Prayers From The Heart
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After fourteen years, I went out and applied for jobs all over, but without any kind of diploma you just don’t get a decent job of any kind. I had applied at our local hospital for a housekeeping job, but they said they weren’t hiring anyone at the moment. I figured they would shove my application on the back of the file. I left feeling like a total failure. I came back to town and applied at our local grocery store. I knew that I could stock shelves, or run a register. They hired me the next day to run a register. It was okay, but I didn’t really like it that much. Most of the dirty work got shoved off on me. They all of a sudden started cutting back my hours. It got to where I was down to one day a week of working. I told them that I quit since they said that they couldn’t give me any more hours. I left and came home. The next day I was fixing to go out the door to start looking for another job when the telephone rang. The hospital was calling to see if I was interested in a job. My heart was beating hard, and I immediately said yes! She told me to come in the next morning for an interview. I had a couple of friends that worked or was associated with the hospital and they put in a good word for me. My boss was kind of stand- officious with me. I had a knot take form in my stomach. I just knew that she wasn’t going to hire me because of my work history. I had not worked in fourteen years. I had stayed home to raise my kids so they could have their mother in there early childhood days, not realizing that it would hurt me in the long run. I needed to work. I wasn’t getting any younger and I needed to build up my social security for when I retired. After a tour of the hospital with the supervisor I went back to the office and she hired me. I left on cloud nine. To me having the housekeeping job was real good, for no more education than I had. At first I thought it was going to be easy, but I soon found out that it was not to be so. There was a lot to learn, especially about where to go, when to go, what chemicals to use and where, etc. I soon found out that the hospital was just like a pot of homemade soup; you’re liable to have almost anything in it. But it’s like everything else in life you either learn to eat it, or spit it out. I learned to take a lot of things. When I went to the night shift I never knew that things would change that much for me, and the people that I worked with would forever change my life. I became very close to a lot of them. I was also close to my fellow employees in our department. They were good people to work with, but of course we only had three people at night, and it would and could get hard on us once in awhile. There were a lot of times we had to pull together to get the jobs done. We knew how to do team work and that makes a lot of difference when you can pull together. Some nights I would be in deserted hallways without anyone being around, cleaning bathrooms and offices. Especially on the weekends, we would have to be in areas that I felt weren’t safe. A lot of times I would hear the echoes of doors closing, people talking and occasionally security would come by to check up on you. As time went on I grew accustomed to the nightly routine. I knew all the places where I was supposed to be and all the places where I wasn’t to be at. I believe the worst place that I hated to be at was in the OR by myself. After the doctor and nurses were gone and I would be cleaning, I would get these crazy notions that someone was watching me, or that someone might come in here and kill me. I would sometimes laugh out loud at myself at how foolish that I was being. I told myself that I was watching too many horror movies. We had to wear a beeper, and sometimes it would go off when I was having these thoughts and it would scare the pee out of me. I would have to scold myself for letting my nerves get to me. Most of the time though I was too busy to have silly notions that someone was watching me, and I would let these thoughts run off my back, like water running off of a ducks back. Some mornings I would see my boss and some mornings I wouldn’t. I guess it was best that I didn’t. I felt like she didn’t give a hoot about me, or my work. I would be driving home wondering what I had said or done to make her feel that way toward me. Of course, I did have some lies told on me, but I guess that was all right too. I really didn’t see any need trying to defend myself. I made up my mind to do my work and to heck with it. I was either liked, or not liked, and it really didn’t matter to me if I was or not. I had been hurt enough in my life without worry whether someone liked me or not. I had been working there over four years and things started changing for me. My body was feeling really tired. My kidneys kept showing that I would have a small amount of blood in them or a large amount. I was using the bathroom okay, so I would just brush it aside. Then my sugar started failing. Then it would be back to normal. So I just put it all out of my mind the best I could. I thought it was because I was working such long hours and plus I wasn’t getting any sleep. My life seemed to be in a hurry. My husband was out of work, because he had hurt his back, and there was no insurance on either one of us. There was never enough money for bills, especially on my pay. I never thought of really asking God for help. I figured that as much as I had sinned, that I was a lost soul. I had lost all track of my life, plus all meaning of life.
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About the Book
The sick, the depressed, and the diseases that I worked around were sometimes difficult. At times, it would be hard for me to digest all at once. I had been working at the local hospital for four and half years. I worked for housekeeping. My job called for a lot of things. Frankly, the job called for too much for one person to do, but I did my job and there were some parts of it that I loved and some parts of it that I hated. But I guess that goes with most everyone that works on a public job. Sometimes you just have to swallow a lot of bull. Some nights when I went into work, I just wanted to turn around and go right back home. There were times that I wouldn’t even get into my department before I was being paged. Well, they would just have to wait, I’d tell myself. But as usual, I would pick up the phone and dial the department that would be paging for housekeeping. My work was rather interesting. You would meet all kinds of people and there were times that I would have to go off somewhere and cry. I had to learn to control my emotions while working there. I loved the people that I worked with, but sometimes I would think that they didn’t give a hoot about me. I was soon to find out how wrong I was in having feelings such as that.
About the Author
If any one of my readers would like to contact me after reading this book, please contact my publisher. I will be very happy to respond to the public. No true names were mentioned in this book for the sake of their privacy. This is a true book of sorrow and life and death.