Daymare
Thirsty Seniors, Episode 3
Lunch was at Gregory’s, seniors’ discount Tuesday, where Maddie and Junie sat in a booth sipping strawberry margaritas. Junie was complaining about her neighbor who is hard of hearing and plays her fifty-inch TV loud enough to shatter the sound of peace, when Maddie interrupted with–
“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 three white metal tubes stacked on top of each other, had one arm with an elbow and a lego-like hand, and a black screen for a face that displayed 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 I drifted off into a, uh, daymare. Like Alice following a rabbit . . .
I followed the robot down a corridor, my feet barely touching the floor, when I saw the robot get on a dimly-lit elevator, the kind with a black iron grill door but closed automatically, silently. It descended out of sight, then another 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 place of parked cars, there were rows and rows of ghostly old people, strapped in wheelchairs; some of them were attached to intravenous bags that hung from nowhere; all of them were hunched over, heads down, drooling on their hospital gowns. I barely saw them, yet I saw them clearly. I looked around for the robot and saw it fade into a concrete pillar. I started 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. I stumbled against an empty wheelchair with straps hanging down its sides, then turned around to rush back to the elevator 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. Forever, I’ve been putting up with your pathetic boring dream of a future together, your dream!” shouted 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 stuttered softly, hoping to escape a future 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, staring intensely into the face of that young man, thinking she had just stepped into someone else’s daymare, found herself whispering to him, “Run.”