The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(83)

“This one looked nice in the brochure,” I said as we neared the care facility.

“They all look nice in the brochure.” My mother stewed in the passenger seat, a red-and-white scarf tied in a knot beneath her chin to protect her hair from the wind and sunglasses covering much of her face. She looked the way she had always looked when I had been young and she had been driving the Falcon. But I no longer felt young, and she had not driven the Falcon for two years. “That’s why they have brochures, to make them look nice.”

As I had predicted, my mother resisted any talk of my father not coming home. The only way I could even get her to look at the care facilities was to tell her that this need not be permanent, that, in time, if he improved, Dad could come home. He still could not talk, though he was doing better making sounds like words, and he’d recovered some movement on the paralyzed left side of his body. My mother, however, had never failed at anything she’d set her mind to, and she’d set her mind to my father coming home. At this point I could have said something like, “Maybe it’s God’s will,” but it only would have been hurtful. Besides, I no longer believed in God’s will. I was not willing to accept that it was God’s will for a good man like my father, a devoted man, to spend his final days in some care facility.

After an intervention with Dr. Laurence and my father’s physical therapy team, my mother at least agreed to look at various long-term care options. We had visited five of the six facilities on the list, but my mother had deemed each too sterile or too clinical, and she thought the staff to be either too robotic or too cavalier. I hadn’t liked them, either, for much the same reasons. “If your father has been sentenced to live out his life in a facility, it will not be a prison sentence,” she’d said after leaving one of the facilities. “That place had all the warmth of a mortuary.”

At the top of a hill we came to the Crystal Springs Long-Term Care Campus. Upon first sight, I sensed it to be different from the other facilities. The two-story stucco buildings were connected by covered walkways and painted the same beige color as the dried grass, blending in nicely with the rolling hills. With tiled roofs, arches, and a center fountain, Crystal Springs had the feel of a Spanish mission.

“This looks nice,” I said, not bothering to add that it should, given that it was the most expensive facility on the list.

“You don’t judge a book by its cover, Samuel,” my mother said.

I parked in a space reserved for visitors. The temperature was pleasant, high seventies, with a cool breeze that rustled the leaves of palm trees and sent ripples of sparkling diamonds across the surface of the Crystal Springs Reservoir in the valley below.

We walked a red concrete path to the main entrance. Several patients sat on benches or in wheelchairs soaking up the sunshine with staff nearby dressed in maroon shirts. Inside the facility, I asked to speak with Shirley Farley, Crystal Springs’ chief administrator. I’d made an appointment earlier in the week, and for some reason I had expected a midfifties, heavyset woman in a white nurse’s uniform with a stern demeanor—Nurse Ratched from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The woman who greeted us wore navy-blue slacks and a white blouse and had a smile on her face. She looked and sounded too youthful to be running a care facility.

“Mrs. Hill,” she said directly to my mother. “I’m glad you could come on such a glorious afternoon. Did you notice the views on the drive?”

“I noticed,” my mother said without enthusiasm.

“They’re spectacular,” I said.

“I wish every day was like this,” Farley said. “Unfortunately, we get fog in the fall, and it can be hot in the summer. We try to take advantage of days like this when we can.”

“I don’t want to be driving that road in the fog,” my mother said to me. “And I hope those poor patients don’t get sunburned.”

Farley glanced at me, and I smiled. To my mother, she said, “May I show you around the campus?”

“Campus,” my mother scoffed.

“Yes, please,” I said, though it felt like a waste of time and effort given my mother’s recalcitrant demeanor.

Shirley Farley walked us past the fountains and flower beds. “We try to get our clients outside as much as possible,” she said. “Fresh air is so important.”

“My husband needs constant supervision,” my mother said. “I hope you don’t leave patients alone.”

“Dr. Laurence mentioned your husband’s condition,” Farley said. “He would have a member of the staff with him any time he is outdoors.”

We proceeded to a communal dining hall. “Some of our clients prefer to eat in their rooms, and we accommodate that,” Farley said, “but we have also found that communal activities, such as dining, have therapeutic effects. We also have movie nights, a book club, chess club, and supervised athletic activities.”

My mother looked away.

“What type of effects have you noticed?” I asked.

“Our clients exhibit lower rates of depression and increased energy, which promotes their rehabilitation.”

“Do any of them ever leave?” my mother asked.

“Some have,” Farley said. “But I’m going to be honest, Mrs. Hill. Most are here for the duration, which is why we do our best to make it as comfortable as possible. May I show you one of our rooms?”