True little dream

by: benzo369

Little Jessica and Tony raced up the fifth floor hallway like two stockcars finishing the Daytona 500. Their faces were red with enthusiasm and their lungs short on oxygen.

Sometimes Little Jessica wins. Most times it’s Tony. But what do you expect?

“He’s five million-feet tall,” Little Jessica likes to say.

Today Tony wins but it doesn’t matter because no one wants to get to this ending first. The door he stands in front of reads: Room 14 – palliative care. Tony stops in front of the door and he appears to ponder the way the door works...

“Is it a twist or a push?” he seems to say…

and moves slowly back from the door waiting for his little sister, Little Jessica, to catch up.

THUMP!

“Ow you jerk!” Little Jessica screams but immediately backs off for fear of arms that stretch a thousand miles. Like a little energetic mouse that has caught the attention of a big menacing broom, she backs off scurrying away to some corner of the ward, hiding her now white face. Exhausted she begins to count in her head…

1…2…3…4…5…

“Got cha!”

“AAAAAHH!”

“Children!”

Nurse Embers has seen it all and she has had quite enough of the happy little display before her for this is no place of smiles, no house of play. Her deep black eyes stare down upon Little Jessica more stringent then they did upon Tony, who walked away so easily.

“You should show more respect when you are in the company of the sick,” Nurse Embers says to Little Jessica, who then walks away patting Tony lovingly on his head and returning to whatever difficult, mean task she was performing before the kids announced their arrival.

Little Jessica thinks it’s curious how Nurse Embers always uses the word “sick” when she knows very well what is really going on in here. It was an infestation of the worst kind and Little Jessica knows about it and she also knows that Nurse Embers knows it. Little Jessica despises the way Nurse Embers talks to her as if she is a small child, as if she was only “Little” because she wasn’t full grown yet, as if she couldn’t put two-and-two together. She was plenty old enough to tell that the world was full of this infestation and she had read plenty of interesting things to back up her own instincts.

“Why do you think he’s that way?” Tony asks as they walk back towards the door. Tony is only three years older so he don’t know jack more then this little mouse and Little Jessica sets about setting Tony straight about the real reason he was in the ward and not the trumped-up, ballyhoo reason that big nurse bitter beaver says is the reason.

“He’s got the disease,” Little Jessica says.

“I know that, stupid,” Tony says.

Little Jessica blows her falling bangs up in to the stratosphere so that her blues can perform a perfect roll that Tony can see.

“No, jerk, he’ got THE DISEASE.”

Tony thinks about it for a second and then looks at Little Jessica who is standing beside him as if she was waiting for a repetitious cycle to end. She moves away from the door again, this time taking her big brother by the hand, and leads him to one of those uncomfortable chairs hospitals love to offer people who visit the sick.

“You see its been happening all over the ‘hospital’,” Little Jessica is crouching both index and middle fingers when she says the word hospital out of a habit she picked up the first day they visited the ‘hospital’. “The ‘patients’” yup, you guessed it, “are told that they are here for routine check ups and then – POOF! – they are suddenly stuck here moaning around the halls with stupid faces, which look like you when you wake up on Saturday for cartoons… come to think of it…” Little Jessica stands on her toes so that she can see in to Tony’s emerald eyes, “…no, you’re good – for now.”

Tony now has this scrunched-up face that looks like a pumpkin seven days after Halloween and he is some angry but he says nothing, even though he would love to shut his stupid sister up.

“Ever heard of a bokor?”

Tony shakes his head.

“They are like Voldemort but worse and they take control of the dead and sometimes the living. So what I think is going on here is that they are all making the ‘patients’ here sick with a disease that makes them slaves to the ‘hospital’ so that they can perform experiments.”

Tony thinks about it for a second, his face is still that very old pumpkin, and then pushes Little Jessica back.

“That’s stupid. You’re stupid,” he yells, to which Nurse Embers runs over to the two and grabs Little Jessica by her hand and drags her over to the nursing station.

“Listen you, stop bugging your brother.”

“I know what’s going on here.”

“What?”

“You can fool my brother – he might be older but he is stupider – you can’t fool me,” Little Jessica says defiantly and then crosses her arms.

“Listen, it’s all so complicated. You need to talk to your mother,” says Nurse Embers, whose tone changes to kind but Little Jessica sees right through it.

“You are turning the ‘patients’ here in to Zombies, admit it!” Little Jessica finally accuses and a feels a weight lift off her shoulder. Inexplicably tears are rolling down her cheek and she considers running away but Nurse Embers pulls her in close and pats her head lightly.

“Shhh, little one, Shhh.”

Little Jessica doesn’t put up with it and pulls herself from the nurse, the ‘hired help’ but Embers’ grip is tight. She doesn’t let go and she gently throws Little Jessica to a chair.

“Yes, darling. There are zombies. But they are inside your daddy. We didn’t put them there and we did all we could to get them out." Just as inexplicably, Nurse Embers starts to cry.

Having finished their moment, the two return to the door of Room 14-Palliative Care Ward. The door is open.

Inside Tony is standing by his father, whispering something in his ear, though daddy can't respond. On the docket by the foot of the bed reads the name of Little Jessica’s daddy Johnny Vergas, father of two.

“Come here baby,” Mrs. Vergas calls for her daughter. Little Jessica runs to her mother and holds her arm ever so gently, tugging at her hand like a wave that tugs at a loving beach. “I know baby. If you want to say something to your daddy, now’s the time to do it.”


Little Jessica walks over to the side of her daddy’s bed and examining his quiet head, she cups her father’s ear, whispering: “there are zombies eating you.”