790: You're It

Ira Glass

Kelsay Irby isn't somebody who likes being in the spotlight-- in fact, kind of the opposite. And she wasn't looking to get in the newspaper the night that she did the thing that got her national attention. She was just showing up to work like normal at the emergency room at a hospital an hour or so outside Seattle, St. Michael's Medical Center.

Ira Glass

Like really high. People were all over the lobby in a messy chaos, sitting in wheelchairs because there weren't enough regular chairs, sitting on the floor, sick kids and their parents, ambulance crews with patients waiting to be seen. Kelsay says it was like an airport gate where the flight's just been canceled. A lot of dissatisfaction, a lot of unrest. And she was short-staffed. Kelsay is the charge nurse. So it's her job to make sure all these patients get seen and that she has enough staff to do that, which has been a problem since COVID at hospitals all over the country, hers included.

So many nurses burned out and left the profession since COVID that it's left hospitals perpetually short-staffed, which, Kelsay points out, makes the job that much more stressful for the nurses who stayed and leads to more of them saying that they can't take it, throwing in the towel, making the problem worse. The people who run Kelsay's hospitals say their staffing levels are in line with national standards and best practices. But Kelsay says, typically, she only has half the nurses she should have for the night shift-- half.

Ira Glass

And if that weren't enough, they'd had a cyberattack. This was a ransomware attack this past October at one of the largest nonprofit hospital chains in the country. CommonSpirit Health, which meant that, suddenly, they couldn't access patients' medical records on the computer for two weeks.

Ira Glass

Normally she keeps track of everybody in the lobby by opening their charts in the computer where she can see if they have lab results yet and get the basic information to figure out who can wait longer and who needs care right away.

Ira Glass

Actually, the patient, a 41-year-old woman, became unresponsive in the waiting room and then was pronounced dead when she got into an ER bed.

Ira Glass

She realized she just had to get more nurses to cover these cases. So she did the normal things that a charge nurse is supposed to do in that situation. First, she checked with the hospital supervisor, a.k.a. the house mom.

Ira Glass

The house mom has the power to send somebody from elsewhere in the hospital to help out in the ER for a few hours-- nurses, lab techs who can draw blood, transport staff, anybody. So she reaches the house mom.

Ira Glass

Second thing she tries, she asked that they page every single person who works for the ER, see if anybody who's not working will come in. Nobody says yes. Third thing, she asks if they can divert ambulances to other hospitals so they're not adding to the patient count in her emergency room. But she's told, no, computers are down at the hospital they would send patients to and they're struggling also.

Fourth thing, there's an ambulance company that the ER has a contract with and has called in, in the past, in exactly this kind of situation where they're short-staffed.

Ira Glass

But the ambulance company was too busy to send anybody. So she tried four things, all the normal things you're supposed to do. Four things failed. Was there any place else she could turn for more help? Then she got an idea, the thing that landed her in the papers. She called 911.

The headlines basically were, ER nurse calls 911 for help. Though, I should say, she did not actually dial the numbers 9 then 1 then 1. She has a regular phone number that you can call and just talk to the 911 dispatcher.

Ira Glass

911 decides to help her out. They sent an ambulance crew with three people. The three of them work the lobby, help monitor and process patients. They're there for nearly two hours, which is enough to get Kelsay over the hump. Afterwards, when nurses around the country hear about this, they call Kelsay a shero, they reach out to her. Some of them said, thanks for the idea, call 911. I'm going to keep that one in mind just in case.

Ira Glass

She was the charge nurse. It was on her to figure things out. She basically raised her hand when she took the job and said, I'm it, and then had to deal with everything that followed, stuff she never predicted or imagined, which is true of everybody in our show today. We have stories where people are like, oh, I'm going to be the one to fix that. And only later did they really discover, to their surprise, what that can really entail. Even when you think you see things coming, you've got it under control, that's who you are, you do not see things coming. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Every day is Father's Day. Family relationships, they get set in certain patterns that usually just harden over time. I heard somebody recently used the word "cooked" to describe their relationship with a parent. That relationship is cooked, it's done, it's not going to change. Megan Tan felt that way about her and her dad.

For years, they'd been distant. He was super critical of her. She stopped engaging, moved across the country, stayed away. And then something happened that made Megan decide to try to uncook the relationship, to remake it with different ingredients, which is one of the things that you just can't tell how it's going to go till you try. Here's Megan.

Megan Tan

My relationship with my father has always felt tail-chasing, like we can never get close. It just didn't work. We're pretty different. And he'll be the first to tell you how. This is a call from 2021.

Megan Tan

"That's the way I was brought up," he says. But it's hard to get him to say more than that. It's conversations like this that remind me I'm always getting to know my father.

When I was little, he didn't teach us the language he grew up speaking. So I thought one way we could become close is if I learned Mandarin Chinese. When I was a freshman in college, I spent a whole year in the library learning how to write characters, doing rote memorization, burning phrases into my brain.

Over the phone, I remind him of what happened my first break home from college. We sat across the table and I showed off my new skills.

Megan Tan

"Surprise," he says. And, yeah, I was surprised, shocked, really. Especially when I said, [SPEAKING IN MANDARIN] and he said, I have no idea what you're saying. I was 18 years old when my dad told me for the first time he spoke Teochew. In the end, he told me I should learn Spanish instead. It's more practical in America.

I suppose this is when I should share some warm childhood memories of my dad. But when I reach back in my memory, I don't really see him. I don't see him at my birthday parties, volleyball games, or academic award ceremonies. He was pretty closed off, icy, shuttered. I remember how he always said "no," how walking around him meant you walked softly. I remember his mood swings and how nothing I did felt like it was enough.

I would tell him I got all A's. He would say, but you didn't do the dishes. I would pay for my own ballet classes. He would say, why are you wasting money on exercising?

By the time, I went to college I had accepted how things were between us. I tried not to tell him anything I cared about because I didn't think he really cared to listen. He didn't really want to know me. But we always stayed in touch, even though it was pretty surface. I would call him, check in.

Then, in 2021, my dad sunk into a deep depression. He was in such a dark place my older sister Kristel called me. She's in Ohio. I'm all the way in LA. She didn't know what to do.

I felt for my father. So I made him a part of my daily routine. I would call him every morning to remind him someone was thinking of him.

In January of 2022, I call my father three times and he doesn't respond. Wednesday, nothing. Saturday, I leave a message. Monday, I leave another message.

Just as I'm putting my phone down, he calls me back. Hello? Dad? His voice is scratchy and dry. I can barely hear what he's saying. He's calling me from the floor.

What do you mean you're on the floor? He fell. He's been on the floor for five days. I'm panicking. I keep my dad on my phone while I call Kristel with my boyfriend's phone. She says she's rushing over and hangs up.

On the line with my dad, I keep him talking. I listen closely to his breathing. Then I hear everything unfold.

Through his phone, I hear my sister come into his apartment. I hear her call 911. I hear medics rush through the door. They ask my father a few questions.

What's his name? Where does he live? How old is he?

I hear a stretcher unfold. My sister picks up his phone and tells me she'll call me right back. Click.

I call my sister and ask for updates every day. The doctors don't know why my father fell. They don't know if he had a heart attack or a stroke. My sister tells me he's barely awake. He's having a hard time talking, walking, and going to the bathroom.

After my dad is discharged from the hospital and checked into a rehabilitation facility, I buy a one-way plane ticket. I'm on my way back to my hometown in Ohio. My dad is 75, but when I see him for the first time after his fall, he looks like he's 90. Usually, he's a round, big belly guy. But now his skin is hanging off his face.

His eyes are sunken in. His hair is unrecognizably long. And he has a beard. I didn't even know he could grow a beard.

Beside him is a walker. I quickly kiss him on the cheek and say, "Hi, Dad," pretending to be unfazed. I'm coming in all smiles. I'm the youngest in my family, you know, the one who makes the jokes, who intentionally brings an upbeat Kimmi Schmidt, Ted Lasso can-do spirit to family gatherings.

I kind of thought when I touched down in Ohio I would be the sunshine that saves my family. I would swoop in, relieve my sister, help my dad bounce back to himself, and then be back on an airplane. My dad spends a couple of weeks at the rehabilitation facility and then moves back home to his apartment.

I start living with him temporarily. I get him into a routine. And every morning, I have him do an exercise he loathes.

I want his grin to remind him of the person he used to be, the person who moved across the world, Singapore to the US, as a 22 year old, totally alone to pursue a dream to attend college and study art. My father loved to draw. He made his living drawing and drafting streets at a civil engineering firm.

When we were all sleeping, he'd sketch cartoons and figures on old newspapers. I'd find them in the kitchen the next morning all over the metro section. After my dad retired, he would fly home to Singapore by himself to see his family. He would cook incredible Chinese food, fill his sketchbooks with portraits, and he was always in the middle of some big biography.

I want to say, Dad, that's who you are and that's who you can be again. But he fights me. He says, "no" and "I can't." This becomes his default response to everything. I feel like he's the boulder and I'm Sisyphus.

It's weird to be in my hometown for more than three days. Usually, I'm in and I'm gone. As I accompany my sister and my dad to visit doctor after doctor, I feel like I'm getting a peek into their life together.

Kristel is 10 years older than me. When my parents got a divorce and sold our childhood home, she helped them sell it. She helped my father move into his apartment, connected him to his doctor when he needed one. For most of our lives, Kristel has been the one shouldering the family responsibilities I've always avoided.

At one appointment, we visit my father's psychiatric nurse practitioner. After the three of us settle into her office, she directs her focus on my father. She asks him some intimate questions about his health and how he's been feeling, his mood, his motivation.

He answers honestly. He tells her he has nothing to live for, that there's no purpose in his life anymore, and that he feels lonely and isolated. I sit quietly and sink into the chair. My father would never say this to us directly, which is why I'm hearing it all for the first time.

A few minutes go by. And then the nurse turns to us. Because of his weakness, poor balance, cloudy thinking, and general fatigue, he can't live alone anymore, she says. She asks if he agrees. He does. But he tells her he feels guilty about burdening us. She looks at us again, smiles, and says one more thing, he should probably move in with one of you.

Kristel and I talk it through. Dad could move in with her. But, to be honest, I don't know if that's such a good idea. She has a kid, multiple jobs. Her life is already so full, so stressful.

But in LA, my apartment is on the first floor. I have a walk-in shower, all the things he needs. I could do it. On my own, I decide, it has to be me. It just does.

Instead of seeing this moment as a burden, I want to see it as an opportunity. My father and I could become closer if we live together. But I need him to want this too. So at a family meeting, I put living in LA on the table to see what he says.

It's clear my dad doesn't want to commit to anything. After 10 minutes of circling around a decision, I start to get impatient. I asked my father pointedly--

We're in Ohio for another three weeks. Now that we're counting down the days, my father's anxiety is ramping up. He doesn't understand how he's going to get on the plane or how we're going to get out of his apartment lease. He doesn't think he has enough pants for California. Everything is impossible.

It's hard for me to listen to this. I sound forceful, like a sunshine bully. My dad tries to say something, but I quickly interrupt him.

Yes, trust me, your 31-year-old daughter, who has never been a caretaker before and is taking you away from everything you know.

Megan Tan

Before this, I lived alone for three years. Then my boyfriend moved in and now my dad. There are three of us in my one bedroom apartment. When we walk in, I immediately start dad-proofing the rooms. I roll up all of my colorful rugs so my dad doesn't slip and fall. In my bathroom, I install a raised toilet seat and grip bars.

I give my father my bed and my bedroom. My boyfriend and I get the pullout bed in our dining room/office. I hide all my lingerie and sexy bathing suits.

When my father lands in Los Angeles, he's still incredibly weak. And I'm not just his daughter. I'm also his secretary. I find him doctors and book his appointments. When he needs to pay a bill, we pay it together.

I'm also his nurse. I help him change his clothes and take showers. When he has an accident, I clean up the floors. He's having a hard time eating and I'm watching him lose weight. I monitor his appetite and cook him specific meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I've brought in a crew of people to help. There's a speech, physical, and occupational therapists and a nurse who all come to visit. An hour here, an hour there. But I'm the first person he sees in the morning and the last person he sees at night. The weight of his moment-to-moment life is fully on my shoulders and I had no idea how heavy it would be.

He can't sit down without my help, can't take a shower without me there. Every move he makes, I'm right beside him, his shadow. Still, I try to resume my life, launch back into work, make plans with friends, go out to bars. I try to take my dog to the park, cook and clean the house like usual.

But it's just not possible. I cancel on my friends last minute. I can't keep the house clean. And I'm constantly running late to meetings. His life is my life. It's all consuming.

But I can't tell my father that. We're together all the time. But I feel like I'm living this part of our life alone. And it's only been two weeks.

I need my dad to depend on me a little less or start to move in that direction. So I try to help him. At the kitchen table, I surround us with post-it notes and colorful markers, ready to brainstorm.

I'm definitely more into this future planning than he is. He's closing his eyes and starting to fall asleep.

My dad once told me before I go to bed, I should envision the things I want to accomplish, that he used to do that. That's how he came to America. And that's always worked for me. But I can't convince him to make any goals. So I pick up a marker and start doing it for him.

Megan Tan

I'm so blinded by my own determination to move him forward. Maybe he does need to sleep. But that's not what I'm thinking right now. I'm afraid. I write down a few more goals like walk without my walker, change clothes by myself.

His eyes are closed. He's tapped out and so am I. No one ever told me my father would become independent again. No nurse told me he would or wouldn't walk without his walker. No doctors told me he would or wouldn't drive.

I don't know what's realistic, which means I'm in my own ideal world and I'm just winging it . I'm making up these goals. I want to imagine a better life for him. And he's improving, little by little, day by day.

He's able to sit down and stand up on his own. But I notice he's not making his bed. He's able to walk more confidently, but he's not going outside. He's able to stay awake longer, but he's not being social.

He spends hours in the middle of the day lying in his bed doing nothing. That's when I'm the most frustrated with him. I storm into his room or I cry to myself in a corner. Exhausted by my own emotions, I call up a Buddhist friend who just encourages me to just let him be and to love him exactly as he is, to respect his life if he leaves his bedroom or not.

I start writing that phrase down every day for myself. "I will respect my father's life. I will love him exactly as he is," something I've never written down before. And this becomes my new goal, to hold my tongue, to say less.

It's hard. I slip up all the time, especially when it comes to his medication. Dad, did you take your medication yet? It's 10:00. You were supposed to take it at 9:30.

Sometimes I catch myself. You're doing that thing again. You're making it sound like he's messing up. But some days, I can't stop.

Did you drink your water today? I interrogate him. Are you sure? Your water bottle looks full.

I'm starting to realize it's the small stuff I say every day, the little things that can chip away at him the most. Because that's what he did to me. When he gets all A's, I focus on how he didn't do the dishes. It takes me a while.

Eventually, I do get better. When it's 2:00 in the afternoon and I notice that my dad has been lying in bed for the past three hours, I go into his room and I ask if he wants to go for a walk. He says "no" and I just say "OK." I let him be.

It's June now. We're three months in and I've been practicing saying less. We get on the phone with Kristel.

Megan Tan

That's one of the first times I've heard my father recognize he's progressing out loud.

I'm laughing because I know he's joking. In the past, I might have gotten defensive. But now I know him better.

Is he really worried we're running out of food? I'm trying to get better at listening to him, like really listening. I don't want to brush him off or just tell him everything is fine. So I ask him directly about his worries and fears. He lists off a few things. He's worried about his car, his clothes, where all the stuff from his apartment went.

Megan Tan

As I'm loosening up, he's loosening up too. And I can tell he's coming into himself again. During breakfast when we're sitting at the dining room table, conversations that used to be dominated by his health status are replaced with mundane talks about whatever, which is great.

So now we talk about all kinds of things. But I hadn't asked him about how he thought it was going. Was I pushing him too hard? How was he feeling? Then, a few weeks ago, one afternoon, he shuffles into my office. I sit him in a chair and we get into it. I ask him, those first few weeks in LA, what was he thinking?

Megan Tan

Dizzy, his mind was dizzy. When I asked my father specifically about whether or not making goals was helpful, he tells me they weren't.

Megan Tan

This isn't the first time my dad has told me that he sees me and everything I've been doing. But every time he says it, it still gets to me. Me doing my best is enough.

Megan Tan

It takes me a while to process what he's saying. I never knew he felt like I never cared. Because I've always cared. But maybe he's right. Maybe I didn't care as much as I care now.

Ira Glass

Megan Tan is the host of Snooze, a podcast from LAist Studios. Her story was produced by Laura Starcheski. Coming up, the surprising power of making a spreadsheet full of profanities. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, "You're It," stories of the people who step up and say, I will take care of this, I've got this, and the very, very unexpected places that can lead them.

Ira Glass

We have arrived at Act Two of our show, Act Two, Game of Phones. So over the last few years, one of our producers, Chana Joffe-Walt, has been checking in with somebody who decided that they were going to be it, like, forever ago and wears the mantle well. She's a school principal, likes being in charge, was great about the whole thing of the buck stopping with her. She is very consistent about it, except for one choice she made that Chana did not understand. Here she is.

Chana Joffe-Walt

A school principal is a pretty classic "you're it" job. It's all you. When the school needs new math books, a new curriculum, a new budget, you're it. A pipe broke and now the science classroom is flooded, you're it. Students got into a fight at lunch, seven teachers called in sick today and now there are 14 minutes to rearrange the entire schedule and communicated to everyone involved, all you.

Because of this, the job tends to attract a certain type of person, a person who believes they can or should or needs to be the one called on in any given moment. Often, but not always, this is also a person who is quick to color code, has contingency plans for everything, and loves a system. You'll find variations. You've got your brilliant visionary types and the parking rules people, the person whose task lists are alphabetical, and the person who is more playing it by ear and talks about holding space.

Dr. Teresa Hill is somehow a little bit of all of these people. The first time I tried to describe her to someone else, I found myself saying, she's just such a principal. When I first talked to her, Dr. Hill had recently become Arizona Principal of the Year. I'd heard of Teacher of the Year. I didn't know Principal of the Year was a thing, but it is. And in 2021, Dr. Hill was the one who was picked.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I do. That was a fake-out question. I know. Dr. Hill's assistant principal nominated her. You're actually supposed to apply yourself. But the assistant principal knew Dr. Hill wouldn't actually do it. So she got the ball rolling, writing, quote, "Dr. Hill has built the culture at Walden Grove High School from the ground up."

It's one of those schools that's friendly and warm. People feel excited about what they do. A few months after Dr. Hill was elevated to Principal of the Year, that's when she made a choice that seemed so unlike her, the opposite of everything she is.

That story begins in August 2021. And you remember this time-- COVID, then schools reopening, there were teacher shortages, parents angry about masks and having to keep their kids home. And when I saw Dr. Hill facing the chaos and vitriol of that miserable period of time, I thought, oh, just watch this woman own this mess. We are about to see all the wizardry of principalness brought to bear on the situation. She's going to rein this right in.

Here's what things looked like at Dr. Hill's school. The county had mandated that students had to quarantine if they were exposed to COVID at school and weren't vaccinated. So Dr. Hill enforced this mandate.

Parents pushed back. One group of parents came to her school and refused to leave the lobby after one of their kids had to quarantine. They were there for hours. They were arrested. They filmed themselves being arrested, posted it online, and the videos made headlines. And after that, Dr. Hill's office administrator said there were angry voicemail messages on the school phone.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Principal Hill assumed the voicemails were about the videos that were circulating online, blaming her for enforcing the county quarantine rules. So angry messages on the school voicemail went straight to the bottom of her to do list.

Chana Joffe-Walt

That was the first one. I want to say, if you're sensitive to profanity, this doesn't let up. Principal Hill kept listening.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Dr. Hill paused. She was sitting alone in her office, door closed, listening on speakerphone. And she'd been clicking through the messages-- next message, next message-- until this one.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She slowly repeated the words of the messages to herself. And then, she got back to work.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She typed "cowards, deniers of freedom." There are 40 messages like these.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She was playing them on speakerphone and her assistant principal overheard, came in to help Dr. Hill transcribe in case she needed these messages for something in the future, maybe as evidence, she thought.

Chana Joffe-Walt

"Bloody fucking homes," Dr. Hill types.

Chana Joffe-Walt

But she kept going all the way through the end. She could get this under control. She could create a useful document. And I'm not talking about a simple transcript.

Principal Hill sent her spreadsheet to the superintendent, noting the threats that may still need investigating by police, helpfully color coded by degree of danger, the same way she may have shared, say, a color chart that allows you to assess and visualize student achievement. It's not an obvious choice to respond this way. But everything she did in response to these messages felt so in line with who she is and how she operates.

She managed it. She contained the problem and shielded everyone else from unnecessary distress. She didn't share the messages with anyone else-- her colleagues, her husband. She told her family she'd gotten some threats and to be on alert for strange cars.

And she began parking in the back of the school and entering that way. She told me she imagined if someone was waiting to snipe her out when she arrived for work in the morning, they'd be sitting by the front door. She said this casually, not like a person who was panicked or scared, but a person who was taking the appropriate steps to deal with the problem. It was handled.

And then we get to the choice that I did not understand. Principal Hill quit in the middle of the school year. Just six months after she was named Principal of the Year, she left her job.

She didn't leave immediately after the harassment. She kept going to work for a couple of months. But the voicemails started to get to her.

The thing about listening to something over and over is that it stays with you. That was the accidental side effect of transcribing these messages. Principal Hill says the words became ingrained in her head. And she would find herself in a meeting or supervising lunch outside and they'd pop back up.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Dr. Hill is so good at keeping what she feels to herself that even after we talked about this for hours, I still didn't understand why she had to leave, why this was the thing that she couldn't shake off. But then, months after she left her job, Dr. Hill gave testimony in court. And she spoke candidly in public about her experience of all this for the first time.

The parents who wouldn't leave her school were charged with trespassing. There was a whole trial. They were found guilty.

And then the judge asked Dr. Hill if she wanted to say anything. Did she want to share the effect this had on her? And she did. She talked about her fear. And this time, she wasn't all casual in describing avoiding the front entrance of the school.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She said to the judge, you have to understand what I had to listen to.

Chana Joffe-Walt

The judge gives permission to cuss. And Dr. Hill, who had prepared nothing, has nothing written down, begins repeating the messages verbatim. It's like she's been waiting to let them out.

Chana Joffe-Walt

A friend of mine, an assistant principal for decades now, told me he still remembers his mentor explaining early on that the job of a school leader is never inflict pain on an institution. The job is to absorb pain for the institution. It must be confusing to be any kind of public official right now, trying to absorb the pain of the last few years.

How many principals or election officials or public health officials or prime ministers of countries have scrambled to respond to a public that is rageful by doing what they know how to do, by throwing PowerPoints at people, by holding public hearings, printing out color charts, only to finally understand that all the vitriol and misinformation was always going to be too enormous for any one person to absorb. Principal Hill shielded everyone else from distress until it was only hers.

Chana Joffe-Walt

What was best for her was the one choice that was completely out of character, something far from her principalness and all her familiar moves. She decided not to be "it" anymore.

Ira Glass

Chana Joffe-Walt is a producer on our show.

Ira Glass

Today's program was produced by Miki Meek and Bethel Habte. People who put together today's show include Chris Benderev, Sean Cole, Aviva DeKornfeld, Cassie Howley, David Kestenbaum, Valerie Kipnis, Katherine Rae Mondo, Alaa Mostafa, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reimond, Alissa Shipp, Christopher Swetala, Lilly Sullivan, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Ravenna Koenig, Mike Sowiski, and Regina Grossman, and the NASSP. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 750 episodes for absolutely free. Also, there's all kinds of other stuff-- lists of favorite shows, videos, tons of things there. Again, thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he called me at 2:00 AM today, 2:00 AM, woke me up to tell me he's been having trouble sleeping lately. Could I maybe sing him a lullaby?

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass back next week with more stories of This American Life.