[Today’s guest post is by Sunny Pereira]
I had just finished an interrogation session that I was doing on a Scientology registrar, because she wasn’t making enough money for the org. It wasn’t even actually my job, interrogations, but I was the preferred auditor for whatever reason.
My job and area of responsibility at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre was not only overstretched, it was impossible for such a large org.
My senior came up to me and told me that one of the course supervisors, someone I had known since I was a very young child, had a fever of 104 and she needed to go to the hospital. I couldn’t drive, and I had no car. There was absolutely no way I could call an ambulance. That would be allowing non-Scientologists onto the property. So I needed to arrange transport.
I managed to convince someone to drive us, with the agreement I would give them some gas money (I had $200 float weekly for staff medical for a CC staff of 250, plus Manor Hotel staff of another 50). So $20 worth of gas got us to Olive View hospital, in Sylmar, Ca. We waited in the waiting room for about two hours, then they gave her a bed and started tests on her. Long story short, she had Stage IV colon cancer and had only two weeks to live.
Wait, what? She had been on post all the way up to that morning, doing 16-hour days like the rest of us. How had this sneaked up on all of us? Surely these doctors had no clue what they were talking about. And so I requested all of her medical information. I needed to get all of this over to Dr. Denk and Dr. Shields for a second opinion.
Olive View, the county hospital, wanted to move her to another facility for better care, but instead my sweet friend wanted to go home. Let’s call her Nelly. We didn’t want her to be far from the CC property, so we set her up to be in an apartment across from CC (on the Tamarind side, a dumpy place called the “Shangri-La”). I didn’t want her being on her own, so I set up for another unwell staff member (we will call him Sam), who had a massive leg ulcer, to stay with her, 24/7. This was convenient because I could check on her throughout the day, make sure they were fed and had the basics of what they needed.
Meanwhile I was still expected to cover the course supervisor position for staff, which was three study periods per day, for a total of nine hours of the day. In addition, I was still required to do daily interrogations on the non-producing registrar (which averaged 2.5 hours per day), keep track of 300 staff with their training, auditing (which was mostly non-existent) and medical care. It was beyond a full time job. I could have had a staff of 20 and still not had enough. I was running all the time, and trying to keep things going by the skin of my teeth. It was stressful and frustrating. I’ve been called a bitch more times than I can remember, I’ve been physically assaulted (for anything from not finding an auditor to give sessions to someone, to not having money to pay for someone’s toothache).
I’d take off to get away any chance I could. It was tough being in that situation of being constantly screamed at, like every problem with the staff is my personal fault and I made them sick somehow.
I managed to meet up with Dr. Gene Denk, who basically told me the same thing as the doctors from Olive View hospital. He thought maybe Nelly had less than three weeks. The cancer had just taken over everything. I asked him about the cancer treatments we had heard of in Mexico, and also about some device that some were using to remove cancer (which was all written up in a book of case studies, 100 cured cancer patients). Dr Denk, in his always blunt way, said “The best way to know if a treatment worked or not is to see how the patients are now.” It had been a year since the studies, Denk said. “They are all dead.” Sigh.
I’m all of about 23 and I am going to be the one to tell Nelly that there is nothing we can do? Ugh.
It had been a long day, and I decided I would talk with her the next day.
But then we had that massive Northridge earthquake. Some of the interior walls came down in our berthing building, but otherwise, according to our CC gardener (who also just happened to be a civil engineer) it was still structurally sound.
All of the staff, in the middle of the night, had evacuated the building, located at Wilcox and Selma, which was closer to the Hollywood Guaranty Building than It was to CC. They were all across the street in the post office parking lot, mustering up to account for everyone and get anyone who was missing (some didn’t even wake from the earthquake and had to be gotten up).
The sun was just starting to come up, and the highest executive from CC came up to me and said “reporting for duty.” What? Oh yeah, in times of emergency, we switched over to special functions and guess what? This little 23-year-old kid was in charge of medical. So I was in charge of everything and everyone, and I was expected to make all the calls on everything. Everyone lined up for assignments from me. We had a couple of head injuries that needed to be checked out, so I sent a couple of staff to take the injured to the hospital for check ups. I was glad nobody was asking for gas money because I was out. $200 is gone pretty fast for staff medical. I noticed there were “wogs” (non-Scientologists) wandering around the parking lot too, and I assigned most of the staff to do locational assists and touch assists on the injured. I sent the civil engineer to go check on CC (which had one of the top of the chimneys break loose and was threating to fall seven stories straight into the Rose Garden Café, and probably take out the Purif sauna underground too). I assigned about 25 staff to go to CC and start filing up all the bathtubs (every room in the building still had bathtubs). We had more staff trickle out of the building, resulting in more needing medical care. I tried to figure out which seemed urgent and which were band-aids. Who was I to know? I have no idea. I sent a few for doctor visits.
Then my husband came up to me and told me that all the PC folders in the CC archives had fallen over and were all mixed up, and there was also some flooding in the archives. We are talking about thousands and thousands of files. Millions of pages. They would all have to be gone through by hand to put them back in proper order. I already knew that would be a job that would take all day for weeks and weeks and weeks. I did not have that kind of time. Thankfully they were not only staff folders, but public too, so that meant I would get some help. And so I set of from the Wilcox building to CC to see what the archives area looked like. And yes, total disaster.
CC was closed off on the Rose Garden side. Because of the chimney. So we had to enter from the alley, which goes directly into the archives area. I started working on cleaning up the files. I hadn’t eaten at all and I was quite exhausted. It was probably 4 or 5 pm by this time. As we were all going through files, my husband asked me “How’s Nelly?”
OH MY FUCKING GAWD, I FORGOT TO CHECK ON NELLY AND SAM! I am SUCH an asshole. I am the biggest asshole in the world. I deserve all the hate and critical comments about my poor job performance. What kind of a jerk ass would forget about these two very ill people? Me. That’s who. Not only had I forgot to check on them after the earthquake, but I didn’t feed them for breakfast or lunch.
I called over to them, because thankfully they had a phone. Sam answered and said they were fine. He was always chipper and happy. I apologized and told them I would bring dinner right away, which I did. Sadly, Nelly was not well enough to eat anything. She was very, very weak, and throwing up. Her fever was creeping back up.
I couldn’t sleep that night. It was just a very long and bad day. And I was worried about Nelly. I had to work out a ride to the hospital for her. I lay awake all night trying to figure out what I could do for her. Early the next morning, I got a ride set up and headed out with her back to the hospital.
Nelly, being the Sea Org member that she was, did not want to be trouble. She kept telling me, and her seniors that came to visit, that she would fix it and get better and be back on post soon. Her seniors were happy to hear that.
I sat with her as the doctor offered to her a surgery to remove the cancerous tumors from her colon. They said the surgery would take at least eight hours and was very risky. She would also have very little bowel left after the surgery. The doctor indicated that it might prolong her life. Nelly immediately agreed to the surgery and the doctor stepped out into the hallway. I followed him and asked him to tell me straight. He did. She probably would not survive the surgery. Either way she likely only had a couple of days.
Meanwhile Nelly is making it go right and trying to get better. She was trying so, so hard to overcome the body. She lay there, so weak, barely able to move her head. She mostly kept her eyes shut. She was small and frail, not the Nelly super-nanny that I remembered. As I looked at her, I thought I was it. I’d be the one to have to tell it to her straight. And so I did. I explained about the surgery and how risky it was, and how she only had a few days left. And that we wanted to make her comfortable and make sure she had what she needed. “I need a new body!” she said. I’d say she was right. After much talking, she understood and accepted her diagnosis.
I went down the hall to call the org. I had to let my seniors know she would be declining surgery. I spoke with my senior’s senior, a lady named Renee, who had already, on multiple occasions, indicated that she hated me, and explained that Nelly would decline surgery and accept her fate. Renee sneered a “thank you” and hung up.
I headed back to the org later that evening, still reeling from the overwhelming responsibility of what I had just done. Was it my place to do that? I don’t know. This was my friend. My nanny and someone I cared for deeply and I hated to see her in so much pain, trying to fight through it to go back on post! I guess I thought if I were in her shoes, I would have wanted a straight report on the situation. And it only felt right to do that for her.
As I walked in to the front door of the org, I heard “murderer.” I turned around. Renee, calling me over, had found her new nickname for me. A few days later, Nelly passed away peacefully in her sleep, and I was left with a strange nickname for the rest of my years at CC Int. Murderer was what I was called, as my name.
— Sunny Pereira
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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
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Scientology and compassion don't mix. And if you happen to be a compassionate/empathetic person as Sunny is and was, you will be in for a world of hurt you may never recover from. I really wish Sunny the best of life and hope the remainder of it is filled with a lot of love, compassion and understanding. She deserves it.
Wow, Sunny. You were in the thick of it. You are one tough MF. So many good people were lured into the “Clearing The Planet” dream. How many are left to tell the tale. Thank you for today’s story.