My grandmother’s hearing aids were in the trash can by her bed.
She’s 84 and deaf without them, and I’m the only family she has left.
The aide told me Grandma THREW THEM OUT herself.
“Alyssa, this happens with dementia patients,” Denise said, walking me toward the elevator with a hand on my back.
Grandma Joyce raised me after my mom took off. She paid for my two years of community college out of a Kroger pension and never once mentioned it.
She’s been at Bellhaven since March. I come Tuesdays after my shift and Sundays before noon.
The next Tuesday she grabbed my wrist and said the night lady hurts her.
I told her nobody was hurting her.
Then I helped her into her cardigan and saw four small marks on her upper arm, spaced out in a line, like fingers.
Denise said Grandma had been bumping into the bed rail.
After that Grandma stopped doing her crossword book. She used to only finish the Monday ones, said the rest were rigged.
She slept through my whole visit twice in a row.
That Sunday there was a green capsule in her pill cup. She takes a blue one and a white one. I’ve filled her weekly organizer since 2019.
Denise said the pharmacy switched brands.
I called the pharmacy Monday on my lunch break.
No switch.
Grandma added me to her checking account four years ago, so I logged in that night and scrolled back.
Sixty-dollar ATM withdrawals. Twice a week. Same Marathon station three miles from Bellhaven.
My grandmother can’t get to the bathroom without two people.
So I typed Denise’s full name into Google with the word “aide.”
I couldn’t breathe. I read the second article twice before it made sense. DENISE VOGEL HAD WORKED AT FOUR HOMES IN SIX YEARS, AND TWO OF THEM HAD REPORTED DEATHS UNDER REVIEW WHILE SHE WAS ON NIGHTS.
I drove over at 6 a.m. with my phone still open in my hand.
Grandma’s roommate Eileen was awake in her chair by the window, and she waved me in fast, both hands.
“Shut the door, honey,” she said. “Your grandma isn’t the first one on this hall, and I’ve been writing down every single night in the back of my address book.”
What Eileen Had Been Sitting On
Eileen is 79. Her daughter lives in Phoenix and calls on Sundays. She’s been at Bellhaven fourteen months, which is eight months longer than Grandma Joyce, and she told me she noticed Denise the first week.
“She’s got a way of being nice that isn’t nice,” Eileen said. “You know what I mean.”
I did.
She got up slowly and pulled her address book from the drawer of her nightstand. It was one of those small spiral ones, red cover, the kind you can get at a dollar store. She’d filled in the back pages with dates and times in pencil, small and careful. Entries going back to April.
April 9: green pill, Marian’s cup. Marian very groggy next day.
April 14: heard crying from 114, Denise came out at 2:15.
April 22: Marian fell. No call light pulled first.
Marian had been in room 114. She died in May. Eileen said the family was told it was a cardiac event. They didn’t ask questions. They lived in Georgia and they were tired and grieving and they believed what they were told, because why wouldn’t you.
My hands were doing something. I pressed them flat on my knees.
Eileen kept going. May through July. Nine entries with Grandma Joyce’s name. The hearing aids, listed. The sleeping. One night in late June where Eileen heard Grandma crying and knocked on the wall between their beds, and the crying stopped, and then Denise’s voice came low through the dark, saying something Eileen couldn’t make out.
“I almost called my daughter that night,” Eileen said. “But it was two in the morning and what was she going to do from Phoenix.”
She handed me the address book.
“Take it,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for somebody to give it to.”
The Green Capsule
I took photos of every page before I left the room. Then I drove to the parking lot of a Walgreens two blocks away and sat in my car and called my friend Terri, who works registration at St. Vincent’s.
I didn’t know who else to call. I didn’t know if I was supposed to call the police first or Adult Protective Services first or a lawyer first. I didn’t know if showing up at 6 a.m. and leaving with Eileen’s address book had already done something wrong legally.
Terri stayed on the phone with me for forty minutes. She looked things up while I talked. She told me to call APS and ask for an emergency intake, and to tell them I had documentation, and to use that word specifically.
“Documentation,” I said.
“And don’t go back in there today,” she said. “Don’t tip anyone off. Can you do that?”
I said yes. I wasn’t sure I meant it.
The APS intake worker was named Gary. He sounded tired in a way that had nothing to do with the time of day. I told him about the marks on Grandma’s arm. The hearing aids. The sleeping. The green capsule. The bank withdrawals. The address book. Denise Vogel’s name and the two facilities and the deaths under review.
Gary said “uh-huh” several times and I couldn’t tell if he was writing it down or waiting for me to finish.
Then he said: “Do you still have the pill?”
I didn’t. It had been two Sundays ago. I’d handed the cup to the floor nurse and pointed at the green one and the floor nurse had looked at me like I was the problem and said she’d check on it, and I had let it go, because Denise said pharmacy switch and I had believed her for three days before I called.
“I don’t have it,” I said.
“Okay,” Gary said. “What I need you to do is – “
And then he told me to write down my case number, and I wrote it on the back of my hand because I didn’t have paper.
What the Second Article Said
I hadn’t told Gary everything I found. Not because I was hiding it. Because I was still trying to understand it myself.
The first article was from a local news site in Dayton, 2019. Headline was something about a nursing home investigation. Denise Vogel named as a former employee. No charges. Facility paid a fine.
The second article was from a different city. Akron, 2021. A family had filed a civil suit against a care facility and named a staff member, Denise Vogel, in the complaint. The suit alleged that a 77-year-old resident named Harold Pruitt had been given an unidentified sedative on multiple occasions without a prescription, that personal items had gone missing from his room, and that Mr. Pruitt had lost eighteen pounds in four months while in the facility’s care.
The suit was settled. The terms were not disclosed. Denise Vogel was not criminally charged. She left that facility and, apparently, kept her certification.
Harold Pruitt died nine months after the suit was filed. The article didn’t say whether the two things were connected. It just listed the date and moved on.
I sat with that for a while.
He had a daughter named in the article. Renee Pruitt. I Googled her. Found a Facebook profile. Sent her a message at 11 p.m. that started with I know this is strange and ended with my phone number.
She called me the next morning at 7:04.
She talked for twenty-two minutes before I said much of anything. She’d been trying to find someone who’d listen for two years. She’d called APS in her county. She’d called a state oversight board. She’d called two lawyers, one of whom told her she didn’t have enough and one of whom she couldn’t afford.
“They move them around,” she said. “When something gets close to happening, they just move them somewhere else and start over.”
I thought about Denise’s hand on my back, steering me toward the elevator.
This happens with dementia patients.
What I Did That I Probably Shouldn’t Have
I went back on Wednesday. I know Terri told me not to. I know.
I told myself I was just going to see Grandma. Which was true. But I also wanted to see Denise’s face when she saw mine.
Denise wasn’t on shift. The woman at the nurses’ station said she was off until Thursday night. I asked casually, the way you ask about the weather.
Grandma Joyce was awake. She was sitting up in bed with her hearing aids in and her crossword book open to a Tuesday puzzle, which she normally wouldn’t touch.
She looked at me for a second before she said anything.
“I thought you weren’t coming until Sunday,” she said.
“I came early,” I said.
She nodded like that was reasonable. Then she pointed at 14 across and said, “Six letters. Actress who played Tootsie’s roommate.”
I didn’t know. She didn’t either. We sat with it for a while.
I didn’t tell her what I was doing. She’s 84 and she’s been scared for months and she deserves at least one visit where nobody is talking about Denise Vogel.
Before I left I checked her pill cup. Blue one. White one.
That was it.
I didn’t know if that meant something or nothing.
The Part That Moved Fastest
APS sent an investigator on Friday. Her name was Sandra Hatch, and she was younger than I expected, maybe 35, with a notepad and a way of listening that made you feel like she’d already heard worse this week and was still taking it seriously.
She met me in the parking lot first. I gave her the photos of Eileen’s address book. I gave her Renee Pruitt’s phone number. I gave her the bank statements I’d printed at the library, three months of sixty-dollar withdrawals, highlighted.
She looked at the bank statements a long time.
“Has your grandmother authorized any other people to make withdrawals on her behalf?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “She authorized me and that’s it. She doesn’t carry cash anymore. Her legs.”
Sandra wrote something down.
The investigation formally opened that day. I found out later that two other families on Grandma Joyce’s hall had been contacted. One of them had noticed a bracelet missing. The other had a father who’d dropped weight fast and they’d been told it was his appetite. They’d believed it because he was 91 and what do you expect.
Denise Vogel didn’t show up for her Thursday night shift.
She didn’t call in either.
Bellhaven suspended her pending investigation. The administrator sent me a letter on facility letterhead that was so careful and bloodless it made me want to throw it across the room. We take the safety of our residents very seriously. Four paragraphs. Her name not in it once.
The state board opened a separate proceeding the following week. Renee Pruitt submitted her records from Akron. Sandra Hatch told me, in a way that wasn’t quite official, that what I’d given her was going somewhere.
I asked if Grandma was safe.
“We’re monitoring the situation,” she said.
Which isn’t the same thing. But it’s what I had.
Where It Is Now
Grandma Joyce finished the Tuesday crossword last week. First time since April. She showed me when I came in Sunday, the whole grid filled in her loopy pencil print, and she was annoyed about two of the answers because she thought the puzzle was wrong, not her.
That’s her. That’s always been her.
She doesn’t know most of what I’ve told you. She knows I looked into some things. She knows people are paying attention now. She squeezed my hand and said, “You’re a good girl, Alyssa,” in the same voice she used when I was nine and she was packing my lunch.
I’m 31. I cried in my car.
Eileen got a new address book. She’s still writing things down. I told her she didn’t have to anymore and she said, “Honey, I’m going to anyway.” Her daughter flew in from Phoenix last month and spent four days and cried a lot and went home with a copy of every page.
Denise Vogel’s certification is under review. I check the state board website more than I should. Nothing has been finalized. These things move slowly. Gary at APS told me to be patient, and I am trying, and some days I am better at it than others.
The Marathon station is three miles from Bellhaven. I drove past it once, just to see it. Just a Marathon station. Nothing to look at.
Harold Pruitt’s daughter Renee texts me sometimes. We’ve never met in person. She sent me a photo of her dad once, standing in front of a Christmas tree, big guy, flannel shirt, grinning. She said he used to do the crossword every morning too.
I didn’t know what to write back. I said he looked like a good dad. She said he was.
—
If this is happening to someone you love, trust what you’re seeing. The address book is still in my nightstand drawer.
If you’re in the mood for more unsettling stories, perhaps you’d be interested in My Patient Was Crying on the 6:40 Bus and the Man Who Filmed Him Now Runs His Benefits, or hear about why My Daughter Stopped Talking After Three Weeks at the Babysitter’s. We’ve also got a tale about how My Wife’s Barista Knew Things No Stranger Should Know that might pique your interest.
