Sadie – The Least of These
Story line:
Sadie, recently divorced, with an adult son who is struggling with his own life, enters the workforce as a nurses’ aide at Park View Nursing Home. Third shift is tough, but suits her life until she hears a resident crying and meets the long-time bully of the third shift, John Braddford. John taunts Sadie, informs her that her son is dating his daughter, and convinces her that the crying resident is just confused. Sadie just wants to do her job, but the residents she gets to meet in the quiet, still hours of the night, come to mean too much to her to look the other way.
As she tries to look into the future and forget the past that had become an unhappy, desolate life, Sadie finds a bright apartment in a large old house owned by Margaret and her son David. Margaret engulfs Sadie in a tapestry of flowers, baking, and philosophy of life while David’s easy, friendly manner helps Sadie enjoy learning about new things and buoys her own sense of creativity. David collects old post cards and an unexpected throve of historical cards has Sadie, Margaret, and David planning a wonderful project of identifying old landmarks with the help of the Park View residents.
At work Sadie has witnessed more behavior by John and his cousin Pam, the night shift LPN, that makes her heart ache for the people whose identities and histories are all but lost once they move into Park View. She designs a project to give them back their histories and sets out to create personal books for each resident on her wing. Her activities land her in the administrator’s office when a resident’s family member commends the project which the administrator knows nothing about. But Sadie is assured that she can continue with the project and she is renewed once again.
Sadie once more comes upon John and discovers what he is doing in the room of a resident, Mr. Dunphy, who Sadie had heard crying. Sadie finds John watching TV in the room, keeping the resident up all night and taunting him to be quiet. Sadie acts and pours water into the TV so that for now Mr. Dunphy will be able to sleep and not have John keep him awake.
But the attempt to save Mr. Dunphy is the perfect event for Pam and John to use to as a reason that Sadie should be punished. Destroying property is reason to be fired and it is only because the nursing supervisor sees a caring person in Sadie and has nagging suspicions about John that Sadie gets to keep her job.
The unhealthy culture of the home continues with jokes about residents, laughing at them naked, and worse. The tangle of personalities and power grabbing and moral struggles is ongoing and exhausting. Nothing is easy to prove when it is one person’s word against another’s. Then there is a theft of personal property and this time a family member is furious. Sadie is sure it is John and Pam, frequent sellers at the local Flea Market, who are stealing items. But how could she ever prove it? When some old postcards that David gave to the residents turn up being sold at the Flea Market, Sadie tells all and has high hopes of catching the bully and seeing him fired from Park View.
The thief is caught and it isn’t John or Pam. How is it that good people do bad things to the vulnerable residents of a nursing home? Sadie is more confused than ever, but when she has suspicions that John is sexually molesting a young, severely disabled patient, she acts to stop this horrible abuse.
About “Sadie – The Least of These”
There are thousands and thousands of Nurses’ Aides working in Nursing Homes across America. They labor for low pay, work long hours, and have what most people consider one of the least desirable jobs in our country. They need a hero. “Sadie, the Least of These” gives them one.
Healthcare and the graying of America are major stories every night in the news. Nursing homes continue to be criticized and how many people really know what goes on inside of these health care institutions? How many people really know how good aides struggle against management that is bottom line oriented, co-workers who don’t care and a complex network of social ills?
Sadie, recently divorced, re-enters the work force, gets a job at Park View and looks forward to helping elderly people. Soon she is witness to circumstances that jeopardize the safety of the residents, but who is she to change a long time system of overlooking the work of the bully of the third shift? And to make matters worse, her estranged son is dating his daughter. Sadie has always taken a back seat to others. She has always kept her mouth shut and kept out of sight. Can she stand up to the bureaucracy and the bully? Can she at least make life better for those who are forgotten in Park View?
Anyone who has a relative in a nursing home as well as anyone who has or does work in the healthcare arena will recognize and relate to events and people in this book. The head nurse who cares, but wouldn’t believe what happens on third shift. The aide who just wants to do her job and go home. The administrator who wants to play golf. The aide who falsifies charting. And Sadie who struggles to know if what she sees is just the way it is or if it is something she has the strength to change.
As a licensed nursing home administrator with over 27 years experience in long term care working at many different jobs, I know what goes on inside a nursing home. I know the good people who get caught up in looking the other way and I know the complexities of a system that creates villains and angels. And I know that ordinary people do extraordinary things every day for other people inside the walls of a nursing home.
I also know that the great majority of people want to do what is right, but need reminders that taking care of other people is important and that the ones who do it in a caring and loving way are the people who make a difference in the world. It’s time for a front-line, entry level worker to have a little glory.
