And Him Me' Be

(I foned Ella, in the care home, every evening -- mostly getting thru -- for over a year. Besides anything else, her chronic captivity was a torment to her.)
Ella: I worked hard, all my life, I only helped other people. I have no record. How did I end up in a place like this! It’s not what I saved for.
Son: I’m trying to get you out, but I have no power to do so.
Ella (with mother love, worried): Don’t work too hard at it. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Then I won’t have you to look after me.
She said, presciently: It won’t make any difference. If they can’t be kind, there’s no help for it.
Son: I have to try (to get you home free).
Ella : I’m not stopping you from trying, but don’t over-do it. It’s no help to me, if you make yourself poorly over it...

(Ella, in so many words): Don’t get involved. The more involved it gets, the more they like it.
Ella said of officialdom: It’s like moving a mountain for them….
Son, on fone, to dermatologist: I was told Ella has an aggressive skin cancer. For a long time, she had a knuckle scab, which she couldn't avoid knocking, and which wouldn't heal.
Derm.: It probably started with the knuckle scab. (Before it spread up her left arm).
(Ella herself remarked): I have a scab under my arm [like a reproduction of the knuckle scab.
More obvious, also on her lower arm, were weals, grotesque skin waves or blisters of the outer skin, at first thought to be the left-overs of an alleged outbreak of shingles. They burst, to leave a patch of raw bleeding flesh].
Care home staff told me, the son: She has a swelling, like a golf ball, under her armpit.
At the care home, Ella kept taking the dressing off. To son: Ask them for another one.
Son to staff: Ella hasn’t got a bandage on her arm. It’s bleeding onto her sleeve.
Care home carer, airily, ignoring my request: Oh, she’s always taking it off… [Because it was painful and soggy under bandage, unless removed to air the wound.]

(The next day, a district nurse came, to the care home, to put on a new bandage.
Ellas place was still held, at that unsuitable place, till the day she died, when she was still paying, for her loathed life imprisonment.)
(Sometimes holding on to me to keep steady, Ella walked out of the care home lounge into the entrance hall. To staff): I want to go home to my son. Why can’t I go home? – It’s a free country!
Senior carer: The powers that be…