The Hoyer Lift is a medical device designed to facilitate in the movement of the elderly or movement-impaired. Using it, a skilled health-care worker can transfer a patient from wheelchair to bed in less than sixty seconds.

The rubberized plates at the base of the lift platform allow a degree of personal dignity – with one’s feet below their body a person is able to possess a spark individual autonomy even while being assisted by the one (or occasionally two) medically-authorized lift operators.

Most Hoyer lifts are on wheels so that they can be used in multiple locations. In occasional cases, however, a lift can be permanently bolted above the patient’s bed in order to save space. While practical, the downside of this solution is that the lift now permanently hangs over the patient like a hand, always curled, fist-like.

The lift is reliant on human operation, and the time which may elapse between when the patient presses the summoning button to when the available nurses finally arrive can often be as long as ten minutes. While waits of this length are understandable, since most nurses care for more than one patient throughout their shifts, the waits are difficult for the patient who may feel they are being held hostage by the very mechanism which is meant to help them.

Because of a stroke last summer, your mother-in-law uses a Hoyer lift in the nursing home where she lives. Because the stroke effects on her speech were gradual, you could still understand her dismissive pronouncements when the lift was mandated for her. “Why do I need this?” and “I don’t like that thing.” and “I can climb into my own bed.”

Mercifully now (for you) she endures the waits for the healthcare staff in silence. You try to make up for the silence by telling her what you did that day. But sometimes you leave out certain details … like moments during your day when you walked somewhere.

Though you dislike these visits you try to do so at least once every day. It keeps you grounded in her suffering. Otherwise you could easily forget, while you gaily jog about your day, that she is, at any moment, probably waiting for someone. And while she waits the only thing she has to look at is the hanging fist over her bed.

Zary Fekete …

… grew up in Hungary.

… has a novelette (In the Beginning) out from ELJ Publications and a debut novella coming out in early 2024 with DarkWinter Lit Press in addition to two short story collections later in 2024.

Show Zary some love via PayPal at zachandjules(at)gmail(dot)com.