Night shift from hell - and back
YORK – It was after midnight. The boys were asleep in this home for boys, a three-story white Victorian so big it has two staircases.
Night-shift workers Jacque Bethune and Dave Becker sat in their closet-like office on the second floor. Jacque was on the computer, eating a cup of fruit cocktail.
Dave was studying for a test he was about to take on crisis intervention.
It was a rare night, they recalled later, when none of the eight boys awoke for a glass of warm milk or a bathroom break or a bad dream.
Even the sleepwalker didn’t sleepwalk.
Over their years, Jacque and Dave have learned that many of these boys have reasons for restless nights. Some have witnessed violence, on their streets and in their homes. Some haven’t had a trusted person to go to in the middle of the night, if they were sick or scared. Some have felt more cared for in this orderly home, with a chores list posted in the second-floor hall, than in their own.
One boy who used to live here had a recurring nightmare. It’d come before each visit home: A bogeyman trying to break into his house and attack him.
The front door creaked open.
Jacque turned to Dave.
Did you hear that?
Yeah.
Probably one of their supervisors, they figured. But there was no hello from the first floor.
Dave walked to the top of the front staircase. Nothing.
Jacque saw a shadow to her right.
She started to turn.
There was a loud pop.
Dave’s mind raced. Did Jacque light a firecracker? He turned to see her slumped over, bobbing her head. Laughing?
Jacque watched her cup of fruit cocktail turn red.
A .22 bullet had entered the right corner of her mouth, deflected off her teeth and lodged in her right jawbone.
She felt numb. She didn’t feel pain, just shock. She dropped to her knees and watched the carpet turn red.
The intruder must have fired at her from the landing of the back staircase and then fled. Neither saw who did it.
Jacque walked herself down the front stairs.
That was a year ago September. No one has been arrested.
Two weeks later, Jacque, unable to speak because of the tracheotomy, wrote a note to her boss:
I will be back.
Dave returned to work a few days later. Jacque returned the first day the doctor said she could, after just a few months.
“Because she’s stubborn,” Dave said, smiling at her.
“Yes,” Jacque says, smiling back. “But if you ask my grandmother, it’s because I’m stupid. She was like, ‘Have you lost your mind? You just got shot there.’”
Jacque has a scar on her throat from the tracheotomy. Her right jaw is swollen. She still picks out pieces of bullet and bone as they surface in her gums.
The bullet changed both of them.
Jacque values her family more than ever. She hugs her 3-year-old more now. He’s clingy when she heads to work, as if he remembers the night she didn’t come home.
She uses humor more.
She trusts people less.
Dave is more protective, escorting Jacque and other female staff members to their cars every night.
Bumps in the night make them jump. If they turn around to find one of the boys standing there, they might gasp. The anniversary was especially bad that way.
But they’ve learned from this, they said the other day.
Tested in a real crisis, Dave knows he can keep a cool head, even though it took a few moments to remember the home’s address after calling 911.
“They say you only use five percent of your brain. I bet mine was just smoking from adrenalin,” he said. “But it’s not something I wish on anybody.”
Both learned they work for people who care.
Jacque’s boss at this home, one of several Epworth Village homes like this around town, held her hand one day during yet another blood draw. He knew she hated needles. She about broke his hand.
They both like their jobs more than ever. They are more aware of why they do what they do.
These boys — 12- to 17-year-olds — need someone there for them at night, to hold their hand, to talk through their bad dreams, to wake them in the morning for school no matter how much they cuss.
“We teach and help these kids through a lot of their problems in life,” Dave said. “We try to emphasize that if you’ve got something wrong, you need to just keep pushing forward and try to resolve all of it.
“If we wouldn’t have come back, what kind of message would that have sent them?”
The two were honored recently with the Lucy J. Nevels 2008 Child Care Worker of the Year award for “their heroic actions after the unprecedented event that occurred last September.”
And for returning to work even though their bogeyman still lurks out there, somewhere, in the night.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
Night-shift workers Jacque Bethune and Dave Becker sat in their closet-like office on the second floor. Jacque was on the computer, eating a cup of fruit cocktail.
Dave was studying for a test he was about to take on crisis intervention.
It was a rare night, they recalled later, when none of the eight boys awoke for a glass of warm milk or a bathroom break or a bad dream.
Even the sleepwalker didn’t sleepwalk.
Over their years, Jacque and Dave have learned that many of these boys have reasons for restless nights. Some have witnessed violence, on their streets and in their homes. Some haven’t had a trusted person to go to in the middle of the night, if they were sick or scared. Some have felt more cared for in this orderly home, with a chores list posted in the second-floor hall, than in their own.
One boy who used to live here had a recurring nightmare. It’d come before each visit home: A bogeyman trying to break into his house and attack him.
The front door creaked open.
Jacque turned to Dave.
Did you hear that?
Yeah.
Probably one of their supervisors, they figured. But there was no hello from the first floor.
Dave walked to the top of the front staircase. Nothing.
Jacque saw a shadow to her right.
She started to turn.
There was a loud pop.
Dave’s mind raced. Did Jacque light a firecracker? He turned to see her slumped over, bobbing her head. Laughing?
Jacque watched her cup of fruit cocktail turn red.
A .22 bullet had entered the right corner of her mouth, deflected off her teeth and lodged in her right jawbone.
She felt numb. She didn’t feel pain, just shock. She dropped to her knees and watched the carpet turn red.
The intruder must have fired at her from the landing of the back staircase and then fled. Neither saw who did it.
Jacque walked herself down the front stairs.
That was a year ago September. No one has been arrested.
Two weeks later, Jacque, unable to speak because of the tracheotomy, wrote a note to her boss:
I will be back.
Dave returned to work a few days later. Jacque returned the first day the doctor said she could, after just a few months.
“Because she’s stubborn,” Dave said, smiling at her.
“Yes,” Jacque says, smiling back. “But if you ask my grandmother, it’s because I’m stupid. She was like, ‘Have you lost your mind? You just got shot there.’”
Jacque has a scar on her throat from the tracheotomy. Her right jaw is swollen. She still picks out pieces of bullet and bone as they surface in her gums.
The bullet changed both of them.
Jacque values her family more than ever. She hugs her 3-year-old more now. He’s clingy when she heads to work, as if he remembers the night she didn’t come home.
She uses humor more.
She trusts people less.
Dave is more protective, escorting Jacque and other female staff members to their cars every night.
Bumps in the night make them jump. If they turn around to find one of the boys standing there, they might gasp. The anniversary was especially bad that way.
But they’ve learned from this, they said the other day.
Tested in a real crisis, Dave knows he can keep a cool head, even though it took a few moments to remember the home’s address after calling 911.
“They say you only use five percent of your brain. I bet mine was just smoking from adrenalin,” he said. “But it’s not something I wish on anybody.”
Both learned they work for people who care.
Jacque’s boss at this home, one of several Epworth Village homes like this around town, held her hand one day during yet another blood draw. He knew she hated needles. She about broke his hand.
They both like their jobs more than ever. They are more aware of why they do what they do.
These boys — 12- to 17-year-olds — need someone there for them at night, to hold their hand, to talk through their bad dreams, to wake them in the morning for school no matter how much they cuss.
“We teach and help these kids through a lot of their problems in life,” Dave said. “We try to emphasize that if you’ve got something wrong, you need to just keep pushing forward and try to resolve all of it.
“If we wouldn’t have come back, what kind of message would that have sent them?”
The two were honored recently with the Lucy J. Nevels 2008 Child Care Worker of the Year award for “their heroic actions after the unprecedented event that occurred last September.”
And for returning to work even though their bogeyman still lurks out there, somewhere, in the night.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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