One: Room 246

What does it really mean to be sane?

The pale yellow walls of the hallway reeked of confusion. There was a certain sense of loss in the air, an utter thickness of bewilderment penetrating the atmosphere of the floor. It was this overwhelming feeling, not the incessant moans of the dying patients nor the antiseptics permeating the air, which nauseated the young woman walking down the hall. Her wavy dark hair was much too long and pretty to decorate such a place as this - a place of forgetfulness, decay, and death. Yet she floated gracefully down the length of the speckled tile flooring, her flowery gown brushing against open doors and vacant wheelchairs as she went.

She slowed as she approached a closed door at the end of the hall. The little plaque on the wall labeling this particular room as “246” hung haphazardly from the plaster where the screws were slipping loose. The young woman took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her skirt, as if her perfection just might erase the ugliness of the whole home. She knocked softly on the door and pushed it slightly ajar. 

“Grandpa?” She called daintily into the dark room. Her voice matched her appearance; it was airy, lighter than a feather, floating above and between the air as if it were a kite dividing the wind into two distinct halves.

The lack of response worried her. She shoved the door fully open and stepped inside, breathing a deep sigh of relief upon locking his blue eyes with her own.

“Clarisse!” The old man cried from his bed. It wasn’t his usual exclamation of joy and comfort upon her arrival. There was instead an air of fear and a hint of unanticipated frustration in his voice, which confused Clarisse wildly. She hurried over to him and knelt beside the antiquated nursing bed.

Clarisse grasped his cold hands and sandwiched them between her own.

“Grandpa,” she breathed. “What’s wrong?” Such deep concern lived in her eyes that it even overcame the beauty of their intense aquamarine hue.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he replied. His eyes darted around frantically.

“Grandpa,” Clarisse said calmly. “It’s okay. You’re in a home, remember? A nursing facility. I’m only here to visit.”

“No!” He exclaimed, agitated. She jumped a bit, taken aback by the old man’s abruptness. He was typically a mild-mannered, soft-spoken type of man. From what Clarisse could remember, he always had been.

He noticed her sudden alarm. “No,” he repeated, more calmly this time. “I still know who I am. I still know where I am. But I am telling you, my dear, you can’t be here. You really must go.”

“Why?” Clarisse demanded. She tried to stay composed. They told her this might happen when the old man began to decline.

“Please,” he begged. There was desperation in his voice. Coughing spasms suddenly overtook him, and he turned from Clarisse as he tried to catch his breath.

Clarisse reached for his glass of water on the makeshift bedside table. His breathing slowed to normal and he turned to face her once more. The sheer beauty of this young woman in her happy little gown with her bright eyes and blush-touched cheeks was, in that moment, utterly wretched to the dying old man.

“Go,” he spat. “I love you, dear, but I need you to go now.”

Clarisse ignored him. She glanced at the empty bed beside her grandfather’s.

“Grandpa,” she said. “Where’s Jack?”

He squeezed her hand tightly. A single tear appeared in his eye - an eye that had seen much more life than most could boast.

“They took him,” he said.

“Who?” She asked. There was deep confusion in her voice.

“You really must go,” he repeated into the darkness.

“Okay,” Clarisse said. “Okay, fine.” Perhaps, she thought, it was best not to upset him anymore. She hugged him across the chest and touched her painted lips to his forehead. His skin was soft and thin, almost like the delicate flesh of a newborn.

Clarisse pondered the twisted irony of this as she stood and made her way, slowly, to the door.

“I love you,” she called from the open doorway. “Goodbye for now.”

The old man said nothing. He simply laid there, alone in the dark, his eyes shut so tightly it seemed he may never open them again.

Clarisse turned away, stung by the rejection of such a lonely man. How lame and unappealing her presence must have been for him to send her away so quickly!

It was this ugly pride which prevented such an attractive young woman from considering more deeply the circumstances.

Her initial airy gait now transformed into a depressed trudge. Clarisse dragged her feet down the hall, the moans of the patients suddenly seeming much louder than before. She turned the corner at the end of the hall and, a few steps later, shoved open the heavy double doors, oblivious to the ancient woman hunched over unnaturally in a wheelchair beside the entryway.

The old woman’s dying eyes followed this strange young woman’s exit from the home with typical confusion.

Yet somewhere in her blurry, dementia-stricken mind, she wondered a shockingly crystalline thought: How could such a beautiful woman appear so sad?

But just a moment later, the youth and her flowing gown were gone, stealing with them any memory the old woman had that they’d ever existed.

She sat still in her chair, as she had every day for the past half decade, and stared absentmindedly at the flyers tacked to the bulletin board across the entryway.

The papers fluttered at the sudden entrance of two uniformed men, who confidently approached the overworked, pale-faced woman who manned the front desk. The woman’s frizzy hair, pulled back in a particularly unattractive messy bun, bounced awkwardly as she shook her head in response to a question posed by one of the men. She pointed a bony finger at the old woman in the chair, who had not once broken her gaze from the bulletin.

The men thanked the receptionist and sauntered over to the old woman. One knelt in front of her chair in a vain attempt to make eye contact with her.

“Mrs. Drake,” he said softly. The old woman didn’t so much as blink at the sound of her name. The only evidence that she still lived was the steady heaving of her chest as she breathed.

“It’s time,” he continued. “We must take him now.”

Still, the old woman didn’t budge. The man, a gruff, rugged-looking person, glanced up at his partner, who shrugged back at him.

“Well,” he sighed, standing. “I guess we just-”

The old woman grabbed his wrist, the sudden movement of an otherwise immobile person sending a chill through the man’s spine.

The old woman slowly cocked her head until her dark eyes met the man’s own. Although blurred by the thousands of wrinkle lines already spread across her face, her forehead was noticeably crinkled in confusion.

“Who?” She croaked. Her voice was unnaturally high-pitched, dried out from her self-imposed dehydration.

“Your husband, Mrs. Drake,” he said gently. The confusion plastering her face remained unchanged.

“George,” he said. “You husband, George. Do you remember him?”

The old woman let her head fall back, slowly, to its natural resting place. There was a twinkle, per se, at the back of her mind - a twinkle that appeared at the mention of that name.

George, she thought. What a lovely name. What a royal name. Perhaps one day I’ll name a child that.

The man gently released his wrist from the old woman’s grasp.

“Come on,” he said to his partner. “Let’s go.”

Together they left the woman in her chair and headed across the entryway.
“What’s the room?” The gruff man asked.

His partner pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.

“246,” he said. “How strange - weren’t we just there last week?”

“Huh,” the gruff man replied. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

The two took a right and marched down the hall, their heavy boots thumping against the tile flooring.

“They really oughta repaint this place,” the gruff man said. “This yellow is depressing.”

His partner only nodded, focused instead on reading the room numbers plastered to the ugly walls.

His eyes locked on the right sign - there was the “246” plaque hanging loose from the plaster, just as it had been one week prior.

The two men glanced at each other - as they always did before a grave extraction such as this - and, sighing, they shoved open the door to reveal the blackened room of Mr. Drake.

Finis.

Story one is for Noah, the little boy who taught me that life is so much brighter than I once believed.