The Switch: Jho's Story

Nurse Remy was a miserable person. She hated her life, her job, and her patients. Especially the patients. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t stop whining and bothering her all the time. These people were waited on hand and foot. By her! What did they have to complain about? She just couldn’t wait to go home and forget this place and these people every day.

Jennifer was a sweet elderly lady. She loved life. Even though she was bed ridden and unable to care for herself she loved waking up every day. She had lived a long full life. She had many blessings that she counted daily.

Nurse Remy went into Jennifer’s room that morning with a worse attitude than usual. She flounced around grumbling under her breath. She went over to Jennifer’s bed to change and dress her for the day. Nurse Remy roughly tossed and turned Jennifer in the bed as she angrily undressed then dressed her. Jennifer said, “Is something wrong dear?”

As Remy slammed Jennifer’s breakfast tray down on the table she growled, “We are shorthanded today so I have to do my job and the aides. Now be quiet and eat your breakfast.” With that she stomped out of the room.

Jennifer wondered what it would take to make someone so obviously unhappy with life. She struggled through her breakfast and then sat back to watch her stories. The things those characters got themselves into were hilarious. She was chuckling merrily when Remy came in with her medications.

“What are you so happy about? You can’t even get out of that bed,” Remy snapped. Jennifer just smiled. When Remy leaned over the bed, Jennifer placed her hand on Remy’s cheek. “I hope one day you can understand what it is like to be me.” Jennifer patted Remy’s cheek.

As Remy straightened up the ground and walls began to shake. Remy and Jennifer were both thrown to the ground.

            Remy woke up on the floor and looked around. Nothing had moved. The only thing that was different was the body lying next to her. She reached out to help Jennifer when she realized she was looking at herself. She started screaming. Obviously she was dead. People came running in and were looking at her and talking to her. How was that possible? She looked down at her hands and started screaming again. Those weren’t her hands. The employees were trying to soothe her and reason with her. She continued screaming and was thrashing wildly. She kept saying, “I’m Remy. I’m a nurse.”

The employees called an ambulance for her and the body on the floor that still hadn’t moved. When they got her into the hospital she was sedated and put through a battery of tests. It was determined that she must have suffered brain damage from the fall. But, she had no other injuries. So she was sent back to the nursing home.

Eventually, she was moved to the Alzheimer’s unit because the staff believed her delusions were getting worse and that she was a danger to herself. She lived out the rest of her days dealing with the indignities of a patient who is incapable of caring for herself.

Jennifer had woken up in the hospital. When she realized that she was young and whole again she signed herself out of the hospital. She spent the rest of her time in Remy’s body making the world a better place. She used the power of being a nurse, at least in name, to lobby for better treatment of the elderly. She became a fierce patient advocate and died peacefully in her bed many years later.