Misplaced.

They say most people eventually reconcile with it.

They sit in wheelchairs and stare blankly at the floor. They sit in chairs and stare blankly as you walk passed. On occasion, some walk around the building and stare blankly at other inhabitants. And some just lie in bed, staring blankly at nothing in particular.

Within room 126, there is one such resident.  She’s talkative today, so I keep quiet.

“She used to have long, dark hair. She was pretty. They keep it short now. She weighs over 200 lbs,” the 50-something-year-old woman says, who will remain nameless.

Her opening story today was a new one and had no particular bearing on her current circumstances.

“I wanna go home,” she says. “It’s hard.”

In the four months since I discovered her lying in the cluttered and darkened room, she leaves only for an hour of physical therapy every day and an occasional walk. She has diabetes and is worried about her weight.

“They don’t give you different meals here,” she says. “I don’t eat the bread. If I did I’d weigh over 300 lbs. They give you sandwiches every night. I’ve never had so many sandwiches in my life.”

There was a time when she was too fat to clean herself, she explains.

“My mom had to wipe me when I took a bowel movement. It was embarrassing.”

On the three days a week she gets a shower, the nurses come in with her to help.

“I wanna go home,” she repeats for the third time. “They said it costs $5,000 to fix the house….”

I don’t have the heart to tell her she’ll never go home, so I keep quiet, and she continues on.

“I wish they had found me a day later,” she says. “I wish I’d die. I want to go to heaven. I wish I could go home, and after my mom died, they would find me in my chair dead.”

She starts to cry.

“I’m not supposed to be in a nursing home,” she says. “I’m not supposed to be in a nursing home….”

The story is not new to me. Throughout any local nursing home, they all have a similar story. Most have no one visit and none, they claim, are supposed to be in a nursing home.

The woman lying in room 126 will never leave the nursing home. She is schizophrenic, but you wouldn’t know unless told, and today was a good day.