Violet
Wednesday night
‘G ive us a smile, gorgeous,’ said the porter, winking jauntily as he passed her in the corridor. ‘Shame to spoil that pretty face.’
She was running a little late having driven to her gran’s care home in south Gloucestershire early evening and then been stuck in traffic on the way back into Bristol, making the turnaround time needed to park at home, wrestle her bike out of the corridor and cycle to work, tighter than she would have wanted.
Was it any wonder she had a face like a smacked arse?
And was it any business of the winking porter’s if that was how she wanted her face to look anyway?
She jogged onto the medical admissions unit and into the small office, slinking down into a chair with a breathless apology. Anjali looked up. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even started on the list yet, John’s just filling us in on the granny-dumping numbers.’
‘Granny-dumping?’ Violet pulled a confused face.
‘Oh yes, of course, it’s your first Christmas,’ said Anjali.
‘You won’t have experienced the joys of festive granny-dumping yet, especially being on nights.
’ She leaned back in her chair and sighed.
‘It’s basically families who want to get rid of the grandparents over the holiday period.
There’s always a flurry of admissions just before Christmas Day.
That’s for the families who have elderly relatives living with them for the rest of the year and don’t want them spoiling the festivities by taking up space, wetting themselves on the best dining chairs or, you know, dribbling over the turkey during Christmas dinner, whatever.
And then there’s another flurry on Boxing Day for those who don’t usually have Granny to stay and who after forty-eight hours of generally being around an old person, find themselves unable to cope anymore. ’
Violet was surprised to hear the normally mild-mannered Anjali sound quite so scathing. She screwed up her nose in consternation.
‘But surely it’s not just that they’re an inconvenience around the house,’ she said. ‘You can’t be admitted to hospital for that? These people must be medically unwell?’
John, from the dayshift shook his head. ‘It’s all the usual bollocks excuses,’ he said, looking down at his list. ‘“Off legs” , “Not quite herself” , “A bit confused”, etcetera. And then you clerk them in and they’re not confused at all, just slightly baffled as to why they’ve been turfed out of the family home for Christmas.
’ He burst into a spontaneous round of ‘It’s the most wonderful time– of the yearrrr…
’ and then broke off as the door opened and Gus walked in.
‘Alright, medics,’ Gus said, addressing the group collectively, although Violet felt for one moment that he seemed to be looking directly at her and she flushed accordingly.
‘Alright, Gus,’ John said. ‘You here to see that bloke vomiting blood? I take it from your presence that the surgeons have agreed to take him to theatre?’
‘It really is a thing, Violet,’ said Anjali gently, seeing that her house officer was looking a little flustered and assuming it was because she remained unconvinced about the recent revelations. ‘Gus, you’ll back me up, won’t you? Granny-dumping. Violet doesn’t believe in it.’
‘Oh yeah. Granny-dumping– believe it Violet, that shit is real.’ He smiled at her. ‘No festive miracles at work here. I don’t get to see the phenomenon so much now I’m in anaesthetics but I definitely remember it from foundation year.’
‘See,’ said Anjali emphatically, as if Gus’s opinion was worth the combined weight of John’s and her own experiences.
‘The numbers speak for themselves. Up and down the country, a big old spike in admissions for non-specific vague symptoms in the elderly. If it wasn’t so universal, we wouldn’t have a name for it. ’
‘How depressing,’ said Violet, her attention having at least partially returned to the unsettling picture her colleague was describing, although she remained aware of Gus in the periphery of her vision. The atmosphere in the room seemed more charged as a result of his presence.
Anjali sighed. ‘To be fair,’ she said, ‘perhaps some of it is just that people can’t cope with the increased pressure on the family home during the festive period, it’s likely not all about inconvenience.
My parents, for example, they’ve had Nana and Dadi living with them for years, but during big events like Diwali when me and my siblings and all our partners come to stay, it can get a bit hectic.
And Nana will often develop a multitude of aches and pains on those occasions, probably in response to the stress. She can be quite demanding.’
‘But your parents wouldn’t call an ambulance for that?’ Violet said. ‘Not unless they thought she was actually ill. They wouldn’t do it just to get rid of her.’
Anjali shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We go through the usual routine, take her to the GP, have a nice chat, agree it’s another bout of all-over body pain that doesn’t really have a pathological cause, she feels better for having seen a medical professional, we go back home, all good.
But then this isn’t an Indian phenomenon.
My parents would kick the rest of us out of the house before they even questioned the elders.
Granny-dumping is just not something we do.
’ She shifted and looked a bit uncomfortable.
‘I don’t want to sound racist or anything,’ she said, ‘but this is very much a White British issue. The difference in how we treat our elderly across the cultures is staggering. You just look at the demographic in residential care. Overwhelmingly White British.’
‘To be fair, isn’t that just because there’s more White British old people living in the UK?’ asked Gus.
‘Yes, probably,’ conceded Anjali. ‘But look at the proportion of elderly people from ethnic minorities living with their families compared to the number in residential care in this country. And then look at the ratio amongst Caucasians, or strictly speaking, Anglo-Saxons, because Mediterranean cultures often have a similar attitude to their elderly as Asians, Africans, everyone else really– just not the Brits. They ship their grannies off in the same way they ship their kids off to boarding school.’
Violet was quiet for a moment, thinking about her grandmother’s care home where she’d been only a few hours earlier.
What Anjali said about the lack of diversity amongst the residents was true.
There wasn’t a single ethnic minority group represented in the entire building, unless you counted the staff looking after them.
But she still felt slighted by the implication that moving your relative to a care home was the same as dumping them into an acute hospital bed on Christmas Day.
She considered the prospect of having her grandmother to stay for the holidays, whether it would be practical on any level.
Now with her dementia so advanced, she guessed not.
Two or three hours was usually Gran’s limit before she became restless and agitated, before she started wandering and throwing things at people and knocking stuff over.
Maybe she did that at the care home too, but there were staff on hand twenty-four-seven, people looking after her, keeping her calm and safe.
Her parents couldn’t provide that level of sustained attention.
She knew that they had thought long and hard about ‘what to do with Gran’, the conversations lasting late into the night and often accompanied by guilty tearful recriminations.
The words burst out of her before she could stop them.
‘People don’t just chuck family members into care homes because they can’t be bothered with them,’ she said hotly.
‘You’re making it sound as though it’s an easy decision.
And it’s not. Often residential care is the best place, the safest place.
’ She was embarrassed to feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes and blinked them away furiously.
There was a moment’s silence and Violet was acutely aware of Gus standing nearby having witnessed her reaction. She kept her gaze focussed on her knees.
‘I know that.’ Anjali said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you…’
‘I’m not upset.’ Violet looked back up and met Anjali’s gaze. ‘I’m fine,’ she said and tried to smile.
‘O-kay.’ Anjali continued to look at her strangely.
‘Well, either way, I’m sorry if I sounded judgemental.
I think I’m just becoming a bit jaded.’ She sighed.
‘You stay in medicine for long enough and you start to see pretty shoddy behaviour from some people– and their families. I’ve almost come to expect it.
Sometimes makes me question what this job is doing to my view of humanity though. ’
Violet mulled this over. She’d never heard Anjali admit to anything other than being completely happy in her work but maybe she wasn’t the only one who had occasional doubts about her career choices.
Perhaps she should ask her about it, check that Anjali was okay.
Trouble was, that was easier said than done.
Violet usually preferred to avoid that type of conversation.
She had a feeling she might make things worse.
Anjali returned to the task at hand and looked down at her list. ‘So, John, how about the others?’ she said, the smile back on her face looking a little fixed.
The rest of the handover passed without incident but Violet felt awkward about snapping at Anjali and decided that she deserved some sort of explanation.
‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ she said afterwards as they walked away from the admissions unit and towards the stairs. ‘I– my grandmother is in a care home. She’s got dementia and it’s– well– sometimes it’s a bit difficult.’
Anjali nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Makes sense. I’d be sensitive about it too. If you need to talk, you know, about?—’