[Barbara]: I come in, I introduce myself, good morning, say hey to everybody.

[Barbara]: And then our routine is to set your cart up.

[Barbara]: And after setting the cart up, you go and you pull your trash.

[Barbara]: We have 32 rooms as a housekeeper to take care of.

[Barbara]: And after you set your cart up, you knock on the patient door,

[Barbara]: introduce yourself.

[Barbara]: I just go in, Barbara, my name Barbara.

[Barbara]: I'll be your housekeeper for the day.

[Barbara]: Then I will write my name on the chalkboard so they'll know, EVS,

[Barbara]: that I will be the housekeeper.

[Barbara]: And while I'm doing it, I'll just get to talking to the patients,

[Barbara]: asking them where they're from, how they're doing.

[Barbara]: Then during that time, I'll get to know a little bit about them,

[Barbara]: and then I'll tell them about myself, like where I'm from.

[LaShara]: I go in and I say, hi, my name is LaShara Springs.

[LaShara]: I'm your housekeeper today.

[LaShara]: I take out their trash.

[LaShara]: I come back and I sanitize their surfaces.

[LaShara]: I clean their bathroom.

[LaShara]: I restock their supplies.

[LaShara]: And I ask them, is there anything else that I can do for them?

[Isaac]: We don't inflict any harm.

[Isaac]: We don't ask you for anything.

[Isaac]: We're only there to clean and sanitize your environment.

[Isaac]: So oftentimes, people feel very comfortable to share even some of their most

[Isaac]: inner secrets and thoughts and feelings with us because the walls are down.

[Eddie]: A lot of them will tell you just their whole life history and whatnot.

[Eddie]: And it's really amazing.

[Eddie]: And like I say, the one with the wheelchair,

[Eddie]: we were sitting in his room the whole day,

[Eddie]: and we just got talking about the way the world's going on right now and

[Eddie]: just how, you know, and we got talking about the Lord and all of that.

[Eddie]: And it was, well, like I say, I was in his room probably 15,

[Eddie]: 20 minutes just talking about the way the world is and the Lord and

[Eddie]: whatnot.

[Maybelline]: Yeah, I have a

[Maybelline]: a friend, I call her friend now because she don't have a lot of family around.

[Maybelline]: Every day when I come in,

[Maybelline]: I was trying to engage with her and make her feel better,

[Maybelline]: make her feel like she's not alone.

[Maybelline]: And for Christmas, New Year's, and Valentine,

[Maybelline]: and Mother's Day we still talking.

[Maybelline]: She told me that

[Maybelline]: we need the doctors and the nurses

[Maybelline]: but sometimes other people within another department

[Maybelline]: can bring a sunshine in the room when they need it.

[LaShara]: I keep in contact with a lady.

[LaShara]: She had an LVAD.

[LaShara]: And before, she was adamant about not getting it.

[LaShara]: And I was just like, you know, you have this little baby

[LaShara]: at home who needs a mom.

[LaShara]: Now she's at home.

[LaShara]: You know, she can be there with her baby.

[LaShara]: She can watch her child grow up.

[LaShara]: So I feel like I helped her with that process.

[LaShara]: Because like I said, she was adamant

[LaShara]: about not getting her LVAD.

[LaShara]: She's like, no, I'm not doing this.

[LaShara]: I don't want it.

[LaShara]: And every morning I'm like, come on,

[LaShara]: you got to get this done.

[LaShara]: We have to.

[LaShara]: You have to be there for your child.

[Hilda]: I think of them, many of them,

[Hilda]: many times and the things that they had gone through.

[Hilda]: I have prayer cloth that the mother gave to her son one time.

[Hilda]: And when they was discharged, I say,

[Hilda]: Here is the prayer cloth that you left.

[Hilda]: He said, no, you keep it, you know.

[Hilda]: And so what?

[Hilda]: And I keep that on my bed.

[Hilda]: It's a little piece I got on my bed, and I keep that.

[Hilda]: And I always, you know, got different prayers and stuff on.

[Barbara]: On my floor, we'll do a lot of dinners and potlucks and stuff.

[Barbara]: And sometimes, you know, we'll be in the room,

[Barbara]: and I will let the patient know that, hey, I cooked some collard greens or...

[Barbara]: I cook fried cornbread or potato salad, because I'm a country cooker.

[Barbara]: Last week, we had a dinner.

[Barbara]: So the patient was like,

[Barbara]: I haven't had no fried cornbread since I was a little boy.

[Barbara]: I said, you want me to bring you a plate of food?

[Barbara]: He said, yes.

[Barbara]: He said, oh, I could use a good plate of food.

[Barbara]: And I had the OK from the nurse.

[Barbara]: I made potato salad and fried cornbread, collard greens.

[Barbara]: He said, I never ate no food like that in my life.

[Rosetta]: A patient came.

[Rosetta]: It was in children.

[Rosetta]: They came, and I think they didn't have enough money-wise.

[Rosetta]: So I collected some money to make sure they had some food to eat.

[Rosetta]: And at that time, I even asked EVS, did they have some meal tickets for them?

[Rosetta]: And we fed the family.

[Rosetta]: And they was happy.

[Lorna]: And I love that.

[Lorna]: Oh, I will never forget this patient.

[Lorna]: Oh, wow.

[Lorna]: The family members, you know, they were there on a daily basis,

[Lorna]: especially her sister.

[Lorna]: And at times her brother will be there, mother, you know, in-laws.

[Lorna]: They were in a smaller room.

[Lorna]: And I realized that it was so crowded.

[Lorna]: And one day I did discharge cleaning in one of the larger rooms.

[Lorna]: And I asked the charge nurse,

[Lorna]: if there's any way they could, you know,

[Lorna]: move this family member to that room.

[Lorna]: And the charge nurse did it.

[Lorna]: She transferred them to that room, and they were so happy.

[Lorna]: They were like, Lorna, this is all because of you.

[Barbara]: I think she's 96 years old, this lady was.

[Barbara]: So I go in there, and she was just as smart as a whip.

[Barbara]: She got a good mind.

[Barbara]: And so we were sitting, talking, and then her son,

[Barbara]: he was sitting in there with her.

[Barbara]: And he was telling us about they live in the country.

[Barbara]: And I'm like, yeah.

[Barbara]: I said, well, I know y'all got a garden out there.

[Barbara]: He said, yeah, we were planting a garden.

[Barbara]: He said, my mama, it's a collard seed that they have.

[Barbara]: I said, I'll try to plant a little garden, too.

[Barbara]: So they said, well, we have these special cabbage collard seeds,

[Barbara]: and we're going to bring you some of these seeds back.

[Barbara]: And he called me last week.

[Barbara]: He said, Miss Barbara, you still up there on the floor?

[Barbara]: And so he said, well, guess what?

[Barbara]: I got you your collard seeds like I told you you were going to have them.

[Barbara]: And I was happy about them, because you know what I did with them?

[Barbara]: Since the season broke, they're in the ground.

[Barbara]: I hope I do get some cabbage collards.

[Lorna]: They're fascinated with my accent,

[Lorna]: so they're always asking me where you're from.

[Lorna]: And when I say Jamaica, then we talk about food.

[Lorna]: We talk about music.

[Lorna]: Sometimes the patients and I will sing together, like Bob Marley,

[Lorna]: don't worry about a thing.

[Lorna]: And we'll sing together, don't worry.

[Rosetta]: about a thing, because every little thing is going to be all right.

[Lorna]: And they'll sing with me.

[Hilda]: One doctor at one time, it was a patient.

[Hilda]: Well, I really don't like to think about it,

[Hilda]: but told me to go in and talk to this patient.

[Hilda]: So I'm taking more and more time with this patient.

[Hilda]: He wasn't, he was giving up.

[Hilda]: He was not fighting.

[Hilda]: With the condition of whatever it was that he had, he was just giving up.

[Hilda]: And she wanted me to go in there and talk to him and to uplift and to

[Hilda]: give him something to fight about.

[Hilda]: You know, to help fight, because sometimes people give up.

[Hilda]: He listened to me.

[Hilda]: I could tell in his eyes the way he moved his eyes because he was a

[Hilda]: prisoner.

[Hilda]: You know, and I'll talk, I'll say, you know, everything that you've done,

[Hilda]: ask the Lord for forgiveness or so what, but you still living.

[Hilda]: And then when you go back, you start telling them,

[Hilda]: bring other people up that's in there and help the younger folks out that's

[Hilda]: in there.

[Gladys]: I do different things.

[Gladys]: I'm a housekeeper, I'm an interpreter.

[Gladys]: I help them with the lactation.

[Gladys]: Sometimes I tell the moms, look, position yourself like this,

[Gladys]: or in any other way that they feel...

[Gladys]: I tell her, this...

[Gladys]: I had the same thing with my child.

[Gladys]: When a mom is very tired, I see that she has her baby in her arms,

[Gladys]: and you know that there are moms that sometimes suddenly

[Gladys]: fall asleep.

[Gladys]: So sometimes I come and I tell her, Mom, put your baby in your bed.

[Gladys]: Like last week, one of them was very tired, and I told her, Mom, excuse me,

[Gladys]: may I lift this?

[Gladys]: Because she was half asleep and the baby was there.

[Gladys]: And she says, I hadn't thought that I could have dropped the baby.

[Gladys]: So what I did was lift the side rail and put a pillow there.

[Gladys]: I told her, now she's more secure.

[Gladys]: And I feel calmer.

[Maybelline]: There are many emotional moments in this place.

[Maybelline]: Day to day there are happy people

[Maybelline]: because they have just become parents for the first time.

[Maybelline]: But there are others in another room

[Maybelline]: who are sad because they have just lost a loved one.

[Maybelline]: When I first started working here,

[Maybelline]: I came to a room and the patient was sitting on the edge of his bed

[Maybelline]: and I was talking to him.

[Maybelline]: He looked perfectly fine.

[Maybelline]: I was talking, I cleaned his room and I moved to the next room.

[Maybelline]: I cleaned two more rooms when suddenly

[Maybelline]: there was a "Code Blue" that was called

[Maybelline]: which means that someone is in difficulty

[Maybelline]: they all come and maybe ten minutes later the patient no longer

[Maybelline]: responsive.

[Maybelline]: So that was a situation a little sad and very difficult because it was

[Maybelline]: the first one I experienced.

[Maybelline]: It was a little difficult, but talking to my colleagues and

[Maybelline]: they told me that I will be exposed to things like that when I am working here

[Maybelline]: and that little by little I will get used to it and become stronger

[Maybelline]: and that my feelings were normal when it is the first time.

[Hilda]: Sometimes I get upset, I just hum, and it brings peace, peace to you,

[Hilda]: and you can get yourself kind of relaxed.

[Hilda]: So I get up like a fresh start.

[Isaac]: Yeah, oftentimes what happens is a housekeeper will build up a strong

[Isaac]: rapport with a patient, someone who may be with us for two days,

[Isaac]: they may be with us for two weeks, they may be with us for two months.

[Isaac]: And our housekeepers probably more often than not have no idea something

[Isaac]: happened with that patient until they return to work the next day.

[Isaac]: And then they're kind of left to deal with it with their other

[Isaac]: housekeeping mates, so to speak, or housekeeping management,

[Isaac]: what'll happen is this is basically how it gets communicated.

[Isaac]: I know that person was in room 611, and now they're not.

[Isaac]: But that's where it becomes vitally important that if you do have these

[Isaac]: huddles, then you know.

[Isaac]: And there's no guess in that, because it is talked about, you know,

[Isaac]: kind of throughout the unit, and everyone knows,

[Isaac]: and it's not like we're segregated from the group.

[Lorna]: It takes a toll on me.

[Lorna]: Yeah, it does.

[Lorna]: Because you get so familiar with them, you know,

[Lorna]: and you watch them deteriorate.

[Lorna]: It kills me.

[Lorna]: It really hurts.

[Lorna]: Family members are there, you know.

[Lorna]: Sometimes they're the one, as a matter of fact, most of the time,

[Lorna]: they're the ones that are telling me that such and such passed,

[Lorna]: and then we hug and console them.

[Lorna]: It's really hard, though.

[Lorna]: It's really, really hard working on that unit.

[Lorna]: Sometimes I'm like, I have to get off this unit, but I stay because

[Lorna]: I really like the nurses there.

[Lorna]: They're very great.

[Lorna]: They work with me and, you know, we're like a team up there,

[Lorna]: so it's okay.

[Gladys]: What I do in my area is not just housekeeper.

[Gladys]: I do that, a lot of little details that sometimes,

[Gladys]: maybe there are people, my supervisor doesn't realize that I do them.

[Gladys]: Not just cleaning, as they say.

[Gladys]: Talking with the patients also helps a lot.

[Gladys]: Sometimes they are depressed.

[Gladys]: Sometimes there are mothers who are crying

[Gladys]: Sometimes I will ask them, "would you like a glass of water?"

[Gladys]: or "are you OK? Would you like me to call your nurse?"

[Gladys]: All those small things that one does.

[Gladys]: This person is here for a reason.

[Gladys]: They are sick, seeking their healing for a reason.

[Gladys]: And are we not engaged?

[Gladys]: Are we not thinking about

[Isaac]: that actual human being that's in that bed versus I need to give this person

[Isaac]: their test.

[Isaac]: I need to make sure that they receive this.

[Isaac]: I need to get these things.

[Isaac]: And we really need to just take a few minutes out of every time that we have

[Isaac]: an interaction with someone just to check on their true wellbeing.

[Hilda]: But you have to take those few minutes to listen to them.

[Hilda]: And sometimes that's all the people want to do is to be listened to.

[Hilda]: They get a lot out of them when you just listen to them.

[Hilda]: Sometimes not talk, you don't have to say that much or so what,

[Hilda]: but let them do the talking.

[LaShara]: I came to love it.

[LaShara]: Like I even started going to school for a healthcare career because since

[LaShara]: working in the hospital,

[LaShara]: it's really gotten me interested in the hospital setting because me

[LaShara]: being a housekeeper has grown, has made me grown to love patients,

[LaShara]: healthcare.

[LaShara]: interaction with patients, interaction with nurses,

[LaShara]: interaction with the whole hospital staff.

[Hilda]: I just mix it all up.