Chapter Four

Another day started itself off with the rousing sounds of an alarm. It had taken Nate all of two minutes in total to decide which sound on his phone was the most annoying thing he had ever heard. And he used one that was even worse than that one as his day to day alarm notification. Today it went off, right on cue, and he rose to his feet. Swiping the alarm off, Nate hesitated and staring hard at his phone. It wasn’t the usual beeping. It was always the same sound, each, and every morning. He had it set to the annoying wind chime noise that made him want to break the phone. He had chosen that sound for that specific reason. Today, it was a squeaking sound that made him think of the true crime shows his grandparents had always watched whenever he stopped in for a visit.

Whenever Nate had visited them as a child, he would watch some show like that with them, and question at what it would take to drive someone to kill another person. What could actually drive someone, anyone, to murder. That sound. That sound would have been the answer. Nate had explained that to them the last time he had visited, they didn’t think it was as funny as he did. Nor did they think he was as right as he thought he was about that sound either.

“New day, Margo.” Her fluffy golden silhouetted shape darted out of the crumpled comforter. Leaving yet more long golden curls behind in her wrath filled wake. “Good morning. Alright, come here. Let’s see. No, I’m not playing. Come on, pup. Okay fine, fine,” Nate lunged out and held the dog in his arms, rubbing and scratching her back and belly. Margo snapped at him, playfully. If she nipped him, she would stop and lick his hand and go back to growling again.

Her collar had square studs inlayed in it, and was an off colored excuse for a brown today.

“Had a feeling…” Nate licked his lips and threw his hands in conceded defeat. “Alright, alright. Come on then, pups. Let’s go get ready for the day already.” Nate sang the last word and let Margo out to enjoy the morning smells. One of her favorite things to do in the busy day of a happy dog.

His phone buzzed to itself on the table. “Hey, John”, he answered into it. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m up. Want to meet at the hospital around eleven. Oh. Sure, no yeah, I can pick you up. Alright then. I’ll be by your place in a little bit then. Alright, okay, bye.” Nate put the phone in his pocket and finished getting dressed for the day.

He was on the road not long after that. If it were any other day he would have gone to the store, refilled his cabinet and fridge with milk, cereal, hamburger patties, etc. Today wasn’t going to be painless, like a normal day. Today was going to hurt, it always did whenever he went to the hospital.

A teal house waving obnoxiously in the glare of the windshield caught his eye. It looked fresh and newer than the other houses. Nate liked the overhang in the front of their garage too. It looked nice. But, something, something was wrong about it. Nate drummed the steering wheel and drove by slower. Letting the realization force itself into his focus. He groaned and kept driving when he couldn’t figure out what was that was bothering him about the bluish-green home.

In the next few neighborhoods there were newer looking houses, all with a fresh coated layer of paint. Some were the standard off white that would take on a molded look whenever the dew got ahold of the building in the mornings. A few darker colored homes looked nice as well, the faux wood exterior stood out and as he had heard once, pop! All of these houses kept catching his attention as well.

Nate had driven through this neighborhood, this entire area for that matter, hundreds of times if not thousands. By this point in his life he knew where everything had always been. He did his best not to let himself be bothered by these new things. They were little things, little changes. They would only bother him if he let them in and do so. The houses over there were now a lighter teal color, almost an off blue color. Not as pretty as that first house had looked. But before yesterday they were pushing themselves into a greenish orange territory, it was distractingly awful. The color change was not an improvement on the neighborhood. But it was a stark color choice nonetheless.

Further along was the crazy cat lady’s house, Mrs. Carlile, or something like that. She lived just down the road from John’s house. Mrs. Carlile was an angry little old lady that was always yelling at the garbage truck driver for some reason or another. Nate and John could never figure out what her deal was. The driver didn’t know her, not outside of their early morning route. The driver didn’t do anything one way or another from what they could tell to warrant her anger and ire. From all intents and purposes, she was just plain nuts and someone that should be avoided.

Today her house, it had a beautiful flower garden outside of it. Last time Nate had driven through, it was a barren wasteland of a front yard. Nothing grew there, nor would anything have wanted to. She was that mean. Sections had always been filled in with large patches of dead grass. The graveyard of old cars being parked off on the side there had long since starved the grass underneath them into nonexistence. A memorial to death and poor maintenance.

Now the house looked beautiful, red and orange tulips littered the sides of the driveway. The dead cars on the side were still there, marring the view of the neighborhood, though today they had what appeared to be an attempt at making them run again. The new wheels and the windows were all washed and free of debris and pollen. Nate shook his head and attempted to keep his attention focused on the road. The next few houses had a different idea in mind. A few more houses down from Mrs. Carlile, past the corner from the retired army veteran had the weirdest changes of all.

The entire front yard had been a normal, everyday, run of the mill yard. Nothing special about it, just freshly watered grass and a birdfeeder in the corner. And nothing else of interest, not even a flowerbed to draw the eye away from the road ahead of them as they passed on by without a second look at yet another home in an over populated town.

That normal, everyday, run of the mill yard, well today it was now over populated with nothing but a field of garden gnomes. A whole village of them, all along the front yard. They filled the yard with little gnomes. And each and every one of them held something in its hands. “What in the, world?” Nate asked aloud, and no one had an answer for him. He suspected that if anyone had an answer anyways, he wouldn’t have liked it. Nate muttered a personal acceptance, that he was indeed beginning to lose his mind after all.

A weapon, that’s what it looked like was in the hands of each gnome, aside from the ones with the garden variety of buckets, hoes, shovels, and assortments they would normally have. The weapon wielding gnomes were each painted to match various superheroes from what Nate could tell. Best one he saw was one that was dressed, or rather painted, to look like a bat like superhero. The rest just looked like messy trash, no characters worth mentioning here for any such reason of other.

“They must have kids,” and new ones that Nate did not remember seeing running around the neighborhood before. Kids that probably had always somehow existed and he had just, somehow, never noticed them before? Yeah, that was probably the case here.

Nate laughed a little, “Today is so weird…”

John’s front door was even affected by all of the new colors of the neighborhood. It had always been a safe example of a baby blue with eggshell accents sort of color combination. It was now green, as it had always been if he was brave enough to ask. Nate nearly didn’t notice the change in color until his hand was on the door knob. He had knocked and decided quickly against waiting a moment for the lack of reply to be the only answer he got back in return for being on time.

John answered out from within in the deeper recesses of the house, telling him to come inside. After all he’d be another minute or so getting ready. He busy buttoning up his teal shirt, before sitting down to put his boots on. Nate fought the urge to ask questions about silly things for as long as he was able to resist. But in the end, he caved. “Couple of dumb questions, John. Was your door always green?”

“What now?” John finished tying his boots. “The door? Yeah, it’s been green for a while now. Couple of weeks, I think. Damn neighborhood association sent out notices. They had approved a community wide change to the colors, or theme, or whatever that they said we needed to ‘conform to’. For the good at the property values or some stupid waste of time and space as all of that. Bunch of idiots. They chose the worst color schemes possible. It looks awful. You saw it I’m sure. Everything looks like old moldy kid show colors from the seventies.” John sighed. “I miss the navy color it was before…”

“Oh”, Nate mimicked the sigh. “I thought it was still…never mind…forget I said anything then.”

“Still having crap changing on you?” , Raising an eyebrow and stroked his freshly trimmed beard John said thoughtfully and full of divine wisdom, “Have you considered seeing an exorcist for your, ghost problems, my son?”

Nate looked around the living room, happy to see everything was its usual mess. He needed a moment to not look at John after hearing that nonsense. What made it worse is that he had said it all with such a straight face as well. “Don’t be mean, please. I’m just glad you aren’t teasing me too much about it. I’m starting to get jumpy about it. On the drive here alone I was so confused. I was here last week and, well…” Nate paused, recounting everything with shaky clarity. “Look if they had just repainted the neighborhood that would be one thing. But, your entire neighborhood is different now, John. I did not recognize it. The old lady on the corner has an entirely new yard going over there now. The one a few houses away, I think. They’ve got superhero lawn gnomes out on it now! Just, I’m feeling very venerable to all of this right now. I feel like the world is trying to gaslight me into accepting that everything has been this way forever and I have just never been awake enough to have noticed it all sooner, or something like that I mean. You get what I’m saying?”

“That. That, my friend, is actually a lovely idea.” John slyly grinned as he drummed his fingers together in an ominous manner that Nate felt was rather obnoxious of him, “Perhaps, maybe I should start doing that. Not a lot mind you. Not at first anyways. But small bits, gradually growing in nature. But, where to begin? Where to begin, indeed?” John checked his pockets for something, then realized his phone was on the counter next to him.

“Please, please, please. Just don’t. Do. That. I don’t think I could keep it together for much longer if you did that. Even as a joke, man. I really am getting upset over it. I even folded and took time off from work. With everything else it felt- What? Yeah, everything went smoothly and the boss made the accommodations with no issues. Like I said before, he’d been trying to get me to take some time off anyways.” Nate’s voice was taut and direct. “I think I’m cracking up a little and the alone time might help as it is. That way, if I do lose it then it won’t be in public. I’ll be crazy in the nice quiet safety of my own home and lair.”

“We’ll see if you do or don’t then. Either way I thing, personally, I think it would be good for you to lose your mind, just a little anyways. We can’t have you clawing at the curtains or anything worrisome like that. Not till we’ve reached middle age, I’d say in our fifties or so. Then, who cares what you do anyways, right. So, then,” John grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge next to the small hallway leading towards the front door to the living room. “Want some breakfast before or after we visit the hospital? I’m fine either way honestly. As long as you’re not going to wig out on me when, well, whatever. Point is, what do you think?”

“Lunch,” Nate checked his watch. Ten-forty. “It’s almost eleven now. If you really don’t mind, we can go afterwards. That way we can get all of the sad stuff out of the way, for the day. What you thinking? You’ve got that look on your face. Got a good idea or a bad idea on where to go?”

John shrugged, “You won’t like it.”

“What you got already?”

“Play some pool and order from the pizza place next door to the bar on fifteenth street?”

Nate stared at him with a blank expression, then he sighed, “You know what?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Nate bobbed his head in agreement, “Let’s do that. It would probably be fun, and I could use some of that right now.”

“Really?”, John’s eyes lit up as a child’s would on the opening presents part of Christmas morning. “You’re not messing with me here? I’m fragile when it comes to this stuff. And you tend not to have so much fun loosing lately these days.”

“Look, it’s a new day today. Some pizza and pool sounds not so bad. And what do you mean losing? I’ve been on an aggressively breaking even streak lately.”

“If you say so, my friend. And awesome! Gonna play pool and eat some good pizza, hell yeah!” John grinned and led the way to Nate’s car. He even held the front door open for him on the way out. “New car?”

Nate pointed an accusatory finger at John’s face, “Don’t. Not with Gloria. Never joke about Gloria.”

“Oh, you renamed it. I like it.”, John grinned a crocodile grin at Nate all teeth and no charm, “Very ABBA.”

“Shut up and get in.”

They both smiled and laughed as the engine growled itself to life at the turning of the key in the ignition.

The hospital was a sad building. Not necessarily due to the influx of patients, or the horribly faded colors of the sign on the front facing of the building itself. Nor the one that was easily missed on the far side of the building The location of the hospital is what did the trick. Hidden away from the main road the building had blended itself rather poorly in with the trees that lined alongside the roads that ran parallel to either side of the hospital. Each of these poor trees wore a pained expression. All of them were not only rather hard to look at, all cragged and bent, they also offered little to no warmth to the overall lack of atmosphere of the hospital. Each tree seemed nearly to whisper to visitors, telling everyone that this was not a friendly place to be in, and adding, quite astutely, not to stay any longer than needed. Sad things happened here.

The staff inside did nothing to dissuade these notions given by the foliage.

“Good morning, ma’am. We’re here to see June Merryweather. Room C17, In the intensive ward. Need to see our licenses?”

“Are you on the list?” Growled the woman behind the counter. Deep bags dragged themselves under her blue eyes, and an overall unfriendly expression was about her face, nearly hidden away under her lush brunette hair. In any other situation, Nate was confident to surmise, she would be a mean spirited person who didn’t like anyone. She just had that sort of personality about her. Though, he always hoped that he would be wrong when guessing what other people were like. He was after all, not that observant.

“Yes. Ma’am. Yes, we are,” Nate continued on with confidence. He ignored the fact that they had both done this dance once before. And he was still more than unhappy with how it went then. She had pushed all of the right buttons to upset him.

The woman sighed, “Sign in here. And here are your visitor passes.” She pointed at the clipboard on the corner of the counter and handed them both stickers labeled ‘visitor’.

“Stop back here after you are done so I can sign out.”

“Yes, ma’am”, Nate nodded and did as they had both been told to do. He eyed John as they walked towards the nearest section of elevators. Once they were far enough away from the front desk, just past the lobby on the left-hand side and waiting for the next elevator to open up, he quietly hissed, “What the hell was that?”

“What?” John narrowed his eyes. “What did I miss?”

“You stuck the visitor sticker on your hat. I got yelled at for not putting it on my shirt last time. She yelled at me and everything. I had it on my jacket pocket and she flipped out on me for it. She yelled that it needed to be on my shirt, and where security could see it. How come she didn’t yell at you?”

“Seriously? She didn’t say anything to me,” John shrugged and straightened the hat in question. “You must have done it wrong or something then. Maybe she had a good reason to yell at you. I know I didn’t tell her that you liked being yelled at or anything.”

“I noticed you didn’t. And actually, yeah. What else is a little weird, is that she wasn’t as mean today either. Maybe it’s because you’re here. Maybe that’s what’s different today.” The fact she had blonde hair instead of brunette didn’t cross his mind till then. She was the same person though. He was not going to forget that scowl any time soon.

“I do have that effect on women,” John admitted. “Simply a curse. A cross to bear, if you will. A burden I will have to carry with me for the rest of my aging days, before I shuffle off this mortal coil and back to the dust. From whence I had been, uh, come from.”

Nate smirked, dropping the topic as the elevator doors opened. They stepped inside and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors closed them inside. Rising quickly, until the elevator came to a stop with a brief, though stressful lurch that unnerved Nate more so than it did John.

“Old elevator…” Nate needlessly pointed out. John nodded and grunted.

They exited the elevator in complete silence. The sterile sounds of the hospital, as well as the designated signs, were all drenched in a sterile hush or rather a controlled lull. Each sign they saw ushered them quickly to where to find Aunt June’s room. The long winding hallways seemed to go on forever before a sudden break in the path forked and sent them to the intensive care wing of the building.

The room was a small corner room that lay overlooking the eastern sections of the parking lot down below. If June had been awake, she’d have loved the view. You couldn’t see much of anything. There really was little to see in any case, next to nothing at that. Besides a few trees and a snippet of the main road roaring past the front of the building. So little joy could have been gleamed from the view itself, but she’d have been able to find it all the same. She was good for that. Always looking out for the brighter sides of things. Saying something about, ‘Those trees do their best to look so pretty there.’ Or even adding quietly as she watched out upon the bustling road, ‘I’m proud of them. They really do their best all the time.’

Nate had put his hands into his pockets when they walked into her room. He hadn’t noticed that he’d done it either, “Hey, Aunt June. Brought John with me today. He says hi. Right, John?”

She looked peaceful, laying there with her hair a tidy mess around the pillow. Her face was even rosy in complexion. If Nate hadn’t talked to her doctors already and known about her illness and seen this coming for quite some time passed, then he’d have assumed she was simply napping. Ready to wake up at a moment’s notice and with no warning at that. She’d wake up and smile at the uninvited company. ‘Hospitals can be so lonely if people didn’t visit,’ she’d explain to them. ‘Everyone needs someone to visit. To come and see them while they are here. It would be so sad if that wasn’t the case.’, Nate pictured her explaining these things with a soft smile that she always wore.

“Mind if I change the channel, Nate?” John asked quietly.

Nate blinked, then rubbed his eye, “What? Oh, yeah. Jesus. What are they leaving it on? She hates sitcoms. Do they have Law and Order or something like that?”

“Let’s, see? And. Yes sir, they do!” John had scrolled through the channels until finding an old rerun. The hairstyles gave it away first. So tacky and definitely of the eighties, maybe the early nineties at the latest. “Doesn’t this count as a sitcom though? Formulaic and all, I mean.”

“I don’t think so. But maybe. I don’t think it has a laugh track though. Wouldn’t that be wild?” Nate considered the question, briefly, before shrugging it off.

An orderly passed by the room, striking up a conversation with the woman at the desk in the hallway. Nate and John chatted amongst themselves, and sometime to June, pretending that she would answer them and humor their dumb questions about the criminal justice system of New York City. This went on for a while. Staying with by her bedside for what felt like twenty minutes, perhaps thirty at the most. Everyone ignored the reruns playing in the corner after a time.

The clock on the wall showed three when John next glanced at it. “About ready to go?” He asked. And in all truth be told honest, he would have been willing to stay for as long as needed to be.

Nate looked at his aunt, and smiled, “I’ll visit again tomorrow. Just. Please get better.” Nate rubbed at his eye again and held the door for John as they left. Everyone in the hallways seemed to have vanished, as one would have expected of white dressed ghosts. Probably off to do other, more important things. Nate pondered this to himself as they both left the way they had come in.

Chapter Four

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