Daymare
Thirsty Seniors, Episode 3
Lunch was at Gregario’s where Maddie and Junie sat in a booth sipping strawberry margaritas. They were there to discuss a new learning experience for their Thirsty Seniors club. Junie was complaining about a next door neighbor who was hard of hearing and played her fifty-inch TV too loud, when Maddie interrupted to talk about her disturbing disjuncted dream.
“I had just walked out of the hospital coffee shop right into the path of a robot. It didn’t stop but glided around me and turned into a corridor. It was as tall as me, made of four white metal tubes stacked on top of each other but shaped like a human body; it had one arm with an elbow and a lego-like hand; and a black screen for a face displaying the number zero zero. I felt like I had walked into a science fiction movie. Anyway, I went to the x-ray waiting room, checked in with the receptionist, sat down, and leaned my head against a wall. That’s when my brain drifted off, into a, uh, daymare. Like Alice following a rabbit . . .
I followed the robot down a corridor. My feet barely touched the floor. I watched the robot get on a dimly-lit elevator, the kind with a black iron grill door. It closed automatically, silently. As it descended out of sight, another small elevator appeared. I got on and went down what felt like several floors to the hospital basement. The elevator stopped in a massive dingy parking garage. But in its place of parked cars were rows and rows of ghostly old people strapped in wheel chairs. Some were attached to intravenous bags hanging from metal stands, all of them were hunched over, heads down, drooling on their hospital gowns. I could barely see them, yet I saw them clearly. I looked around for the robot then saw it fade into a concrete pillar. I wanted to follow it, but I couldn’t stop searching the faces of the old people for signs of life, life that didn’t seem to be there, no expressions, just dull half-opened eyes trapped in long sagging wrinkles. Finally, I turned to escape when . . .
“NO. I'm not giving back MY engagement ring! MY diamond engagement ring! I don’t care if it was your grandmother’s! I earned it, putting up with your mousy weak stinginess for three years!” Screamed a young woman seated a few tables from Junie and Maddie.
“I, I’m sorry, I’ve . . . I’ve been trying to tell you this just isn’t going to work,” a young man softly stuttered, wanting to escape what he feared would be a combustible marriage. Her reply was to throw her drink in his face, that not being sufficient to satisfy her rage, she stood up, leaned over the table and violently slapped his face. A waiter rushed to their table, manager trailing behind him, both tried to calm the outraged young woman who was screaming profanities, crying loudly and declaring all she had sacrificed for her now definitely ex-fiancé. Customers nearby looked on, stunned, concerned, and afraid, some pulled out their phones to video her fury, others called friends, maybe the police.
Maddie, interrupted from describing her own horror, found herself staring intensely into the face of that young man, recognized fear is an exit, felt her brows slightly raise, only whispered, “Run.”