be like this – that this is her genetic
destiny. She is convinced of this whenever she compares herself to her parents.
She was born to and raised by parents who were saturated with hatred and
prejudice. Somehow, Amy was able to repel the insidious effects of her parents,
Karl and Greta Herman. They were not violently destructive haters; they did not
physically hurt people or damage property. They were passive supporters of
violence and destruction who expressed their views to their like-minded friends
and by how they voted.

From a young age, they tried to instill their bigotry into Amy. Their actions
are personified in the lyrics of the song from the Broadway show South Pacific –
“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

You’ve got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught

From year to year.

It’s got to be drummed

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In your dear little ear

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made.

And people whose skin is a different shade.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late.

Before you are six or seven or eight.

To hate all the people your relatives hate.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Her parents tried to teach their hatred to their only child, Amy, from the time
before she was six to when at 18 she married and severed all ties with them. They
openly voiced their hatred for blacks who they believed were sub-human and
should be shipped back to Africa. If it were not illegal to lynch blacks, they would
attend public hangings and be the faces in the crowds, like those pictured in sepia-
tinged photos from the past. They hated Jews although they’d never even met one,
and inexplicably believed that they had horns on their heads. Had they lived in
Germany during World War II, they would have claimed not to know that Jews
were slaughtered in concentration camps despite moving into a furnished
apartment of a Jewish family evicted from their home. They’d look at the pictures
of the Jewish family still hanging on the walls and feel no guilt at their
extermination. They thought homosexuals were morally despicable and should be
jailed, or better yet castrated. They felt their views were confirmed when they
heard of homosexuals being executed in Arab countries.

Amy vividly recalled an incident of her mother trying to instill the seeds of
hatred in her when she was about five. She was at a park playing in a sandbox. Her
mother was busy talking to other mothers and not paying attention to Amy. There
was a black boy who was also in the sandbox, and together they were making
cakes. They patted each other’s hands as they shaped the sand cakes. When her
mother saw this, she jumped up and pulled Amy out of the sandbox. As she
dragged her away, she said, “Don’t ever touch a nigger’s hand.” Amy didn’t know

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what a nigger was, but assumed the black child was one since she had touched his
hand. She went on, “Next thing you know he’ll want to put his weewee inside
you.”

Amy had no idea what she was talking about. What was a weewee? With the
passage of time, she understood that her mother was saying. “If you let a black boy
touch your hand, he will immediately try to have sex with you.”

Despite hearing her parents’ vitriolic words for 18 years, Amy managed not
to internalize them. She marveled at how she was able to silently reject their
venom. It was as if she had an internal judge who ruled the words from her
parents’ mouths as untrue and morally wrong. She never expressed her feelings to
them because she feared her parents’ reaction to her insubordination. She was a
“good” child who never openly disagreed with her parents. So, she was silent until
the day she left when she spewed out the feelings that had accumulated
exponentially over 18 years.

On the last day she saw them, she said, “I hate you because of your hatred,”
becoming acutely aware of the irony of her words as she spoke them. She
reciprocated with the feeling that she most detested in them. For the rest of her life,
she mulled over this conundrum without reaching a resolution on how not to react
to hatred with hatred. She re-read St. Paul’s words, “Do not repay evil for evil,”
and Martin Luther King’s words, “Returning hate for hate multiples hate, adding
deeper darkness to the night already devoid of stars. Only love can drive out hate.”
And of course, the Biblical admonition, “Love thy enemies.” She couldn’t
internalize these sentiments. They remained hollow words to her. And Mandela’s
miracle of transforming South Africa’s policy of apartheid to democracy through
forgiving was unfathomable to her. She looked inside herself and could not find
forgiveness for her parents. She concluded that they were haters who could not
change. But so was she.

When Amy took a psychology course in college, she became fascinated by
the nature-nurture issue as it applied to herself. She asked herself the question:
“What is more important in determining the type of person you become - your
genes or your environment?” Most scientists believe that the two interact; genetics
set the range for a trait, and where in that range a person falls is determined by
one’s environment. That explains inheritance of physical and psychological traits,
but it doesn’t explain a case like Amy’s. She felt that genetics alone determined the

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person she became. Somehow, she had inherited “good” genes from a distant
ancestor, or miraculously her parents’ bad genes had mutated into good genes.
Environment played no part in explaining the person Amy became after 18 years of
living in a greenhouse for cultivating hatred.

There is so much research on the genetics behind diseases, intelligence,
mental illness, and creating the “ideal” child which primarily focuses on
intellectual, psychological, and physical traits. People want good looking, smart
children, but not necessarily kind children. Kindness, compassion, and empathy are
“fuzzy” concepts, much like the soul; and therefore, not the subjects of science, but
cast into the less exalted fields of philosophy and religion.

Even as a young child Amy was interested, even fascinated, with right and
wrong and with good and evil. In Sunday School when she was six, she learned the
Ten Commandments. She fervently believed it was imperative that she follow
them. But with time, she sensed that she was breaking the fifth commandment to
honor thy father and mother. She knew she was different from her parents in many
ways, but most importantly in the hatred they harbored in their hearts. She couldn’t
honor people who felt like this.

Amy felt most fulfilled when she did things for others. She believed that by
being kind and doing good she was making a difference in the world, no matter
how infinitesimal. Her job as a nurse working with dementia patients validated her
belief that she was destined to do good for others, especially the neediest.

But some of her beliefs were challenged when Ashley, one of her dementia
patients, was a victim of a brutal rape. After Amy learned the identity of the rapist,
she desperately prayed for justice for Ashley and punishment for the rapist. And
the only punishment she viewed as fitting was death. She could only react to the
evil in this man by seeing the sixth commandment – thou shalt not kill – broken.
He had to be stopped from spreading his evil and punished for what he had done to
Ashley. Not honoring one’s parents was a minor sin compared to the sin of killing.
But to Amy, killing the rapist was justified, and therefore not a sin. In fact, she
believed that God commanded that somehow she make sure that he be punished by
death. And eventually he was. Amy recognized that she had another side of herself,
one that condoned hatred, violence, and vengeance. One side of Amy was good
and one was evil. She was two Amys.

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Chapter 1

Amy was the night shift supervisor of the memory care unit for dementia
patients at Shady Oaks Senior Community. Now this was a job that most people
would not like, and some might even detest because of the setting, the patients, and
the hours. Who would want to work in a nursing home which is essentially a small
institution for terminally ill patients along with caregivers who range from truly
caring, even loving, to caregivers who are indifferent and occasionally even hateful
to their patients? Amy chose to work in such a setting. Who would want to work
with senile, needy people who mostly take from their caregivers and rarely give
anything in return? Amy chose to work with such people. Who would want to
work from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM when most people are safely tucked away in their
warm beds? Amy chose to work the night shift.

It might appear strange that Amy felt privileged to work at Shady Oaks. This
was the last stop for her patients so she wanted to make it as much like a
comforting home as possible. She loved her dementia patients: her “people” as she
called them, as if they were her extended family. Some find dementia patients
unpleasant, repulsive, and frightening. Maybe because they feel that “there but for
the grace of God go I.”

And there was something about working from 11 PM to 7 AM that appealed
to Amy. The atmosphere was different – it was subdued, sometimes even calm
without the constant bustle of the staff and visitors during the day shift. Amy found
that there was a mystical spirituality at night. It was when she asked herself the
why questions she’d been asking for a long time. Why are some people struck
down with dementia ending their lives with sadness and hopelessness? Why is
there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why? Why?
Although questions abounded, answers did not.

Ironically, working the night shift enabled Amy to spend more time with her
family at home. Amy’s home was totally different than Shady Oaks. It was a “real”
home with grandparents, a parent, and a grandchild, all of whom loved each other
dearly. Working the night shift enabled Amy to sleep while her husband, Keith,
and her daughter, Teri, were at work, and her granddaughter, Tammy, was at
school.

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Amy slept until 3:30 PM when Tammy got home from school. Then she and
Tammy played, shopped, or just spent quality time together. Promptly at 6:30
every night, the family sat down to a home cooked dinner to nourish their bodies
with food and their souls with love. Their family life was like a 1950’s TV sitcom.
Everyone was loving and unselfishly caring.

But best of all was the time when Amy put Tammy to sleep. She got into bed
with her and sang songs, told stories, and painted a bright picture of Tammy’s
future. Someday Tammy would realize her dream to become a kindergarten
teacher; marry a handsome, kind man; have twins, a boy and a girl; and have a
yellow and a black Labrador Retriever, something she couldn’t have now because
of Teri’s allergy to dogs.

Amy often wondered why she loved her granddaughter so intensely. She
knew all grandparents loved their grandkids, but Amy’s love for Tammy was all-
encompassing. She knew that, without hesitation, she would give her life for
Tammy. Was her love for Tammy so intense because they looked so much alike?
When Amy looked at pictures of herself at Tammy’s age, she was amazed at the
similarity between them. Did she see herself reflected in Tammy? Did she hope
that this version of herself would achieve her life goals in a way that Amy hadn’t
been able to? Would this give Amy a sense of vicarious fulfillment?

Many people thought that Tammy was Amy’s daughter because of their
resemblance. At 42, Amy could certainly have a six-year-old. They both had
blond curly hair, and were plump, not fat, but pleasingly plump. Their bodies
looked like nudes painted by Renaissance artists. They had a kind of plumpness
that made you want to snuggle close to them for warmth and comfort. Their faces
were round, and their pink cheeks asked to be pinched by well-meaning, but
politically incorrect people commenting on how cute they were. Their twinkling
blue eyes reflected a keen interest in everything and everyone around them.

They also had similar personalities. They were innately happy and wore
perennial hints of smiles. The corners of their mouths naturally turned upward.
And they were truly kind, never intentionally saying a mean word to or about
anyone. They rarely missed an opportunity to compliment someone whenever it
was merited, and even when it wasn’t if it served a good purpose, like boosting an
insecure person’s self-esteem.

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Even at six, Tammy showed empathy for the less fortunate, just as her
grandmother did. Tammy often volunteered to help the two special education
students mainstreamed in her class when they had difficulty with a task. She would
explain how to perform a task when they didn’t understand the teacher’s directions,
or she would help them when a task was too difficult for them to perform
independently. Although there was a classroom aide to help these children, they
preferred getting help from Tammy. She was a supportive peer who made them
feel that they could succeed like everyone else in the class.

Amy focused on the beauty around her. She always stopped to appreciate a
vivid sunrise or sunset so she could marvel at the day to come or the day that had
been. When she found a perfectly formed rose in her garden, she inhaled its
essence. She rarely picked her flowers because she wanted them to thrive in their
natural habitat.

She believed that everyone, including herself, could make the world a better
place, if only an inch at a time. Was she an idealist, who with other like-minded
people could improve the world someday? Or was she a Pollyanna filled with
unreasonable and blind optimism? The answer depends upon the worldview of the
questioner.

But Amy had one big difference from Tammy – her laugh. Amy had a
booming, mirthful laugh that was infectious making most people around her, even
dour people, laugh, but more quietly, or at least crack a smile. However, there were
always some grinches who were bothered by her laughter and its intrusion into
their dismal worlds. Her laugh reflected her inner happiness. She saw pain and
suffering throughout her workday, but she didn’t let that depress her. She viewed
them as unavoidable aspects of the life cycle that had to be faced bravely. They
had to be counterbalanced by focusing on the good and beautiful even when, at
times, these were elusive.

Not only did Amy search for the good around her, sometimes the good
seemed to find Amy. One night while making her rounds, Amy went into Diane’s
room. Diane, like many dementia patients, had mostly bad days, with an occasional
good one. On the bad days she was unresponsive to words. She lay frozen in her
bed looking like a corpse, except for the faint in-and-out motion of her chest. But
on that day Diane surprised Amy. She was sitting up in bed and greeted Amy with
a smile, and brightly asked, “Who are you?”

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“I’m your nurse Amy,” she replied with surprise.

When Amy touched her hand, Diane said, “Your skin feels warm. Are you
sick? Get in bed with me and I’ll make you feel better Amy.”

What a shock! Diane remembered Amy’s name after being told just once.
More surprisingly, she cared about Amy’s health. She focused outward on
someone else in her surroundings. Somehow, she had cracked open a seemingly
impenetrable mental door to peek outside before it slammed shut and locked
permanently.

Amy looked into Diane’s eyes and saw a faint glimmer of the caring woman
she had been prior to the assault of Alzheimer’s on her brain. Being a wife for 60
years, a mother of five, and a grandmother of 11, Diane knew what it was like to
care about others. Amy wished Dianes’s family could have witnessed this fleeting
emergence of the caring woman she had once been.

As she was leaving, Diane called out, “Don’t go Amy.”

Again, Amy was shocked at Diane recalling her name and her desire to
continue their interaction. Amy tenderly kissed her forehead, and said, “Good-bye
my friend.”

Soon after Amy left her room, Diane reverted to her vegetative state. She
died a week later. Maybe this was her fond farewell to the world she had known
before Alzheimer’s. Why had she chosen Amy to bid farewell to? Why not
someone else who worked at Shady Oaks? Why not a family member? Did she
somehow sense that Amy cared about her? Was this her way of thanking her? Was
there an undamaged part of Diane that continued to exist deep inside her? Was it
locked away to be given a brief reprieve before death?

As Amy left Diane’s room, she turned her thoughts to a topic she
contemplated on quiet nights - how little is known about the perplexing disease
named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist who first identified the
condition in 1906. Despite over 100 years of studying the disease, relatively little
is still known about it, and sadly a cure seems distant. But Amy was sure of one
thing. The brain did not have an off and on switch. There were gradations of
impairment in different functions at different times. From experience, she knew
that memory stopped working, but not always completely. In some patients,

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memories wafted in and out, or they were modified. And there were functions of
the brain that worked sometimes (like recognition of people) and there were parts
of the brain that changed (like non-violent people becoming violent). As Amy’s
experience with Diane demonstrated, the workings of the brain were baffling,
enigmatic, inscrutable, and perplexing. Although space has been called the final
unconquered frontier, it well may be the workings of the brain.

Although Amy was discouraged at the lack of progress toward a cure, she
was encouraged by strides made in improving the quality of life for Alzheimer’s
patients, especially with music and animal therapy. The music department at a
university near Shady Oaks paired college students majoring in music with
dementia patients. The students identified meaningful music from the patients’
pasts and played it for their enjoyment and to stimulate memories for when and
where they heard it. She witnessed some patients who rarely spoke recalling
words to entire songs. So little is known about human memory. It seems possible
that there is a different memory system for music than for language or faces or
things that we see, hear, feel, or experienced in the past. How can infinitesimally
tiny engrams of physical and chemical changes in the brain be responsible for
recalling our first kiss or our first experience driving a car?

When a program for pet therapy was introduced to the unit, Amy delighted
at witnessing the responsiveness of some patients to dogs and cats when in some
cases they were unresponsive to humans. Some became affectionate, even
protective as they sheltered them in their arms. To see them show tenderness was
evidence of the caring person still inside.

But most importantly was the attempt of the Shady Oaks staff to make the
environment as home-like as possible. There were holiday meals, religious
services, concerts by community groups, and field trips to parks and restaurants.
To the extent possible, Shady Oaks provided a home away from home.

On slow nights, there were two patients who Amy looked forward to
spending some time with - Jack and Ellen. They were insomniacs who kept Amy
company during the long, silent hours of the night. They sat in the living room area
and quietly scribbled in coloring books, leafed through outdated magazines, or
vacantly watched a muted TV.

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One night, Jack was looking at pictures of a safari in an ancient National
Geographic magazine. When Amy asked what he was reading, he replied,
“Something about a safari.” When she asked him how he was doing, he said, “So
fari so good.” Amy fondly kissed the top of his totally bald head, and said, “That
old punster’s still inside there.”

Making puns had been Jack’s forte before Alzheimer’s, but miraculously he
was still able to do this in the dead of night in a deserted room in a place for broken
people. Amy found these islands of lucidity in people who seemed to have little or
none left. Although she treated all her patients with respect, she recognized the
special people who occasionally surfaced in some of her patients. Because Jack
had been a surgeon prior to Alzheimer’s, she always addressed him as “Dr. Jack.”
How Amy wished she could find a way to bring people back for good, not just for
fleeting seconds.

You would think that it would be relatively quiet on the night shift of the
memory unit in a nursing home. But some nights, it wasn’t. There were some
patients with Sundowner’s Syndrome, whose behavior dramatically changed in the
early evening when natural light dimmed. There’s a glitch in their circadian
rhythm; their internal biological clock is off. They become agitated, restless, and
confused. By 11, most with Sundowners have quieted down. With complete
darkness, their biological clocks are reset.

Some nights there were patients who tried to leave the unit and had to be
returned to their rooms. They often set off shrill, deafening alarms as they tried to
open the locked doors. This woke some patients who yelled or cried in fear at what
the open doors might bring in. No, the night shift was not always tranquil.

No matter what was happening outside their rooms, there were some patients
who slept peacefully or silently laid awake pursuing unknowable dreams of times
past. Amy knew some of them dreamt because she saw their eyes darting back and
forth behind their closed eyelids. They showed REM, the rapid eye movements
associated with dreaming. Amy pictured their dreams like old-time silent, grainy
movies that flickered spasmodically. The analogy to old-time movies was
appropriate since most of the actors in these movies were the patients’ parents,
siblings, spouses, and children from many years ago.

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Sometimes there were emergencies at night like there were during the day,
but they were different. They were quieter, less frantic. Death was expected more
at night than during the day. Darkness gave death privacy. There were nights
when Amy believed that she actually saw the Angel of Death stalking the halls in
search of his next victim. He was always around, but during the day, his presence
was obscured by the light, noise, and activity in a busy nursing home. The staff,
visitors, therapists, and volunteers created a hive of buzzing activity. At night, the
Angel of Death freely roamed the halls as if this were his domain, and indeed it
was. Amy often had to call other staff or the rescue squad to prevent the Angel of
Death from planting his lethal kiss on a dying person’s lips, or she had to start the
process of officially pronouncing a person dead after the Angel had already
bestowed the fatal kiss.

Amy wasn’t especially religious, spiritual, or superstitious, but she was a
fervent believer in God. Strangely, she also believed in the Angel of Death, which
she realized was so inconsistent with her rational approach to life. She saw no
conflict between her belief in God and her belief in angels because she had actual
experiences when both had been in the memory unit at Shady Oaks.

She felt God’s presence when she witnessed unusual moments of kindness
and love. She recalled feeling God’s presence when she saw a dementia patient
come out of his haze to hold his new grandson for the first time. He smiled widely
as he lovingly said the baby’s name, “Herbert,” which was also his name. He
kissed the baby’s forehead as he said, “Thank you God for this blessing.”

She also saw the hand of God at work when she saw patients care for other
patients. Jane was a patient who had been a nurse before alcoholism annihilated
her brain and eventually led to dementia. Jane often helped feed her fellow
patients, escorted them to their rooms when they were lost, put sweaters on them
when they were cold, or held their hands or hugged them when they needed
comforting. The part of Jane’s brain where empathy dwelt had not been destroyed.
The nurse in her partially survived.

Amy had experienced the Angel of Death’s presence on the memory unit of
Shady Oaks too often to question his existence. When he was near, her senses
became saturated by him. When she entered a room where the Angel had been, she
felt a precipitous drop in the room temperature. It was as if icicles had been mixed
into the molecules in the air. She broke out in a cold sweat. She left a distinctive

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smell wherever he’d been. It was an acrid, stale odor, like rotting flesh, stale
garbage, or chemical gas. It was all these mingled together into a putrid mélange
that made her gasp for fresh air. As she entered a room where Death had been, she
even caught faint sounds lingering in the room, like murmurs. It was as if tiny,
flickering sound waves could be seen moving up and down on an oscilloscope.
What had he said? Perhaps words of welcome to the next world. Perhaps
comforting words to allay a person’s fear of what was coming next. Several times
she even thought that she had seen the Angel’s black robe fluttering as he scurried
away. She never saw his face. She knew she would only see his face when he came
to claim her. Her Angel of Death was not the Grim Reaper who carried a scythe to
harvest the souls of the dead. No, her Angel of Death wore a black hood pulled
over his face and a rustling robe and mercifully led people to the great beyond.

Amy didn’t fear the Angel of Death. In fact, she felt that they had a unique
relationship. She understood his purpose in the cycle of life and death. She felt
that he even showed mercy when he ended the unusually cruel suffering of some
dying patients. There is some psychological, spiritual, or existential pain that even
massive doses of morphine cannot dull. There were times when Amy thanked him
for bringing peace when it was desperately needed. She knew there were some
dying people who welcomed the Angel of Death into their open arms as he gently
kissed them.

Amy thought that the Angel of Death killed some people in stages. A light
kiss to the forehead resulted in the start of the demise of the brain in people with
dementia. When the brain was completely dead, he returned for the rest of the
body. This was his coup de grace. This second kiss on the lips was a death blow
ending the person’s suffering. It was a mercy killing.

She also believed in another angel, her Guardian Angel sent by God to
protect her from the Angel of Death until it was her time. Then at last, she would
see his face as he gently kissed her. She hoped that was many, many years off.
Like the poet Robert Frost, she believed that she had promises to keep and many
miles to go before she could sleep for eternity.

Amy wondered what happened after that final kiss. Did the Angel open a
door to the next world where there was a blinding shaft of light that people with
near death experiences describe? Did walking through that light heal the brains of
dementia patients? Did all the lost memories come flooding back? Had they been

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placed in temporary storage to be retrieved after life? Had the destroyed memory
engrams been resurrected? Had their souls continued to exist despite the brain’s
destruction? Amy believed that the soul did not have a biological base so it could
survive whatever physically happened to the body. To her, the soul was where God
dwelt in people. It was also the most unknowable, unfathomable part of
humankind. But she was sure of one thing - the soul existed even in her dementia
patients making them worthy of respect due all human beings.

Amy thought that the dead person was immediately taken to God for
judgment. Behind that door, she envisioned God sitting in judgment, rewarding
good people with eternal bliss in heaven and punishing evil people with eternal
damnation in hell. When she watched TV and saw hate-spewing people, dictators,
perpetrators of genocide, mass murderers, and child abusers, she knew there would
be eternal retribution for them. God would mete out the justice they deserved.
Although she did not know if her parents were still alive, she knew that when they
died, they would be condemned to hell for their evil racist beliefs.

Amy wondered about the relationship between the Angel of Death and
religion and the ministry. She never asked any of the clergy whom she knew how
they felt about the Angel of Death. They would probably think that she was crazy
or a fanatic fundamentalist. She also never told her family and friends about her
secret relationship with him. They, too, would think she was crazy. To Amy, the
Angel of Death was her invisible friend, whose existence was never to be shared.

On the memory unit, most clergy supported the family members, but there
were some who also ministered directly to the dementia patients. They always
touched them to let them know they were there to help them take the next step.
Some held one-way conversations with them and were undaunted by the lack of
coherent responses. Amy thought it was so important for people with dementia to
be touched. It was a way of getting through to them, sometimes the only way. She
knew that there were millions of sensory receptors on the skin that sent messages
to the parietal lobe of the brain. She was sure that some of the messages got
through. Her belief was confirmed when she pressed the hand of an unconscious
dementia patient who responded by pressing back on her hand.

There were some clergy who conducted services for Alzheimer patients
hoping to satisfy any spiritual needs they might have. One day Amy was meeting
the Shady Oaks director during the day shift and observed a service for memory

14

unit patients being conducted by a minister. Seated around the minister were 15
sleeping patients in the classic position of chin resting on chest and face hidden
from view. Maybe these ministers thought the patients were absorbing their
religious message in some way other than consciousness. Maybe they thought their
patients were like people in hypnotic trances who subconsciously absorb messages
being sent. Maybe they were right. No one knows.

Amy had witnessed remarkable results for some clergy and lucid hospice
patients on the other units at Shady Oaks. There were some clergy who showed a
special sensitivity to the needs of the dying and their families and were able to help
them attain a state of peace in their final days. But these were not dementia
patients. They were people who had intact minds but broken bodies, so different
from Alzheimer patients. Amy knew that dying Alzheimer patients, like all dying
people, need peaceful closure. Their brains were damaged, but not their souls.
Their souls needed ministering, but she didn’t know how this was possible. She
just wished there was a way to achieve this formidable goal.

Chapter 2

The night that changed Amy’s life forever started out as usual until a storm
blew in after midnight. From the beginning, it was extremely intense, causing the
lights to flicker convulsively and some light bulbs to even pop. The staff grew
edgy because of the electricity pulsating in the air. It almost looked as if tiny
sparklers were being waved during a fireworks display. Unannounced flashes of
lightning broke through the slats of the window blinds draining all color from the
rooms and bleaching everything white. Seconds later the ear-shattering claps of
thunder followed, causing the furniture to tremble. She knew that this storm would
awaken many of the patients, especially those with Sundowner’s, upsetting their
biological clocks by the changes in light.

The storm had caused some of the light bulbs in the unit to blow out. Amy
went to Ashley’s room to check on her because she, more than most patients,
became highly agitated whenever it stormed and when it was dark in her room.
Although most of the time Ashley was unresponsive to her environment, that
changed when there were storms and when lighting pierced her shades. All the
bulbs except one in the bathroom were out. It shed a shaft of light across Ashley’s
bed in the darkened room. Amy found a lamp with a working bulb and turned it on.

15

Ashley’s eyes were wide open, looking as if they were about to pop out of
her face. She wore a mask of horror. Her whole body was quaking, almost as if
she were having a seizure. Amy put her face in front of Ashley’s eyes so she could
see her. She stroked her cheek as she said, “Ashley honey, it’s alright. I’m here
with you. I’ll protect you. Nothing’s gonna hurt you. You’re safe with me.”

She spoke words of support even though Ashley couldn’t understand them.
Amy’s words were coated with softness making them as comforting as gentle
caresses. She kissed her forehead as she squeezed her hand. Maybe in her own way
Ashley understood Amy’s words, comforting touch, and loving kiss. Amy knew
this was highly unlikely, but she chose to believe it. It didn’t matter if Ashley
understood these words or not because they would soon be proven untrue. Amy
couldn’t protect Ashley from the evil hands that would soon violate her.

Even in her advanced stage of deterioration, Ashley’s former beauty was
detectable. Her perfectly molded features and faded blue eyes showed traces of
her earlier self. The many photos of Ashley covering the walls showed Ashley
when she was someone else: when she was beautiful, intelligent, strong, and
confident; when she was whole. There was a picture of Ashley wearing a tiara and
strapless gown when she was crowned homecoming queen in high school. She
wore a sash proclaiming her queen. A sparkly tiara sat precipitously on her mass of
curly brown hair which was such a contrast to the sparse colorless strands that
sprouted from her scalp now. Even her eyes had changed. In the photo, they were
sparkling and bright blue. Now they were dull and faded. The whites were
streaked with red blood vessels. Standing next to her in the photo was David, who
was homecoming king and wearing a sash over his tuxedo proclaiming him king.
Eight years later the king and queen would become husband and wife.

A picture of Ashley completing her first marathon highlighted her sinewy,
athletic body, so different from her body now which was just a bag of bones
connected by strings of muscles. The look on her face reflected her feeling that if
she could run 26 miles, she could conquer anything. How wrong she was. She had
met an unbeatable foe - dementia.

Wedding photos and pictures of Ashley with her daughter Courtney as she
grew from a baby to a beautiful 13-year-old documented her loving family. There
was one picture of Ashley and Courtney laughing at an unknown joke, something
they would never do again. There were photos of Ashley in her cap and gown

16

when she graduated from college and pictures of her as a science teacher and later
the assistant principal at Washington Middle School.

The pictures were there to spark Ashley’s memory, but they only served to
accentuate the Shakespearean tragedy of Ashley Bennett’s life. Like the storm that
was attacking Shady Oaks, Ashley’s life had been attacked by a tsunami – early
onset Alzheimer’s. She developed the first signs of the disease at 43. She’d get lost
in the school corridors that she had traversed for eight years; she’d forget meetings
despite writing them in her planner always open on her desk; and she’d forget the
names of her students. At first, the students laughed at her forgetfulness. One even
joked that maybe she had Alzheimer’s. But when it became evident that her
forgetfulness was symptomatic of a serious condition, the jokes stopped and were
replaced with pity and sadness.

By the age of 45, genetic testing showed that Ashley had Presenilin, PS-1, a
defect on the 14th chromosome that causes early onset dementia. The family also
learned that her paternal grandmother probably had it. Hidden in a gene passed on
from her ancestor was the seed of her destruction.

As Ashley’s condition worsened, her husband, David, could no longer care
for her at home, especially when she started leaving the house in the middle of the
night despite having a security system and door handle alarms to prevent this. He
wanted to keep her home as long as possible, but the issues of her safety as well as
Courtney’s mental health drove his decision to place her in the memory unit at
Shady Oaks.

Courtney was psychologically overwhelmed by witnessing the rapid
deterioration of her mother as well as her crushing fear that she, too, would get
early-onset dementia. Even though genetic testing showed that she did not have
PS-1, she was still convinced it would suddenly attack her as it had attacked her
mother. She became obsessed with remembering every minor detail in her life to
confirm that she was not losing her memory. She filled notebooks with facts and
names of people in her life. She was constantly whispering to herself to aid her
recall. She could be heard repeating the names of her classmates, her teachers, and
facts she had to memorize for tests. She received psychological counseling and was
cared for by David’s widowed mother, Jeanette, who came to live with them.
Alzheimer’s destroys the lives of the victim’s family as much as the victim, maybe
more.

17

Gone was Ashley’s life as an assistant principal at a middle school, mother
of a formerly happy daughter, and beloved wife of a successful criminal lawyer.
She’d had it all – a job she loved, a daughter she loved, and a husband she loved.
They were all cruelly wrested from her. Now she was a frozen woman awaiting
death, longing for death. If she could have spoken to the Angel of Death, she might
have pleaded for a kiss.

Amy was fond of all her patients, but Ashley held a special place in her
heart, maybe because she was young, just a few years older than Amy. She kept
picturing herself as a victim of early onset Alzheimer’s and how her family would
be destroyed. Whenever Amy had extra time, she’d spend it in Ashley’s room,
maybe hoping to ward off the curse that had befallen Ashley attacking her. Or,
maybe Ashley would somehow sense that someone in this foreign place where she
now lived loved her.

Amy went to check on the other patients and then returned to Ashley’s room
before heading home. As Amy was straightening the sheets and fluffing the pillows
on Ashley’s bed, she thought she heard something. A weak, crackly voice seemed
to emanate from Ashley. She hadn’t seen her lips move, but she thought she heard
her say, “Help me, help me.” Amy glanced at the TV, the radio, the intercom, and
her phone to see if the words had come from them, but they hadn’t.

She squeezed Ashley’s hand, and said with shocked disbelief in her voice,
“What did you say?”

She felt foolish talking to Ashley who hadn’t spoken in months. She existed
in a vegetative state. Ironically, she was in relatively good health physically.
Mentally, there was no health. Amy envisioned Ashley’s head like a vessel holding
her brain which had shrunk to the size of a pea.

Leaning down so she could place her ear next to Ashley’s mouth, she said,
“Did you say something Ashley?”

Now she clearly heard her say “Help me. Help me, Amy.”

Her lips still hadn’t moved. The sounds hadn’t emanated from her mouth.
The words seemed to have radiated from her whole being. But there was
something different this time. Ashley called Amy by name. She talked directly to
her. She hadn’t just cried out for help. She pleaded for Amy to help her. How did

18

she remember Amy’s name when she no longer recalled her husband or her
daughter’s names? Amy couldn’t recall any previous time when Ashley actually
said her name, even in her first days at Shady Oaks when she was verbal.

Amy became frantic. She was quaking with fear and covered in cold beads
of sweat. Amy wondered if she was hallucinating and hadn’t really heard these
words, but had merely imagined them. What caused this? Had she been working
too hard? Had she eaten something that was physically upsetting her? Had the
violent storm somehow generated this bizarre reaction in her? Was someone
playing a joke on her? It was Good Friday so she thought that she might be having
an epiphany. Maybe Jesus was talking to her through Ashley. But she didn’t really
believe that. She couldn’t accept a mystical reason for this baffling experience. She
wanted to run from the room and scream for help. But what kind of help? From
whom? Help confirming that a silent, semi-comatose patient had actually spoken
for the first time in months and had even known her name. No one would believe
her. She couldn’t believe it herself.

She squeezed Ashley’s hand tightly and screamed, “What did you say?”
Ashley stared ahead blankly, remaining mute. Ashley didn’t respond to Amy’s
loud scream. She didn’t flinch.

“What do you want me to help you with? I don’t understand.”

Just then Amy’s pager went off. Mary Alice was beeping to report that Hilda
had fallen out of bed and she needed help picking her up. Reluctantly leaving
Ashley, Amy rushed to Hilda’s room. She knew that she had to help Mary Alice
who had just started working at Shady Oaks the previous week. It wasn’t legally
possible to restrain patients in their beds so Hilda, who was in constant motion, fell
out of her bed regularly. Hilda, at 103, was the oldest patient at Shady Oaks and
the most restless sleeper.

As Amy hurried down the hallway, she noticed that the light bulbs were out
and that the emergency lighting had come on. When she entered Hilda’s room, she
saw that only one light was on in her room.

Amy examined Hilda and found that she hadn’t suffered any injuries from
the fall. In fact, she had slept through it. Because of Hilda’s frequent falls, the bed
was kept low to the floor, and there were thick rubber mats around it to soften the
impact of any falls. Amy was relieved that Hilda had survived another fall and

19

might even reach her 104th birthday next month. She and Mary Alice picked up the
90-pound Hilda and tucked her back in bed. Amy gave her a peck on the cheek and
Mary Alice gave her a peck on her forehead.

Now Amy had to do the paperwork concerning Hilda’s fall. Meanwhile,
there was still screaming from some patients who had been awakened by the storm.
Amy shut out their screams while she had been with Ashley and Hilda, but now
she heard them loud and clear. They were like little children crying for their
parents after a bad dream. Amy recalled that when Teri was very young, she would
be awakened by bad dreams and wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until Amy
got in bed with her. Comforting her frightened daughter was as comforting to her
as it was to Teri. Now when she heard the screams and cries around her, she
wished that she could crawl into bed and comfort her patients with her enveloping
arms just as she had done with Teri years earlier. Amy had found her niche in life.
She had a calling to comfort people, no matter their age or status. She believed that
this was her unique gift from God. This was her blessing.

At 6:45 when the next shift came on, Maggie, the memory unit day
supervisor, asked what had happened during the night. Amy told her about the
storm and the outage of all the lighting that needed repair. Maggie said that she’d
already called the electrician to come as soon as possible to replace the lights and
check the wiring. She also told her about Hilda falling out of bed. She didn’t dare
say anything about hearing, but not seeing Ashley talk. Maggie would think that
she was crazy. Even Amy thought that maybe she was a little crazy, but she was
also certain that she had heard Ashley say, “Help me, help me Amy.” Then Amy
reconsidered and thought that maybe they hadn’t actually communicated verbally.
Maybe, they’d communicated telepathically, brain to brain. Only Ashley didn’t
really have a functioning brain capable of communicating.

If there was anyone who Amy could share her experiences with it was
Maggie. She had worked with Maggie from the first day she started at Shady Oaks.
She loved Maggie. She was a caring woman who had survived the death of her
husband from cancer seven years earlier and had successfully raised two sons who
were both now in the military. She was the only nurse at Shady Oaks who loved
the patients as much as Amy. They both shared endless springs of compassion.
They were cut from the same cloth. Maggie had a new boyfriend, Glen, and was
hopeful that he would work out as a potential husband. She had brought him over

20

to meet Amy and Keith who both approved of him. So now it was a waiting game
to see if their relationship would last.

Amy was too exhausted to spend any more time thinking about what had
happened. She stored the experience away to be examined later when she was
more alert and rational. Later she would decide whether she would tell Maggie,
but not now.

Chapter 3

Amy was totally exhausted when she arrived home. She lived only 10
minutes from work, but the drive that morning seemed like an hour. Whenever
Amy arrived home, she experienced a sense of homecoming, a sense of belonging.
It was as if her house had arms that reached out to envelop her as soon as she drove
up the driveway. To her, this modest three-bedroom red brick ranch house on a
street with almost identical houses was a mansion; it was her palace. The spring
flowers surrounding the house were open, welcoming Amy with their vivid colors
and sweet smells. She parked her five-year old Honda Civic in the driveway next
to Teri’s seven-year old Toyota Corolla. Keith’s two-year old Ford Explorer which
served as the family bus was sheltered in the one-car garage. The driveway and
garage looked like a used car lot, except for Tammy’s pink tricycle parked on the
grass.

Amy was relieved to be home after her disturbing experience at work. Home
was her sanctuary where she was comforted by her loving family, and where she
felt protected from the evils of the world. It was Saturday morning so she
wouldn’t have to be back at Shady Oaks until Monday night. She had the weekend
to decompress, refuel, and avoid thinking about what had happened, or what she
imagined had happened. And it was Easter weekend which made it easier to think
of the good things in her life. She had learned to deal with the stresses of work by
not bringing them into her house. She parked them outside. She mentally pictured
herself putting her memory of her experience of Ashley talking into the glove
compartment of her car. She would retrieve it on Monday when she returned to
work.

The first thing Amy saw when she entered the house was an ornate silver
frame holding an 8” x 10” photo of her, Keith, Teri, and Tammy taken a year ago
on Easter. Since it was Easter weekend again there would be more photo shoots.

21

Amy was obsessive about recording family events so on Sunday when everyone
was dressed in their Easter finery, they would take pictures in the house before
going to church. Weather permitting, there would also be outdoor photos in front
of the house and the church. Amy loved her iPhone because she had instant access
to her camera and could snap continuous photos and save them to the cloud for
eternity. If the photos had weight, they would burst the cloud showering the
photos to Earth. Sometimes she felt like a paparazzi photographer snapping photos
of her family of celebrities. She had also become a selfie fanatic and constantly
faced her camera towards herself and whoever happened to be nearby.

Everyone was still asleep or in the process of getting up since it was 7:20 on
Saturday so Amy took an extra minute to reflect on the picture. She focused on her
husband of 24 years. She and Keith married as soon as they graduated from high
school. They were old-fashioned and didn’t approve of sex before marriage, so
they married the week after completing high school and as soon as Amy could get
away from her parents.

Amy loved Keith from the day they met in freshman English class. She had
never slept with another man, and Keith had never slept with another woman. They
loved each other today as much as they loved each other when they first met,
maybe more because of the storms they had weathered together.

One of the other pictures on the front hall table was of Amy and Keith’s
wedding. She wore a frilly wedding dress that made her look 20 pounds heavier.
No one could tell that she’d purchased the dress with a mended torn side seam in a
second-hand bridal shop for $20. Atop her blond curls she wore a jeweled crown
with a lacy veil. For that, she’d paid $5 since some of the jewels in the crown were
missing. But the picture didn’t show any of these flaws. It showed the perfection of
a deliriously happy bride in a fancy dress and veil.

Amy held a bouquet of yellow roses that matched Keith’s boutonniere
pinned to his white shirt. He couldn’t afford a tuxedo or a suit so he wore a white
dress shirt and black trousers. Their clothes weren’t what made the picture special
though. It was the looks on their faces showing exhilaration, joy, and anticipation
at the prospect of at last having sex.

Amy’s parents paid the expenses for Amy’s clothes and the food for the
wedding reception. But when they met the people from Keith’s church where they

22

were marrying, they were angry. They felt that the people in that church weren’t
true Christians even though the church was one of the main Presbyterian churches
in the community. After unsuccessfully demanding that Amy and Keith change the
wedding to their fundamentalist church, they severed all contacts with them. The
break-up was mutual, her parents not wanting anything to do with the heathens
they considered Amy and Keith to be, and Amy not wanting anything to do with
her racist, hateful parents. She had broken the commandment to honor her father
and mother, but they had also broken an unwritten, equally binding commandment
to honor their daughter. Family love is two-way: children must honor their parents
and parents must honor their children. Withholding love from one’s child is one of
the worst forms of child abuse.

When Amy and Keith married, they had little money so they moved in with
Keith’s father, Jimmy, who stayed in his room much of the time giving Amy and
Keith free use of the house. They lived with him rent-free for three years until they
could afford to rent an apartment. They appreciated his allowing them to get on
their feet so every Sunday night they took him out to dinner. This was the closest
that Keith and his father had ever been, thanks to Amy.

Since their wedding, Amy and Keith had changed physically. Amy who was
somewhat overweight then was now plump with the 25 pounds she had put on.
Keith, who looked like a bean pole back then, had also put on 25 pounds, but the
added weight and frequent gym workouts made him look buff.

The biggest change in Keith was the thick bushy moustache he’d grown. He
pampered his moustache, trimming every hair precisely to his liking. He was
developing male pattern baldness with an ever-expanding beanie of skin showing
through his thick hair. Most of the time, he wore a baseball cap to hide his hair
loss. He joked that he was growing a thick moustache so that he could eventually
transplant hair from it to fill his bald spot.

Like all marriages, Amy’s and Keith’s had its challenges, but fortunately
they had overcome them and had become even closer. Their biggest test had been
Keith’s drinking. His father had been an alcoholic so perhaps it was in his genes.
When Keith was growing up, there were many evenings when his father passed out
on the couch after non-stop drinking of beers. Keith didn’t know how he was able
to get up the next morning and go to work as a bus driver, but he did. Amazingly,
his father had a perfect driving record. Keith’s mother had left them when he was

23

eight so he was his father’s caretaker whenever he was drunk. Keith and his father
never talked about his drinking or his mother who cut off all contact with them
after she left. They never talked much about anything until after Keith and Amy
moved in. Amy was talkative and was able to elicit lengthy conversation from his
father to everyone’s surprise, even Jimmy’s. For the first time he shared that he
had been stationed in Korea when he was in the army. He vividly described
experiences touring Seoul. The only topic that he never visited was his former
wife. She remained an enigma.

With a physically absent mother and a psychologically absent father, Keith
didn’t really have a family growing up, so he raised himself. He was basically a
good boy, doing well in school and not getting in trouble. He learned to play the
guitar at ten and gained a reputation as a good musician. With friends, he formed a
rock group, and they performed at dances and social events.

But Keith was more than a good boy. From a young age he showed a highly
developed sense of morality, always motivated to do the right thing and always
defending the underdog. Where did this trait come from? From whom did he
inherit it? Not from his mother or father. Fortunately, it was tucked away in one of
the genes handed down from a distant ancestor. Like Amy, he had inherited
goodness. Because of this special trait, Keith was well liked by his peers and
respected by the adults in his life. Every year at school, he was given a good
citizenship award for his exemplary behavior. And his kindness and goodness
attracted Amy to Keith when they met in ninth grade. It was love at first sight for
both, but not for physical reasons, rather for philosophical reasons. They both
shared the same values, believing that kindness and goodness were most important
in life. And they both shared the same aspirations – to marry and have a happy
family. They believed that they were made for each other, and they were right.

Early in their marriage Keith had gone on occasional drinking binges,
especially when things in his life weren’t going well. Keith drowned his sorrows in
beer, lots and lots of beer, just like his father. Eight years earlier after a night of
drinking, Keith had driven home drunk. Miraculously, he hadn’t had an accident.
Amy had heard his car pull up, but she hadn’t heard Keith come into the house so
she went outside to find out where he was. She found Keith slumped over the
steering wheel, too drunk to get out of the car. She dragged him into the house.
After he slept off his binge, Amy went into their bedroom. She was seething with

24

fury. She looked like a volcano about to erupt. She sat on the edge of their bed and
steeled herself for the unavoidable confrontation that she had delayed for too long.
She clenched her fists and braced herself to say words she dreaded uttering.

“Keith, I’ve had it with you and your drinking. I can’t believe you drove
home drunk. I can’t see you kill yourself and maybe someone else. It’s booze or
me. Do you understand? You can’t have both. If you don’t go to AA and stop
drinking, I’ll leave you. You know I love you with all my heart and soul, but I’ll do
it. I swear to God. I can’t see you kill yourself like this. Decide on your family or
booze. Which one? Decide!”

She thunderously screamed the word decide.

He looked into her eyes and knew she was serious. He’d never seen her so
enraged, so furious. He knew she would end their marriage if he didn’t give up
drinking. He also knew that he couldn’t live without her. She was the center of his
universe. He thought that he might even kill himself if she left him.

“You know I’d die without you.”

“Then you know the choice you have to make. Booze or me. Life or death.”

“Life. Life. Life. Life.”

He clung to her as if she were a life preserver, and she was.

He cried uncontrollably as he blubbered, “Amy, Amy, don’t leave me. Don’t
leave me.”

The next day, Keith joined AA and never had a drink again. It wasn’t easy.
Fighting alcohol was a constant battle because one of Keith’s passions, music,
exposed him to temptation. He played guitar with a group of friends named The
Grown-Ups. They performed at local bars and restaurants, where surrounded by
alcohol, he did what he enjoyed – making music. His abstinence was made
somewhat easier because of the support of one of the other band members who was
also a recovering alcoholic. But he was helped most by the others at the AA
meetings which Keith attended more religiously than church. AA had been his
salvation.

For 12 years, Keith worked as a plumber for a large plumbing company. He
hated his job and everyone he worked with, but it paid well and had good benefits.

25

He didn’t like taking orders from the nasty people who ran the company. He
especially despised Roger, the owner’s son, who was an outspoken racist, always
complaining about “niggers” getting all the breaks, “towel heads” being behind all
the terrorist attacks in America, and “kikes” making all the money so they could
take over the world. Keith avoided Roger so he wouldn’t be tempted to tell him
what an asshole he was. He knew that if he shared his views, he’d be fired, despite
his 12 years of being a dependable worker. Keith would be punished for believing
all Americans were equal. Although he lived in a country that is supposed to
protect free speech, he didn’t have free speech at his workplace. He was in a
situation like Amy had been in when she was growing up – surrounded by racism
but having to bury his feelings and opinions to survive.

On days when Keith had to spend time with Roger and control himself not to
express his feelings, he returned home emotionally exhausted. As soon as he
walked in the door, Amy could tell from his facial expression that she needed to
comfort him. He would lament that he was trapped in a job he hated and with
people he despised, and how he would never be able to realize his dream of going
to Nashville and playing in a country band. He knew this was impossible because
he couldn’t leave his family, and even if they went to Nashville with him, he
couldn’t support them. With time, this dream grew dimmer, but it never totally
disappeared. For Keith, there still was a golden guitar at the end of a gradually
fading rainbow.

Then Amy examined herself in the photo. She saw a woman who was happy
and positive despite the challenges she had faced over the years. Her most daunting
personal challenge had been difficulty having children. Since they first met, she
and Keith had planned on having three children. They never anticipated problems
with this because they were both healthy. Amy was unaware that she was not in
good reproductive health until her miscarriages occurred. In the first two years of
marriage, she had three miscarriages.

Her fourth pregnancy was with Teri who was born two months prematurely,
weighing only two pounds. In the first week of life, she had a brain bleed. The
technical name for this is Intraventricular Hemorrhage and refers to blood
collecting and pressing on the brain. This resulted in Teri having neurological
problems. She also had breathing difficulties because her lungs were not fully

26

developed, a common problem in preemies. She stayed in the hospital for eight
weeks until she weighed five pounds and her lungs functioned adequately.

Amy spent every day of the eight weeks at the hospital helping the nurses, or
just holding Teri so they could bond. Whenever they made eye contact, Amy knew
that she and Teri were linked forever. Keith spent as much time as possible with
Teri too. The nurses told him to hold Teri against his bare chest so they could
physically bond through his heartbeat. From pictures Amy took of him holding
Teri like this, it was apparent that he as well as Teri were bonding. This was the
beginning of the happy family he and Amy so desired.

From the start, Teri showed developmental delays, especially in motor and
language skills. Amy tracked Teri’s slow development by comparing her to norms
in baby books. Teri didn’t sit up until she was nine months, and she didn’t walk
until she was 18 months. She was most delayed in mastering language, not saying
her first word (Momma) until she was 28 months. The first time Teri looked at
Amy and said Momma was one of the happiest moments of Amy’s life.

Teri was helped by physical and speech therapy which provided the critical
early education she needed. By school age, Teri’s major problem involved
academics. She only reached the third-grade level in reading and math. However,
one area where Teri was definitely not delayed was social skills. She smiled and
laughed often. She loved being played with. As a baby, she could play peek-a-boo
endlessly. She loved people and most people loved her. She inherited her parents’
genes for goodness. Most people called her sweet and good natured.

When Teri was two, Amy and Keith tried to have another baby. She suffered
two miscarriages. After the last miscarriage, Amy hemorrhaged and needed a
transfusion. Although Amy’s miscarriages were attributed to congenital uterine
abnormality, no effective medical treatment was ever found to prevent them.
Finally, the gynecologist recommended that Amy have a hysterectomy because her
pregnancies were a danger not only to the fetuses, but also to her. She
recommended that Amy and Keith adopt, or that Keith father a child with a
surrogate mother. These recommendations were abhorrent to them. They only
wanted a child who was biologically both of theirs.

So at the age of 25 Amy had a hysterectomy, becoming incapable of
realizing her dream of having three biological children. Amy cried the entire time

27

she was in the hospital. At home, she was despondent and only cheered up when
she was with Teri. Fortunately, Amy was helped by a counselor who specialized
in women’s fertility issues. She helped Amy confront her belief that she was no
longer a complete woman because she couldn’t have children. She never entirely
got over this feeling, but with therapy and time, it lessened considerably.

Amy’s other disappointment in life involved her dream of becoming a
midwife or a delivery room nurse. Although she couldn’t have any more children,
she wanted to assist in the miracle of birth for others. For this, she needed a four-
year RN degree. She knew that it would be difficult both time-wise and money-
wise. The mothering demands for Teri who was in a preschool special education
class and receiving after-school speech and physical therapy made it difficult for
Amy to go to school. Also, it became problematic living on Keith’s salary alone
after his father had a stroke and had to be placed in an assisted living facility.
There were no other relatives to help and his father had only his limited pension
from the city and the money he made from selling his modest house. That
provided enough money for them to place him in the assisted living unit at Shady
Oaks Senior Community. That was the beginning of Amy’s long association with
Shady Oaks.

After Keith’s father died, Amy got her LPN certificate at a community
college. Once she completed the program and passed the state licensure test, she
got a job at Shady Oaks. She worked with patients at the opposite end of the life
spectrum – the end rather than the beginning. She had gotten to know the people at
Shady Oaks when Keith’s father was there. She liked them and they liked her. She
felt comfortable there; it almost became her second home. Indeed, the patients
became her second family, her extended family.

Chapter 4

Before Amy left the front hallway, she focused on a recent picture of Teri,
now 22. She was so pretty. She looked so normal, and for the most part she was.
She didn’t show scars from the battles she’d won in overcoming her mental
limitations and a tragedy that eventually became a triumph. Psychological testing
indicated that Teri was in the borderline mildly retarded or slow learner range, with
an IQ of 75. She had good conversational skills, so her cognitive limitations were
not readily apparent until she had to use problem solving, logic, or academic skills.
Kids at school sometimes teased her that she was a dumb blond. She didn’t mind

28

this because there was no insinuation that she was mentally challenged, only dumb.
To her, there was a big difference between the two. Lots of kids were dumb, but
lots of kids were not officially declared mentally retarded by the schools.

Although Teri had limitations, she had three assets: a sweet, outgoing
personality; good looks; and a dogged determination to achieve whatever goals she
set, which sometimes earned her the label stubborn. She embodied a combination
of the best traits of Amy and Keith – kindness and attractiveness. Because she was
good looking and had good conversational skills, people assumed that she was
intellectually normal. They were surprised when her limited cognitive or academic
skills became apparent. They thought that being pretty and being mentally
challenged were mutually exclusive. There are even some people who mistakenly
expect people with intellectual limitations to look like the age-old caricature of
retarded people – droopy, vacant eyes, swollen tongues protruding from their
mouths, and stooped posture. No one fits this stereotype, but nonetheless it
continues, just like the persisting stereotypes of Jews with big, hooked noses and
Blacks with faces like apes.

Throughout school, Teri was in special education classes. She was integrated
for non-academic classes which made her aware of the academic and intellectual
differences between herself and her non-disabled peers. When she walked down
the halls in high school, she carried biology and history textbooks so students
would think that she was in regular classes. No one was fooled by this.

Despite Amy and Keith’s efforts to build Teri’s self-esteem, she still
developed feelings of inferiority. They emphasized how she was like everyone
else, but she kept referring to herself as stupid, dumb, and “a retard.” At times, she
even called herself an idiot. Interestingly in the early 1900’s, the “scientific”
terms for the mentally challenged were idiot, imbecile, and moron. Now these are
derogatory terms which have become part of everyday parlance.

To make Teri feel better about herself, they enrolled her in dance class and
put her on a community soccer team. She was fairly good at both, but her
intellectual limitations sometimes became apparent when she couldn’t follow
directions or got confused. The other kids would laugh at her while she became
flustered and held back tears of humiliation.

29

Amy and Keith were especially concerned about Teri’s gullibility and
eagerness to follow anyone who was friendly and nice to her. When she was
young, they constantly warned her about talking to or going anywhere with
strangers. Her eagerness to be like everyone else was what led to the catastrophe in
the Peterson family. When Teri was 15, she was raped, or possibly she participated
in consensual sex. Whatever the situation, Teri had sex and became pregnant.

When Teri got her period at age 13, Amy explained the facts of life and
warned her repeatedly about letting boys do anything to her. This was hard because
Teri liked boys and responded positively to any boy who showed her attention. She
wanted to have a boyfriend like other girls. Amy and Keith considered putting her
on the birth control pill to prevent her from becoming pregnant. Keith even raised
the possibility of having her sterilized, but they quickly discarded these ideas as
being overreactions. They thought that her getting pregnant was unlikely because
of their close supervision of her activities. How wrong they were, and how they
regretted their decision not to put her on the pill, or at least until after their
granddaughter Tammy was born.

Amy kept track of Teri’s periods which were regular. However, when she
was 15, she missed her period twice. Amy took her to Dr. Dana Kahn, a
gynecologist who welcomed mentally challenged females as patients. She had a
sister with severe disabilities, so she had a special interest in this population.

Dr. Kahn found that Teri was about eight weeks pregnant. Amy and Keith
were dumbfounded. How could this have happened? How had they failed to
protect her? They thought that they had monitored Teri’s activities carefully and
couldn’t find a time when she might have had sex. They constantly asked Teri
about having sex, but she refused to talk about it. Whenever they raised the matter,
she became emotionally overwrought. She’d go to her room and scream
repeatedly. “I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone. I hate you!”

They tried to find out if she’d been raped. When they asked if someone
made her have sex when she didn’t want to, she emphatically said no. It became
apparent that she hadn’t been raped if rape is defined as being coerced into having
unwanted sex. But is it rape if it is wanted by an underage girl with limited mental
abilities and limited understanding of the ramifications of unprotected sex? When
they asked if she willingly had sex, she said that boys liked her and told her that
she was pretty and that she was hot. She wouldn’t say any more, but she would don

30

an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile as if she had a secret. They realized that obviously
she’d had sex with someone. They questioned if she was legally able to give
consent because of her age and mental status. Although she was 15
chronologically, she was about 11 mentally.

They didn’t know who to look to for help. They didn’t feel comfortable
asking for advice from Dr. Kahn, their lawyer, or their minister. They had to make
critical decisions on their own. And to do this, they needed information.

Amy and Keith became detectives searching for situations where Teri might
have been alone with a boy. They used a calendar to identify the days when she
might have conceived. Then they tried to find where she had been during those
times. There were some nights when she’d slept at her friend Sasha’s house. Sasha
was a slow learner who was in some of Teri’s classes. They enjoyed each other’s
company. Amy and Keith were happy that Teri had a friend. They encouraged
them to get together whenever possible. They liked when Ned, Sasha’s older
brother and star of the football team, drove them to the movies or took them out for
pizza. They felt that he would keep the girls safe. They viewed him like a big
brother to Teri. How wrong they were.

Amy knew that Teri liked Ned, even adored him. She talked about him as if
he were a rock star. She decided to ask Teri if she had sex with him. She
emphatically said, “of course not.” But the nonverbal message of her eyes looking
down at the floor was more revealing than her words.

They so wanted to believe her. But they had serious doubts when they
learned that Ned had a party on one of the nights when Teri had slept over at his
house. Amy and Keith hadn’t known about this. If they had, they never would
have allowed Teri to go there. They found out that Teri knew about the party and
hid it from them.

They questioned Teri about the party and after repeated interrogation, she
finally told them that about 20 kids had been there. She said that she drank brown
stuff from a brown bottle and that it made her feel woozy. She didn’t like the taste
of it, but Ned kept making her drink more. They were sure that he had given her
beer and got her drunk, which made it easy for someone to seduce her.

Teri didn’t know the names of the kids who were there, but she said most
were Ned’s friends on the football team and some were cheerleaders. She also said

31

that Sasha’s mother wasn’t around. She didn’t know if she was upstairs in the
house or out of the house. Keith and Amy were shocked that Sasha’s mother had
been so irresponsible – to be absent from a party with beer flowing and underage
kids.

Amy and Keith tried to get information from Anna, Sasha’s mother, but she
was uncooperative. She became angry because she felt that they were accusing
Ned of getting Teri pregnant, and indeed they were. They were also accusing her
of negligently creating the situation for Teri to get pregnant. And there was the
criminal issue of allowing unsupervised underage drinking at her house. They saw
the fear in Anna’s eyes as they talked. Fear not only because of the legal
ramifications but the public knowledge, and resulting shame, regarding her actions

Anna screamed, “Why would Ned have sex with that retard when he could
get any girl he wanted? He’s the star of the football team.”

They couldn’t believe that Anna had called Teri “a retard” when her own
daughter could be called the same epithet.

She screamed for them to get out of her house. After that, she refused to
allow Sasha to spend time with Teri who was crushed by losing her only friend.

Eventually Amy and Keith heard from various sources that there had been a
wild party at Sasha’s house with lots of drinking and sex. All the kids talked about
it being the wildest party ever. They had to face the possibility that Teri may have
had sex with multiple partners, and that it would be almost impossible to learn the
father of her baby. They couldn’t legally force any of the boys at the party to have
DNA testing unless they wanted to take the legal route, and they didn’t.

They kept discussing whether they should involve the police but decided
against it because Teri would be the one who would be vilified and shamed, not the
non-handicapped kids. They also feared that they would be blamed for allowing
Teri to go to a wild party even though they were unaware of it. They would be
viewed as negligent and feared that Teri might be taken away from them. No, they
wouldn’t legally pursue their search for what had happened at the party. They
would accept Teri’s pregnancy. They would make the best of it.

32

When they were making their final decision about Teri, Amy, ever the
optimist, said, “We’ll make lemonade out of lemons and survive, maybe even
thrive.”

Keith, proving himself even more optimistic, replied, “Maybe this is a
blessing in disguise.” He didn’t know how prophetic this would prove when they
were blessed with Tammy.

Amy and Keith had to consider other less likely possibilities as to the
father’s possible identity. There were times when Teri was alone at the recreation
center after soccer or dance because Amy or Keith was late picking her up. She
had been alone so she could have had sex with a boy in the bathroom or locker
room. Amy had heard of this happening. She had even heard of kids having sex in
the school auditorium.

Then there were the times when Teri was alone in the house when there was
a food delivery or repairs being done by a worker. There was a cute pizza delivery
boy who flirted with Teri whenever he came to the door, but it was unlikely he
could have come into the house and had sex with her. There isn’t much time when
you’re making a delivery, but you don’t really need much time to make a baby.

Although they didn’t want Teri to have an abortion, they raised the topic
with Dr. Kahn. They felt that they had to pursue it as a viable option. She assured
them that it would be legally possible since Teri was 11 weeks pregnant and they
could give legal consent, both because of her age and mental status.

They reluctantly broached the subject with Teri. “You know you can have an
abortion if you don’t want to have the baby. We would help you get through it.”

Teri exploded. She became hysterical. “If you make me have an abortion,
I’ll kill myself. I want this baby. You can’t make me kill it.”

Keith hugged Teri, and said, “Okay. Okay. We won’t talk about it again.
You’re going to have this baby, and everything will be fine. We’ll be with you
every step of the way.”

Amy and Keith didn’t discuss abortion with Teri again, but they discussed it
between themselves whenever they were alone. They were being ripped apart by
constantly analyzing the pros and cons. They worried about everything that they
could think of to worry about. What happens if the baby is handicapped like Teri?

33

What happens if Teri isn’t able to take care of the baby? What happens if the
authorities take the baby away from Teri? These were not questions that had
answers; rather they were questions that raised more questions.

As Teri’s due date grew closer, Amy and Keith had their final conversation.

“Keith, this is a test of our strength. We’ll get through this and be stronger. I
know God will lead us to do the right thing and that is to help Teri have this baby
and raise it to the best of our ability.”

“God willing.” Keith took Amy’s hands and they both prayed for strength
and guidance.

Teri dropped out of school because of the teasing and cruelty she would
experience once the pregnancy became apparent. Although there were other girls
at school who were pregnant, they weren’t teased. Getting pregnant was not
against the norms of their social group. They were even proud. And most
importantly, they were not mentally challenged.

Unlike Amy, Teri had an easy pregnancy. She delighted in being pregnant
and stroked her abdomen as she talked and sang to her baby. She was the happiest
she had ever been up to that point in her life.

Dr. Kahn though it would be best to put Teri to sleep for the delivery. She
didn’t know how she might react if there were unanticipated complications. She
also raised the possibility of having Teri’s tubes tied while she was sedated.

“Amy and Keith, I’d like to suggest that you consider the possibility of
having Teri’s tubes tied. We don’t know if her having sex was a one-time
occurrence or the beginning of a promiscuous lifestyle. If so, she’ll have more
babies and I don’t think you want that.”

Keith said, “We hadn’t considered that. I really don’t think she’ll become
promiscuous, but I can’t say because I don’t know how our lives will change with
the baby.”

“Dr. Kahn, Keith and I would like to discuss this between ourselves before
we answer you. The idea has hit us unexpectedly. There are so many issues. Can
we let you know next week at Teri’s next appointment?”

“That’s fine. Unless she goes into labor early and then you can tell me then.”

34

For the next week Amy and Keith talked about little other than the possible
sterilization. They ricocheted back and forth between wanting to protect Teri from
another unwanted pregnancy to the issue of taking away her right to have another
child. They finally concluded that protecting her from another unwanted pregnancy
was most important.

At Teri’s next appointment, they told Dr. Kahn of their decision. She
explained that it was a simple procedure and stressed that it could be reversed in
the future if Teri wanted to get pregnant. Amy and Keith couldn’t foresee such a
situation. They also asked Dr. Kahn not to tell Teri about the sterilization because
of the psychological effect it would have on her mental status, especially since she
was so close to giving birth. She agreed not to, but she did suggest that they tell
Teri sometime in the future when she was better able to cope with the issues
involved.

Dr. Kahn worked with a lawyer who did the paperwork allowing Teri to be
sterilized. Amy and Keith felt comfortable with their decision feeling that it would
prevent possible problems in the future. Their decision did prevent future problems
of Teri unintentionally getting pregnant again, but it created unforeseen problems
when Teri wanted to intentionally get pregnant.

From the start, Teri was a devoted, loving mother to Tammy. She was
responsive to all her needs. She loved sharing her body when she breastfed her.
Amy and Keith were filled with pride whenever they looked at Teri cuddling
Tammy as she sang lullabies to her.

When Tammy started preschool, Teri got a part-time job at McDonald’s. She
loved working there because she enjoyed socializing with the customers. She
performed her duties competently and was extremely reliable which was
appreciated by the management. When asked if she wanted to train to become an
assistant manager, she said no. She was aware of her limitations and knew that she
would have difficulty with stressful situations and managing people, especially
some of the teenagers who were smarter than she was. Some of them sent her
messages that she was beneath them because she was a high school dropout, and
not because she was mentally challenged. But most of them were nice to her. She
told the manager that she didn’t want to take on more responsibility because she
needed to be available for her daughter.

35

Being a “normal” mother and worker made Teri keenly aware of one area
where she was not “normal” – driving. She had been told by everyone that she
couldn’t get a license because of her cognitive limitations. She was determined to
prove everyone wrong, and ultimately she did. She spent hours with Keith studying
the driver’s manual until she had most of it memorized. She passed the written test
on the second try. She passed the behind-the-wheel test on the first try. She has
been a careful driver and has not had an accident, unlike many of her higher IQ
peers.

As Tammy developed, it became apparent that she was intelligent and
advanced in areas where Teri had been delayed. She started speaking and walking
at 12 months. Amy dreaded the day when Tammy would exceed Teri in reading
and math. She wondered if Teri would welcome this or be humiliated by it. She
probably would feel both emotions, shame at her own limitations, but pride in her
beloved daughter’s achievements.

Occasionally, Amy and Keith looked at Tammy as she happily played and
marveled at how God had created such a beautiful creature from such tragedy. At
those moments they regretted ever having considered abortion. Amy and Keith
would hold hands and thank God for blessing them with Teri and Tammy.

Chapter 5

Looking at the pictures of her family helped Amy banish memories of her
crazy day at work. She was ready to forget her professional life and focus only of
her home life. She went into her bathroom and found Keith intently trimming his
moustache. She kissed him on the back of his neck, and said, “good night.” She
got into bed and immediately fell into a deep sleep for the next seven hours. At
3:00 she awakened feeling refreshed and relieved that she didn’t have to go to
work for two days.

When she went into the kitchen to have her breakfast, she found a note from
Keith saying that Teri and Tammy had gone to the grocery store and he had gone
to have his car serviced. She didn’t like being alone in a quiet house. She felt
comforted when the TV blared children’s programs and Tammy played school
with her dolls.

36

She collected the laundry and put in the first of five loads. This was her
usual Saturday of weekly chores. During the week, she was helped by Teri who did
most of the house cleaning and shopping.

By 6:00 everyone was home. Amy made a huge pot of chili, everyone’s
dinner favorite which provided left-overs for the next day. Then they watched
videos of children’s movies with Tammy. Amy hadn’t thought once about the
tumult at work or hearing Ashley speak. She immersed herself in her happy family
life. Shady Oaks was a distant, foreign land.

The next day the family went to Easter services at Friendship Presbyterian
Church. After they married, Amy and Keith had visited several churches to find
one that fit their needs. After visiting five churches, they found Friendship, which
was considered a “liberal” break-away church from the more conservative
Presbyterian churches in town. There they met people who shared their views – a
belief in God and Jesus as their Savior, a belief in the goodness of people, a belief
that all people were equal, and most importantly, a belief in the importance of
doing good in the world, of doing God’s work.

They had become close friends with two couples they met at Friendship -
Joe and Sylvia Tepper and Lois and Ira Silver. The Teppers were older than Amy
and Keith and had two grown children and two grandchildren. Their son, who was
in the Navy, was stationed in Korea so they rarely saw him, his wife and two
children. Their daughter had moved to Alaska and saw herself as a frontierswoman
and wanted to be as far from civilization as possible. They hadn’t seen her in four
years.

Joe was a retired fireman and Sylvia worked as a secretary in a law office,
coincidentally the office of David Bennett, Ashley’s husband. The Teppers were
like surrogate parents to Amy and Keith and doting grandparents to Tammy. They
certainly didn’t look like their biological parents. Joe was a redhead with a pink
complexion and bright green eyes. He would have fit in well in Ireland where his
ancestors came from. Since retiring, he worked out daily so he was muscular.
Sylvia, on the other hand, showed her Italian heritage with her thick black hair and
her dark complexion. She was buxom and looked like a loving grandmother who
would hold you tight if you needed comforting. And she loved playing this role
with Tammy.

37

The Petersons were like children to the Teppers. They relied on them for
help in the home and with Tammy, but most importantly with advice about both
practical and personal matters. Both couples found their relationship rewarding
and emotionally fulfilling. But they especially admired the Teppers because of
their commitment to helping the community. They volunteered at the food kitchen,
helped at the homeless shelter, and tutored at-risk preschoolers. They were making
a difference in the lives of people who were needy, including the Petersons.

For the first time in his life, Keith felt like he had parents. He especially
enjoyed spending time with Joe who became the father Keith never had. Joe taught
Keith to fish and they both spent as much time as possible exploring nearby lakes.
Occasionally, they took Tammy along, but she was more interested in having her
Barbie dolls swim alongside the boat than catching a fish.

The Teppers also became Amy’s surrogate parents. They were loving and
shared a similar philosophy of life. They doted on Tammy like grandparents and
even asked her to call them “Poppa” and “Nana.” They showered her with gifts,
especially anything to do with Barbie dolls. Every time they saw a coloring book
or a book about Barbie, they’d snatch it up as if it were a priceless find.

The Silvers were about the same age as Amy and Keith. The Teppers were
like their parents and the Silvers were like their siblings. Like the Petersons, the
Silvers did not have close families. Ira was an orphan who had been raised in a
foster home and Lois had been raised by her grandparents because her mentally ill
mother was institutionalized.

The Silvers also looked nothing like the Petersons. In fact, they looked more
like siblings than husband and wife. They were both tall, over six feet, and thin.
Although they were thin, they were very muscular from running. Both were avid
runners who prided themselves on having run half marathons. They tried,
unsuccessfully, to interest Keith and Amy in running, but their interests were more
sedentary.

The Silvers had a six-year old son named Tommy who was Tammy’s
boyfriend. Everyone laughed at their rhyming names - Tommy and Tammy.
Tommy was pudgy and disliked physical activity. He showed a talent and passion
for music and was studying both the piano and violin. He was always asking Keith
to teach him to play the guitar.

38

Ira was a school security officer at a local high school. Lois was a school
secretary at Washington Middle School, where Ashley had been a science teacher
and the assistant principal. They often shared baby sitting and had Tammy sleep
over at their house and Tommy sleep over at the Peterson’s. Tammy especially
liked spending time at the Silvers because they had two dogs, both loveable mutts
from the SPCA.

Amy and Keith found more than religion at church; they found a family of
parents and siblings. The six were close and did many things together, but more
importantly they shared their worries and concerns with each other. They were like
close family members who were also therapists.

After taking their annual outside Easter pictures, the Petersons went into the
church. They were very fond of their female minister, Lillian Simon. She was
middle-aged and attractive. She had a thick head of slate gray curls and a face with
perfectly formed features and clear skin. She had a ramrod erect posture which
sent the message of strength. She was married to Janet Kane who was a surgeon.
No one in the congregation was concerned that she was lesbian. If they were, they
wouldn’t be members of Friendship. They cared that Lillian had a strong
commitment to God and her congregants.

Lillian had been a pilot in the military and got a calling to the ministry prior
to retiring. Instead of piloting planes, she now piloted her parishioners. She had
flown in the wars in Iraq and had faced death which strengthened her relationship
with God. She was a dynamic speaker who prepared interesting, thought-
provoking, and sometimes faith-challenging sermons. No one ever fell asleep
during her services. Parishioners often stayed after services to discuss her sermons
with her, and even debate differing points of view. Lillian loved being challenged
because it showed that her congregants were thinking about and not just blindly
accepting religious concepts.

Her theme for her Easter sermon was that God wants us to experience a new
birth through Jesus. He wants us to rise up from our old selves and transform
ourselves into better people. He especially wants us to renew our relationships with
people we dislike or who are different from us. He wants us to forgive others so
they can forgive us. Keith thought of Roger and felt that he just couldn’t do this
despite knowing that he should do it. He couldn’t overcome his hatred of Roger
and all that he stood for. He couldn’t accept Roger’s racism. It wasn’t just a trait

39

that he had. It was part of his basic make-up that poisoned everything he touched.
He felt that he had to pursue this issue with God because it would take a lot of
dialoging and he was still doubtful of the outcome. He planned to discuss this
further with Lillian.

Both Amy and Keith thought of Amy’s parents whom they couldn’t forgive
for their all-consuming bigotry. There would never be any starting over with them.
Their relationship was dead, permanently. They wanted it that way and so did her
parents. They couldn’t risk the damage her parents could cause to their lives,
especially if they came into contact with Tammy or Teri who they would view as
abominations.

Amy and Keith asked themselves how they could forgive those who are
responsible for cruelty to immigrants, injustices in the criminal system, and world-
wide murders of innocent people. It wasn’t their place to forgive these people; it
was God’s. And they didn’t think He would forgive them. They believed He would
punish them in hell for eternity.

Along with the congregation, they repeated the mantra, “Love will overcome
hate,” five times, but it didn’t seem to be working. Amy and Keith knew that they
couldn’t ponder these Easter messages just on Easter, but they had to mull them
over all year-round which they did.

As Amy thought about Lillian’s words, she felt as if she was drowning in a
sea of evil; that the world was becoming a living hell. She especially felt that way
when she watched the news and saw the mayhem in foreign countries and the deep
divisions cracking apart her own country. When she looked at the rabid haters on
TV, she was reminded of the pictures of the faces in the crowds at lynchings.
These were the same people. Their faces were indelibly etched with deep seeded
animosity. And yet, when she looked around at the people in her church family,
she saw only goodness. She saw Jim Riley who devoted his life to lovingly caring
for his wife who was totally disabled by multiple sclerosis. She saw Phil and Sheila
Marley who took in abused foster children. She saw Hilda Sanchez who devoted
her life to teaching severely autistic children, even adopting one when his mother
abandoned him. She knew that with people like them spreading their goodness that
evil would eventually be conquered and the world mayhem and division in the
country would lessen, and hopefully disappear. Somehow, someday, good would
prevail in the world. God would rule.

40

After church services, the Tepper, Silver, and Peterson families had Easter
dinner at a buffet restaurant. They stuffed themselves, and then relaxed at the
table, and talked while Tommy and Tammy played with toys and books they had
brought from home. They basked in the gift of friendship that God had bestowed
on them. Before leaving, they held hands and thanked God for their friendship and
love.

On Sunday nights, Amy and Keith usually spent alone time sharing their
feelings and helping each other prepare to face the work week ahead. This was the
time when Amy planned to tell Keith about Ashley. She knew he would help put
her weird experience into perspective. He would make sense out of something that
seemed senseless.

They were sitting on the front porch holding hands like they had done since
they were teenagers. Keith could tell that Amy was upset because she was
fidgeting.

“Amy, what’s up? What’s bothering you?”

“Keith, the strangest thing happened Friday night at work. I didn’t say
anything about it because I didn’t want to spoil our weekend. Anyhow, you know
that patient Ashley who has early onset Alzheimer’s and was the assistant principal
at Lois’s school and Sylvia works in her husband’s office. Well, remember there
was that violent, terrible storm, and all the patients and even the staff got spooked.
I was with Ashley because I know she gets terribly agitated by storms. I was fixing
her bedding when I thought I heard her say, ‘Help me. Help me.’ But I didn’t see
her lips move. I asked her what she said, and she repeated, ‘Help me. Help me.’
And again, her lips didn’t move. It was as if she was communicating directly to my
brain. It was like mental telepathy. I felt like I was in a Stephen King book. But
what was really weird was that the second time she asked me to help her, she
called me by my name. She said, ‘Help me Amy.’ I didn’t think she even knew
my name. She never said it before. She hasn’t said anything in months. Isn’t that
the weirdest thing you ever heard of? What do you think happened? Do you think
I imagined it? Do you think I’m going nuts?”

As Amy relived this eerie experience, she shivered. Keith put his arm around
her and pulled her close, trying to calm her. But even he felt a tinge of fear of
Amy’s strange, inexplicable experience.

41

“I don’t know, Amy. Maybe you did imagine it. It was this scary, stormy
night and maybe you just got spooked. It does feel spooky there at night.”

Amy silently agreed that it was spooky at night, especially when she saw the
Angel of Death walking the halls. But she couldn’t share these experiences with
Keith, or he would never believe what happened with Ashley. No, her encounters
with the Angel of Death had to remain Amy’s secret, never to be divulged to
anyone.

“Maybe she actually said it without moving her lips. That’s possible. Look,
I’ll show you.”

Then Keith said, “Help me” without moving his lips. His voice seemed to
emanate from someplace deep in his chest. He looked like a ventriloquist
performing a trick.

“You try it.”

“No. I can’t do that. Anyhow, why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she
speak normally? Her voice didn’t seem to come from her chest. It came out of her
head. That’s why I thought of ESP. Why wouldn’t her voice come from her lips?
This just doesn’t make sense.”

“Next time you’re with her, try to get her to talk. Put your ear to her mouth
so if she is talking without moving her lips, you can tell.

Here. Try it with me. I’ll say it again without moving my lips and you put
your ear to my mouth so you can hear how the sound echoes in my chest.”

Keith enacted the demonstration again.

“I don’t know. I don’t think that was how it was. But it had to be. I’m so
confused. That was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve ever had. So scary.

I don’t think she’ll ever talk again. That was a fluke. Just like that woman
Diane who was perfectly alert and asked me if I was sick when she’d been totally
non-communicative for months, and then she died the next week.

Keith, I keep thinking about why she asked me to help her.”

“Maybe she wanted you to help save her from what Alzheimer’s is doing to
her, how it’s destroying her.”

42

“But that would mean that she’s aware of what’s happening. She doesn’t
seem to be aware of anything so how could she know she’s being destroyed by
Alzheimer’s. And how could I help her? How could I stop it? And why me, and
not David, or her doctor, or her priest?

Do you think she wanted me to help her die? To kill herself?”

“Absolutely not.”

“If she had an awareness that I’m Amy maybe she has an awareness of her
situation and wants to end it.”

“No, no, no. You’re imagining all this. It’s impossible.

I really don’t think this is going to happen again. As you said, it was a fluke.
But to put your mind at ease, if you can get her to talk, ask her why she wants you
to help her. What does she want you to do?”

“I’ll do that when no one’s around. People will think I’m crazy talking to a
patient who is totally out of it. We talk to patients, but we don’t really have
meaningful conversations. We say things like, ‘It’s going to be a nice day today,’
or ‘We’re going to have waffles for breakfast today.’ We talk at them. We don’t
really talk to them.”

Keith hugged Amy tightly, and said, “Don’t worry about this Amy. I’m sure
it’s not going to happen again. Let’s try to forget it.”

On Monday morning, everyone went off to work or school and Amy slept
late. When she got up, she ran some errands. She had supper with the family and
put Tammy to sleep. Then she went off to work to start a new week and try to
forget what had happened with Ashley.

Chapter 6

After Amy entered the passcode into the keypad at the door of the memory
unit, she saw that the lights had been replaced. The hall seemed to shine with extra
brightness. But she immediately knew something even more important than
lighting had happened since she had last been at work. Something not good. The
unit was abuzz with staff wearing masks and gloves. She felt like she was entering
a medical unit at a war front. She saw Maggie, looking totally exhausted, dragging
herself down the hall toward her office.

43

“Welcome back Amy. Since you were last here, lots has happened. We’ve
had a stomach flu outbreak as you can tell from our masked faces. Everybody
keeps vomiting and pooping, and the overpowering smell makes us throw up even
more. It looks like we’re having an ebola epidemic, but we’re not. At least, I hope
we’re not. I called in three temps to help with all the extra work. Soledad and
Latoya are out sick, and I’m sure more folks will be out tomorrow.”

Amy calmly said, “Thanks Maggie. We’ll handle it. Don’t worry. We’ve had
flu outbreaks before. Go home and get some sleep.”

“Oh flu’s not all, my friend. Let me tell you what else happened. We got a
new patient named Emily who came in just minutes before the outbreak. And she’s
worse than the flu. She’s worse than leprosy. She has everything in the world
wrong with her. And although she has C.O.P.D. from smoking two packs a day,
she still wants to smoke even though her doctor prohibits it. She keeps asking for
someone to take her outside so she can have a smoke. I’m sure she has cigarettes
hidden somewhere in her room. I can see her secretly lighting up and her exploding
in flames as her match hits her oxygen tank. She has another condition that’s not
considered medical, but it’s the worst thing she has. She is mean to the bone. She’s
combative and refuses to take meds, food, or keep her oxygen connected. Her
favorite word is “fuck” which she says constantly. Get used to hearing it. You’ll
think you’re in a sleazy truckers’ bar or a fraternity house.”

She looked disgusted when she talked about Emily but changed noticeably
when she switched to talking about Hilda. She became emotional as tears welled
up in her eyes.

“And the worst thing of all is that we lost an old friend. Hilda died last night,
just days short of her 104th birthday. I was so hopeful that she’d make it so we
could have a party to celebrate her wonderful life. She died peacefully in her sleep.
And you’ll be glad to know that she died in bed, and not on the floor. She was such
a sweet person, always smiling and thanking us for whatever we did for her. She
radiated goodness. She was a blessing from God. I’ll miss her.”

“I will too. I loved that old lady.

Is that all? Any other catastrophes, maybe a flood or an earthquake or a
patient riot?”

44

“No. I think you’ve got enough to keep you busy. Good luck. You’ll need it.
See you tomorrow my friend. I’d hug you, but I might be contagious. Oh, what the
hell.”

She grabbed Amy and hugged her tightly. Maggie, who was a fit runner,
laboriously trudged to the door. She looked like she had just completed a
marathon. She had, but it wasn’t a running marathon; it was a work marathon.
Today was one of those days when Maggie wondered if she should change jobs.
Maybe a less stressful job, like assembling nuclear bombs.

Amy went to her office to review the paperwork Maggie had left. Then she
donned her mask and gloves and started on her rounds. Flu was dangerous for
everyone, but much more so for medically fragile people like the Shady Oaks
residents. And because of the close living arrangements, it spread like wildfire.

Four hours later Amy had her first opportunity to sit down and drink a cup
of well-earned coffee. She laughed as she thought of her first encounter with Emily
who greeted her with, “Who the hell are you, you mother fucker?” That was
certainly a first for Amy. No one had ever called her that, at least not to her face.
She was tempted to respond, “Hi, I’m Amy, the mother fucker,” but she knew that
she had never before said the word “fuck” aloud or silently, and never would.
Amy’s worst swear word was an occasional “damn,” usually when she broke
something.

In her years at Shady Oaks, Amy had been physically assaulted, but
fortunately she hadn’t been seriously injured. But this was her first major verbal
assault. She preferred words to actions; they didn’t hurt. In fact, they made her
laugh. She was reminded of the chant from her childhood years. “Sticks and stone
may break my bones, but words can never harm me.”

While making the final rounds of her shift, Amy checked on Ashley. She
saw that since she had last seen her when she came on duty, she had thrown up.
Her nightgown was covered with vomit and she smelled of diarrhea. Amy sighed
and said to herself, “You caught it girl. Hope you pull out of this. Well maybe I
don’t. Maybe this would be a good time to say good-bye to the world. But it’s not
my decision. It’s God’s and my buddy, the Angel of Death.”

Amy looked up at the ceiling, sure that God was looking down through the
shingles of the Shady Oaks roof. “Hey God, be kind to Ashley and take her

45

peacefully. She’s had so much. Maybe it’s time. Just thought I’d give you a little
push. Obviously, it’s your decision.”

Amy checked Ashley’s vitals and found that she had a temperature, but her
heart and blood pressure were normal. It always amazed Amy how the bodies of
dementia patients continued to fight off illnesses to survive, while their brains had
given up the battle long ago.

Amy fed Ashley some water. She waited a few minutes to make sure she
kept it down, and then removed her nightgown. She was used to seeing her
emaciated body that looked like a corpse at a liberated concentration camp. But she
immediately noticed something different. There were marks all over her small,
flattened breasts. She looked closer and saw that they were bite marks. They were
especially pronounced around her nipples. She could actually see teeth marks
surrounded by traces of Ashley’s blood. It looked as if someone tried to bite her
nipples off. She gently brushed her fingers over the bite marks, unconsciously
hoping to erase them and the thought of how they had gotten there. Her body and
mind came to heightened attention at this horrific sight. Could this have been done
by some animal? But there were no animals at Shady Oaks. There was an
exterminator who came regularly and kept the place pest-free. And how could an
animal bite only her breasts which were covered by her nightgown, and not her
arms which were exposed?

Then Amy’s eyes moved down to Ashley’s stick-like thighs. There were
bruise marks as if she had been manhandled. The bruises were only at the top of
her thighs near her crotch. Her lower legs and arms were unmarked. Because her
skin was paper-thin, the bruise marks were a deep purple. She ran her fingertips
along each of the bruises hoping to make them disappear.

And Ashley wasn’t wearing her diaper. She always wore a diaper. Amy
glanced over at the trash can and saw that it had been stuffed to the bottom.
Because she wasn’t wearing a diaper, urine and diarrhea had soaked into the sheet
creating a mess and a stifling, overpowering odor.

What did this all mean? Why were there bite marks and bruises on Ashley’s
body, but only in certain places. Only in places that couldn’t be seen. Only in the
sexual areas. Amy never thought of Ashley as being a sexual being, but suddenly it
occurred to her that someone saw her that way even though it was hard to believe.

46

So hard. Someone had sexually attacked Ashley. Thinking these words made Amy
shiver with fear and horror. She couldn’t deny what her eyes were telling her.

Amy stared at Ashley’s body for a few more minutes trying to think
rationally after a stress-filled day. She gently touched the bite marks and bruises
again to make sure she wasn’t imagining them. And then she fought back visions
of how these had been created. She couldn’t deal with that now. If she thought of
what had happened, she would be paralyzed with grief and wouldn’t be able to
think or act rationally. But soon Amy would be unable to block out images of what
had happened. They would come in the form of nightmares that would plague her
for years. She would envision Ashley, the rape, the rapist, and every detail of the
room. But she wouldn’t see the rapist’s face until she found out who he was. And
then her dreams would become re-enactments of the crime. It would be years for
these dreams to dwindle and finally end.

Amy looked around at the room which seemed unusually bright because
Amy had turned on all the lights that had been blown out by the storm. She looked
at the pictures of David and Ashley that covered the walls closest to her bed. She
realized that they had witnessed the rape. She wished she could have closed their
eyes.

Although Amy was totally exhausted, she was able to think rationally. She
kept saying to herself, “Keep control. Think. Think.” She knew she had to retain as
much of the evidence as possible. She decided to take pictures of Ashley’s breasts
and thighs. No one would believe her if she didn’t have actual visual evidence.
She would have to show the pictures to Maggie, Mike, the director of Shady Oaks,
Jayne, the medical director, the police, and the countless others who would be
involved in this tragedy. She used her iPhone which allowed her to zoom in to
take close ups clearly showing the actual indentations from the teeth marks. She
had never anticipated that she would use her beloved iPhone for anything other
than taking happy pictures of her family. She took picture after picture of every
inch of Ashley’s body, her bed, and various parts of the room.

Amy had to find out when Ashley had last been changed so she could
pinpoint when this might have happened. Someone else must have seen these.
The bite marks and bruises didn’t seem fresh, but she really had no way of
knowing if they were or not. She was just guessing. Why would someone ignore
something like this? Maybe the temps Maggie hired saw them but ignored them or

47

didn’t realize what they meant. Or more likely, the staff was so overwhelmed with
the flu outbreak that no one checked on Ashley because she didn’t make any
demands.

Amy didn’t allow herself to consider who had done this. It was too
frightening, too horrifying, too gruesome to think that anybody at Shady Oaks was
capable of doing something so horrific. She had to be careful not to let anyone
know about this now. With the flu running rampant through the unit, it was not the
time. This matter needed the undivided attention of everyone. She thought that by
her delaying reporting this, it might happen again, but she doubted this because the
staff was constantly going in and out of the rooms.

She knew that this was the worst thing that had ever happened at Shady
Oaks. Last year the staff had been given a full day of training on physical and
sexual abuse by a specialist in elder abuse. She remembered thinking that this was
something that could never happen at Shady Oaks. All precautions were in place
to prevent this. How wrong she was. For a moment she thought back seven years
ago when Teri got pregnant. She thought of all the precautions she and Keith had
put in place to protect Teri; but like now, there were unimaginable, unanticipated
flaws in the system.

She was overwhelmed by what happened to her poor Ashley. She felt
physically weak at the realization that she had been sexually abused. She thought
that Ashley had experienced the very worst that could happen to a woman.
Fortunately, she didn’t know what had happened. But did she know? Was this
somehow connected to her communicating with Amy? No, that couldn’t be
because she talked last week before the rape occurred. She fervently prayed that
Ashley was not aware of what happened to her. She hoped her dementia protected
her.

But Ashley’s beloved family would know. They would again be crushed by
the cruelties inflicted upon Ashley. How could Courtney cope with this? How
could she survive? For a fraction of a second, Amy considered hiding what had
happened to protect the family. But she knew she could never do this. Sacrificing
Ashley’s family was the cost of stopping this evil predator. She had to get justice
for Ashley and any other helpless victims he may have abused.

48

Amy washed away all traces of vomit and feces clinging to Ashley’s body.
She rubbed layers of lotion on her body to obscure the smell. She hoped Ashley
would sense the gentleness of Amy’s touch, and this would somehow erase any
memory of the brutal, vicious mutilation of her body. Then she put a fresh diaper
and a clean nightgown on her. She fed her more water to rehydrate her. Amy knew
that she had to keep Ashley’s nightgown for possible evidence, so she placed the
smelly, dirty nightgown in a plastic bag and planned to lock it in her locker for safe
keeping.

Amy decided to try to communicate with Ashley even though she knew it
was unlikely she would get a response. She felt she had to tell her that she was
there for her and she would do everything to protect her from the abuser. She
leaned into Ashley and murmured in her ear, “I love you my Ashley. I promise you
I’ll do everything in my power to get the animal who did this to you. I know God
would want me to get justice for you. God picked me to find out what happened.
He picked me to stop this man’s evil.”

Amy didn’t expect an answer, but she asked anyway.

“Ashley, who did this to you? Tell me so I can make sure that he gets the
punishment he deserves. Help me my beloved Ashley. I love you.”

As she pulled away from Ashley, she heard her say, “Bu.”

Amy yelled, “What?”

She said it again, “Bu.”

She didn’t actually say a word. She said the /b/ sound. She said bu in the
same way she had radiated help me the last time Ashley had communicated with
her.

Amy kept repeating, “Say it again. Say it again. Say it again.” But Ashley
lapsed back into oblivion.

Amy wished that she had videoed their encounter. No one would believe that
she’d talked, that she answered Amy’s question. Then she wondered if anyone else
would have heard Ashley talk. Maybe she was the only one who could hear her.
Maybe there was this mystical connection between them and no one else could be
part of it. If there was no voice on the video, people would really think that she was
crazy.