Fresh off the Starship

Missy—as Missy is apparently who she resides in, although she wasn’t supposed to—tugs on the tube attached to her hand and winces. “Ouch!”

“We might be able to get rid of that thing,” the nurse says as she enters the room, “now that yer awake and can eat and drink.”

She adjusts the bed so that Missy’s sitting up, and she sticks a straw in her mouth. “Just suck, pull on the straw,” the nurse instructs, clearly bewildered by how much she has to tell this woman.

Missy’s eyes go wide as the liquid fills her mouth. Ohhhhhhhh! That’s nectar of the heavens!

The nurse puts some lumpy-looking food item on a rounded eating implement and feeds her.

Ohhhhhhhh! Manna of creation!

“Most of my patients are nowhere near as appreciative of orange juice and oatmeal as you are!”

“Ohhhhhhhh, it’s sooooooo good!” Ohhhhhhhhhh!

“Maybe everyone should have a

 coma so we can come back and be so grateful.” The nurse feeds her another spoonful of oatmeal, to another swoon. “Okay, perhaps not. Perhaps we should just wake up every day and be grateful and skip the coma.”

“I haven’t heard the woman next to me,” Missy says.

“She died last night.”

“Oh! She got her wish.”

“What wish?”

“She wanted to go home, ‘now,’ she said.”

“Wow. Well, yes, she got her wish, then.”

That makes one of us. As no one has yet to answer her beseeches to the ceiling, she adds, Have you forgotten me down here? Just send me to the wrong place and then forget about me? Thanks!