The front door of a dementia unit is alarmed and coded, and the alarm logs every opening, because a resident outside in a nightdress at six in the morning is the thing every one of us dreads. Every morning at six the door alarm goes. The door is opened from the inside, held for about four seconds, and closed. The camera shows the door open and held, by a hand that is on it, and nothing going through.
I am the night lead on a dementia unit and the front door is the thing I lie awake about on my nights off.
The door.
A keypad on the inside, a code the residents do not know, and an alarm that goes on the night lead's pager if it opens without the code. It logs every opening with the time and whether the code was used. The camera in the hall sees it.
Every morning at six it opens without the code.
The opening.
The alarm goes. I am there within a minute, because I am never far from it at six now. The door is closed. The log says it opened at six, was held for four seconds, and closed. The camera shows it.
On the camera the handle goes down. The door opens, inward, about two feet. A hand is on the edge of it, at the height a hand holds a door, holding it. Four seconds. The hand is a woman's, old, with a ring, and the arm goes out of the frame to the left, where the hall is, and there is nobody in the hall on the camera, only the hand and the door. Then the door closes, and the handle comes up.
Nothing goes through it. I have been on the step outside at six, on the other side, and it has opened on me, two feet, held, and closed, and the hall was empty, and the hand was on the door a foot from my face.
What has been checked.
The lock, replaced. The alarm, replaced. The camera, replaced, and the hand is on the new camera.
The code. Changed. It opens without it.
The residents. Fourteen of them. At six they are in their beds, or in the lounge with the early carer, and I have been able to put every one of them somewhere at six every morning for three months, and none of them is at the door.
The hand.
The ring is a wedding ring, worn thin, on a hand with the knuckles of a woman in her eighties. I have looked at the hands of every woman on the unit. It is not any of theirs. I have looked at the hands in the photographs on the memory boards by the doors of the rooms, the old photographs, the ones the families bring, and I have not found it.
So I asked the day staff, the long serving ones, about who used to be on the unit, and I described the hand, and the oldest carer said, without stopping what she was doing, that's Margaret, she held the door.
Margaret.
A resident, years ago. Who had been, the carer said, a school caretaker, and who had kept a caretaker's habits, and who had got up every morning at six and gone to the front door and held it open, because in her mind it was a school and the children were coming, and she held it for them, and said good morning, and the staff had let her, because it was the one thing she was sure of, and she had done it every morning until she died, which was on a morning, at the door, at six, with it held.
She held it for the children. The children were not coming. She held it anyway, for four seconds, which is about how long you hold a door for somebody who is nearly at it.
What is done about it.
The six o'clock opening is on the log and the inspectors have asked about it and the manager has said a resident opens the door at six and is supervised, which is what the camera shows, apart from the resident.
What I do.
I run the unit at night.
I go through the door. At six, when it opens, I am on the inside, and I go out through the held door, past the hand, onto the step, and I say, thank you, Margaret, and I stand on the step for a moment, and I come back in through it, and I say, good morning, and it closes behind me.
Somebody should come through. That is what the door is held for. It was never the children, and it is not me, but it is somebody, and the hand, since I started, holds it a little longer. Six seconds. Seven. And last Monday, when I came back in and said good morning, the hand let go of the door and, before it went out of the frame, patted it. Twice. The way a caretaker pats a door she has held all her life, a pat for a thing that has done its job, and I have not been able to get that out of my head, and I do not want to.