When their mother died at a nursing home, two detectives wanted answers
IT TOOK THE SISTERS FROM NYPD A MONTH BEFORE THEY LEARNT HOW BAD THINGS WERE AT THE FACILITY WHERE MORE THAN 100 RESIDENTS HAVE DIED
Alittle after 1 in the afternoon, Aida Pabey got the call from the nursing home: Her mother was not going to make it. It was April 6, nearly four weeks after the state had barred all visitors to nursing homes, and Aida and her sister, Haydee, had been struggling to get even the most basic information about their mother. Was she eating? Had the coronavirus reached her part of the home?
Now this dire call. Just the day before, the sisters had been assured by an aide that their mother was “fine.”
They were both detectives in the New York Police Department, 20-year veterans. They were used to getting information, even from people determined to withhold it. But the nursing home had been a black box.
Sister act
They raced to the home. Haydee got there first and managed to get upstairs. Aida, arriving second, identified herself as a crime scene investigator and brought safety gear. The security guard refused to let her in.
Their mother, Elba, died that night. But it took the sisters nearly a month before they learnt how bad things were at the Isabella Geriatric Centre in Manhattan, where more than 100 residents have died, possibly the most pandemic deaths of any nursing home in the state.
The sisters still do not know how she deteriorated in those last days, and what was done to protect her, because the home has not released her medical records.
Families in the dark
The Pabey sisters’ story — two experienced police officers unable to crack the silences of their mother’s nursing home — is a parable of corporate fog in the time of Covid-19. As nursing homes have been overrun by the virus, accounting for half of all deaths in some states, families say they have been kept in the dark, barred by law from visiting and given incomplete or contradictory information by the homes’ administrators.
The detectives’ forensic tools were useless to the sisters — there was no evidence they could examine, no witnesses they could interrogate.
No easy answers
The home declined a request to discuss how the virus got in and how it overran measures to contain it. Audrey Waters, a spokeswoman for Isabella, said the home had followed all state guidelines in battling the virus and informing families, adding: “We have worked tirelessly to prevent this deadly and ferocious virus from spreading in our nursing home, and we are committed to doing everything in our power to continue to limit its spread and protect our residents and heroic staff.”
For Aida Pabey, the frustration of those last weeks has only escalated. “I feel betrayed,” she said. “My mom is gone, but I want to do whatever it takes so that this doesn’t ever happen ever again.”
Before the state banned visitors to New York nursing homes on March 12, the sisters would stop in to spend time with their mother several times a week. These visits also provide checks against abuse or neglect. All that ended on March 12. No longer could the sisters get information for themselves.
Enter the virus
Meanwhile, the nurses and aides at Isabella were getting sick. Personal protective equipment was scarce, according to two nurses, and employees handled both Covid and non-Covid residents, creating avenues for the virus to spread.
To keep the staff from misusing protective gear or taking it home, the administration rationed gowns, face shields and hand sanitiser, the nurses said. They each got one N95 mask per week, for which they had to sign, one of the nurses said. It was dangerous work: “I got my son sick,” the nurse said.
Waters, the spokeswoman at Isabella, said that the home always had enough protective gear, and that it followed Health Department guidelines for conserving PPE.
Nonetheless, Covid-19 had come to Isabella. Waters said the first resident to get sick was sent to the hospital for testing on March 21. The first confirmed death among residents was on March 25.
The Pabey sisters were unaware that residents and staff were getting sick, but video calls arranged by the staff gave them pause. They could see their mother’s roommate wandering around the room, sometimes touching their mother or her things, also without a mask.
Outbreak at Isabella
On March 24, a Twitter account using the name NYCStrong posted that there was an outbreak at Isabella. Then on March 27, the Pabeys said, their video calls stopped.
When the sisters asked about their mother, it was hard to get more than bland assurances. “They’d just say, ‘She’s good,’” Haydee said. Often they could not reach anyone at all.
Meanwhile, the virus was spreading within the home. “We knew that residents were passing away,” the nurse said. “We knew that staff were getting sick. All I could tell you is that we were just hoping it’d come out on the news so someone could give us the help that we are receiving right now.”
The home’s website posted no updates on infections. Then on April 5, when Aida called for an update, the aide answered distractedly, even getting her mother’s gender wrong. “She said, ‘He’s fine, his respiration is good,’” Aida recalled.
The final call
Then the following day, Isabella called to say that Elba was not going to make it. The home posed a question to the sisters: Should they call an ambulance to take their mother to the hospital, or should they try to simply make her comfortable? Call an ambulance, they said. Then they changed their minds.
Elba’s eyes were closed, and she was having difficulty breathing. Haydee called her sister using FaceTime, and from the lobby Aida was able to sing to her mother one last time.
Elba Pabey died that night, at age 72, just one day after the staff had said she was “fine.” The death certificate, Haydee said, cited “natural causes” and did not mention Covid-19. “I don’t believe that,” she said.
For the Pabey sisters, the weeks after their mother’s death felt like a rolling insult. On April 17 the state Health Department released death counts at individual nursing homes, citing 13 at Isabella. But this number was misleadingly low.
Then, a day later, the home informed families of Covid-19 deaths, reporting on its website that 70 residents had died, either confirmed or presumed to have been as a result of the virus. But on May 1, after a report on the cable news channel NY1, it released a staggering count: 98 deaths among Isabella residents. Since then, at least eight more residents have died.
“All we wanted to know is, what happened?” Aida said.
I feel betrayed. My mom is gone, but I want to do whatever it takes so that this doesn’t ever happen ever again.”
Aida Pabey | Daughter of Elba who died in a US nursing home
We knew that residents were passing away. We knew that staff were getting sick. We were just hoping it’d come out on the news ...”
A nurse at Isabella Geriatric Centre in Manhattan
Employees handled both Covid and nonCovid residents, creating avenues for the virus to spread.