I Might've Died Between Now and Then

10:03 AM
Nothing has happened today.

10:05 AM
Still nothing.

10:06 AM
I wonder if Altan will come in today. He hasn’t come in since he came by to apologize for never fixing my heater.

10:07 AM
Which was two days ago—a long time when you’re old. I might’ve died between now and then.

10:09 AM
What if I die before he comes again? What if he finds me flat out on the floor, dead of a heart attack, cold as ice?

10:10 AM
Then he’ll be sorry. What does he do all day, anyway? He sells coffee. That hardly anyone buys.

10:11 AM
How does he live? He only sells coffee for a quarter a cup. I bought coffee from him one time and it nearly blew the roof out of my mouth. Nasty, strong-flavored stuff. I hear you ‘acquire a taste’ for it. What’s the point of acquiring a taste for something you disliked when you tried it the first time?

10:12 AM
Perhaps he’s desperately trying to sell coffee to make ends meet, and so he can’t come see me. Perhaps he’s got family back in Turk-land that he’s scrambling to feed with a measly income which is nevertheless a fortune to Turk-land people. What’s the exchange rate for Turkish money and the dollar?

10:30 AM
I called the bank. The exchange rate is 1 Turkish Leera is equal to .627 U.S. dollars.

10:32 AM
Lira. Turkish Lira.

10:33 AM
So he’s making less money here than he would in Turkey.

10:34 AM
Why is he even here? He was here before I moved to this miserable town. What is his purpose? Perhaps he came thinking that coffee selling would be a bigger business here in the U.S. than in Turkey? Perhaps he was hoping to send back money to his starving family?

10:42 AM
What if he’s married? And has twelve children? And eats dogs for food?

10:45 AM
I never should have trusted him!

10:46 AM
That’s what I get for falling for a foreign man: a coffee-selling, married-with-twelve-children surprise. Serves me right.

11:00 AM
Someone’s just come in the library. Looks like a student who’s just come in here on accident.

11:01 AM
Well, he’ll just have to figure out the library on his own. I’m too heartbroken over that foreign, heart-stealing scoundrel to bother with explaining the Dewey Decimal System.

11:02 AM
Not that this boy seems to care. Here he comes. Probably to ask me what are all these strange rectangular objects made of paper are. Kids these days wouldn’t know a book if they read one. Which they wouldn’t.
“Hey, where’s the history section?” My name is not Hey. I think I shall not answer him.

11:03 AM
“HEY, WHERE…IS…THE…HISTORY—“
“Shhh! This is a library!” Hmph, where are those little library rules pamphlets we’re supposed to give people—aha, there they are. I’ll give him one of these. Not that he’ll read it.
“I want to know where the history section is.” My, he sounds petulant.
“Over there. In the aisle that reads ‘history’ in the big block letters.” I’ll point to help him.

11:04 AM
Ah, peace at last.

11:05 AM
What would a scrawny little high school kid want with history books? He’d better not be writing in my books.

11:08 AM
I wish the bookshelves didn’t go all the way to the ceiling so that I could see what he was doing.

11:15 AM
I can’t stand it anymore!

11:17 AM
Ah. He’s reading. He doesn’t appear to have a pen or pencil in his hand, and he’s even turning the pages right so they don’t tear… Well. Just because he behaves when I look at him doesn’t mean he’s not whipping out a highlighter just as soon as I turn my back…

12:00 PM
Still no sign book misuse. But that is no excuse to be lax on my lookout! I must be vigilant.

12:02 PM
I’m getting a bit stiff crouching behind this bookshelf.

12:05 PM
The library phone is ringing! No one ever calls the—

12:05 PM
Ack! I’m stuck! I’m stuck with my knees bent and my back hunched!

12:06 PM
By the time I hobble to the phone it’ll have stopped ringing—that boy is looking at me funny.

12:06 PM
HA! I made it!
“Mrs. Evans at the John G. Oden Public Library speaking. What is it you want?”
“Ms. Evans?”
“Mrs. Evans. I’m a widow. What do you want?”
“It’s me, Mrs. Evans. Altan Yilmaz.”

12:07 PM
HE CALLED ME ON THE TELEPHONE!
“Mr. Yilmaz. Couldn’t you have dropped by? This is a business line.” It’s not like the library is very far, after all…
“Mrs. Evans, I didn’t have anyone else to call…”
Well that is NOT flattering. Huh. I think I shall hang up on him and he can grovel all he likes and I shall NEVER LET MYSELF BE MELTED AGAIN.
“Mrs. Evans, I’ve been arrested.”

12:30 PM
I need some tea.

I Have a Library to Run

5:00 AM

Ah, spring is here! The weather is pleasant, for once in this miserable little pit of a town, and there are flowers everywhere! Well, dandelions, anyways. I never minded dandelions. Some people get so worked up over a little yellow flower in their perfect green squares of lawn. Strange, neurotic people.

5:08 AM

I left the windows open last night in the building to air out the stuffiness. I’m not supposed to leave windows open over night—burglars might get in.

5:10 AM

Just checked under the bed and in the bathroom. No suspicious men in black ski masks that I could see.

5:11 AM

It’s always nice to look under the bed and not find a burglar. An everyday pleasure, you might say.

5:14 AM

Like tea. I remember I tried to give up tea for Lent one year.

5:15 AM

Why do religions always demand that you give up something? It’s ridiculous. I like tea; why should I have to give it up? Is happiness against religious text?

5:20 AM

Everything is yellow! Someone snuck in the library and painted everything yellow! I hate the color yellow! Whoever did this will di—

5:21 AM

Oh.

5:21 AM

It’s pollen. From leaving the windows open to let in the nice spring air. Well, there’s nice spring air now.

5:24 AM

And also nice spring pollen. This is going to take ages to clean up.

7:46 AM

HA! I may be old, but I can still dust and sweep up a storm!

8:00 AM

Someone is knocking on the door. The library doesn’t open until 9! The nerve…

8:05 AM

They still haven’t gone away. I suppose I shall have to DEAL WITH THEM. I shall need my umbrella.

8:07 AM

“BACK you devil who does not read the sign on the door that says we are not open until—YOU!!!”

It is Altan Yilmaz! Heart-breaker! Scoundrel! The sort of man women write advice columns about!

I shall whack him with my umbrella.

8:08 AM

There. I have accomplished something Good for womanhood today.

8:09 AM

ACK! He’s coming in! He’s coming in the library! And using his coffee cart as a buffer—I can’t reach him with my umbrella!

“Mrs. Evans! You…you are dead!” He looks choked up. I don’t care. I am a stone. I am chilled to his affections.

8:10 AM

And…he’s crying…

“Mrs. Evans, I’m so sorry I didn’t fix your heater that night before…before you were murdered! And now your spirit has come to haunt me for my failure!” Good lord, he’s on his knees…

“Please forgive me!” He looks very sincere.

8:11 AM

No! I am stone! Chilled stone!

8:15 AM

I’ll just give him some tea and send him on his way. Well, I’ll make him leave at 9. Because at 9, I have a library to run.

I Shall Be a Temptress

5:30 AM
I was able to contact Macy. She was rather excitable at first over the phone--kept calling me her 'friend' that had finally gotten in contact with her.

5:32 AM
The excitement died down rather once she figured out it was me. BUT! She has agreed to come back to work. Excellent. I can't be doing all these heavy-lifting duties by myself. I can't even reach the top shelf. The books came in a couple days ago; I've been busily filling in the bottom half of the shelves. It fills me with a deep sense of satisfaction to see all the books neatly filling those awful gaping holes where books should be.

8:09 AM
And what do people do? They insist upon coming here and making MORE gaps in the shelves. Go buy your own books!

8:11 AM
Few things are more horrendous than an unreturned book. Not returning books is where all evil begins.

8:12 AM
Because once you don't return books, you figure there's no harm in taking other things and not returning them. When you don't return a library book, you're breaking a PROMISE. It's stamped into every library book. The due date promise. And once you break that promise...you can break any promise.

8:14 AM
Therefore, not returning library books should end in a far more severe penalty than a 50 cent fine.

8:15 AM
In fact, I shall add to my list of requirements I made all those months ago. I found the list in my desk.

6.) Thou shalt return books or I shall hunt thou down with an axe. Or a scythe... I shall be...the Grim Reader.

9:00 AM
Stacking books into shelves doesn't work if a cat is asleep in the back of them.

9:01 AM
I'll have to go to the store and get some hydrogen peroxide. Ow.

10:13 AM
I have made a successful venture to the store and back. No one noticed I was gone. No one assumes that there's no librarian in a library; they just assume that, if they can't see a librarian, the librarian is hidden behind some shelf or other.

10:15 AM
I would have been to the store and back sooner if I'd ridden my bike, but my knee made an unpleasant popping noise when I tried to get on it, so I walked. And every step I made, it popped again.

10:16 AM
Don't people shoot horses when their knees don't work properly?

10:28 AM
I just looked it up. They either shoot the horse or they sell it to a glue manufacturer. The book had pictures and everything.

10:29 AM
I need tea to wash away images of horse anatomy that was never designed to see the light of day.

10:35 AM
Let's see, what do we have here? Numi tea. I've never had it before--I bought it on a whim. Whim--whimsy, whimsical. Related to the older word 'whimwham,' which means 'fanciful object.' The saving grace of the internet is that it has things like online etymology dictionaries.

10:37 AM
Unicorns are whimsical. I wonder if they'd get shot once their knees gave in?

10:38 AM
I must think happy thoughts. Like tea.

10:40 AM
Good heavens, there are instructions on how to make the tea on the back of every Numi tea packet!

On the back of the Orange Spice tea, it says...let me see, where are my glasses...I know I just had them a moment ago because I was reading the list of requirements earlier this morning...

10:43 AM
Oh god! What if I left them in the grocery store? What if I never get them back? I've only got one pair! I'm a librarian, I can't afford new glasses!

10:44 AM
And new glasses are all made into stupid designs! With pink swirls on the rims!

10:45 AM
I found them. In my breast pocket.

10:46 AM
Ahem. "Moonlight Orange Spice tea. For the Perfect Cup: Pull fresh water from the orange grove spring."

...We haven't got any orange groves up here. Or springs, for that matter. Of course, the instructions do specify THE orange grove spring. Perhaps making this tea involves some sort of epic journey.

"(otherwise, drinking water will do)." Oh. How boring. "Bring to a boil--" what idiot doesn't know that making tea requires boiling water?--"and pour over a sachet of Moonlight Spice." No, I think I'll pour it into an empty teacup and see how that tastes.

"Steep 5-7 minutes. Due to the delicacy of the white tea, careful attention is needed to capture the full taste." Hmm.

10:55 AM
I don't think this teabag is for me. Perhaps another one? Let's see..."Ruby Chai: Tempt water to a boil..." Now, this is more like it.
I shall be a temptress. I am wearing a skirt; skirts are tempting.

10:56 AM
I've also undone one button on my shirt. Now, what is it that temptresses do? Ah, yes. They sing. That's what the sirens did in the Odyssey. The library is empty, too, so...

11:02 AM
There was one man on the a computer over in a corner I couldn't see. It's ok, though, he left soon after I started singing.

11:04 AM
How long, I wonder, does it take to tempt water in a boil? It doesn't even look mildly interested in me. Not even the faintest bubble.

11:10 AM
I give up. I've tried. Now I'm going to return to the tried and true method of torturing it with intense heat until it boils.

11:20 AM
Ah, the peace and tranquility of docile water and a tea bag.

I'm Going to Raise Hell

5:30 AM
It is strange to wake up inside the library. It's not a particularly attractive building, even the back rooms. Linoleum floors, cinder block walls, fake wood counter tops in the staff kitchen.

5:32 AM
Still, anything is better than SunnyDay Retirement Home, where Every Day is Bright with Possibility.

5:34 AM
Possibility of some old person turning up their toes, most likely. I wonder why retirement homes are all named to sound like kindergarten buildings. Stick the two next to one another and you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

5:35 AM
Unless you went inside, of course. Kindergarteners look different from people who are 80+ years old. Fact of life.

5:38 AM
Zeppelin just knocked over the tea. Not just the cup of tea, but the whole tray with the teapot, tea cup, sugar, and milk.

5:39 AM
And the plate of cheese and crackers and apples.

5:40 AM
I shall have to kill him and sacrifice him to the library gods. Perhaps they'll take pity and replenish the book supply.

5:41 AM
Except I can't kill him. I've only got two cats; I mustn't waste them.

6:00 AM
The mess has been cleaned up, the cat locked in the book return box until I think he's learned his lesson, and now I have a fresh pot of tea. Well! Not a bad morning after all.

7:30 AM
I've just got a huge box from a UPS man! This really is quite exciting--it must be the books ! I didn't even have to sacrifice my cat.

7:35 AM
Now I just have to get the wretched thing open. There appears to be a lack of sharp objects in the library to cut through the tape on the box. No scissors, no box cutter, no letter opener... Perhaps if I try stabbing the tape with a pencil or pen, I can make a hole and pull it apart from there with my hands?

7:38 AM
No.

8:00 AM
I can't believe I'm being foiled by a box covered in tape. I tried prying the tape up with my fingers, but my grip is too weak. I never knew how nice it was to have nimble hands until I didn't have them anymore. I hate being old. I wonder if one could get hand transplants?

8:01 AM
Probably not.

8:04 AM
I don't know what to do with this ridiculous box. It's too heavy to move anywhere, and it's stuck right here in the way of the door.

8:07 AM
Ha! SUCCESS!! I'm brilliant! I opened the box with my cheese grater. At least I can get through the cardboard now.

8:10 AM
This...does not look like something someone would pack books in. It's an insulated cooler, I think. Do books require a certain temperature to travel in?

8:11 AM
Perhaps they're preserving the books from aging? Maybe I should travel in a freezer and see how that improves my bodily preservation.

8:12 AM
GOOD GOD! These are not books!

8:14 AM
What kind of a country is this, I ask you?! I ordered books, which, the last time I checked--though, admittedly, I've been unconscious for several months--are bits of pulped wood with bits of ink on them. Ink has heavy metals in it, which is very detrimental to the environment, but the contents of this box are definitely more detrimental to the environment than ink could ever be.

8:15 AM
And detrimental to my mental health. Detri..mental health. Ha!

8:16 AM
Hahaha! Alright, I need to focus on the problem at hand.

8:17 AM
I'm going to call the UPS office and raise hell. I don't want these things decomposing in my nicely renovated library.

8:25 AM
"Hello? Yes, I--" wait, this isn't a real person, it's a machine answering their silly phone! No, I do NOT want to check the shipping status of my package, that's the whole problem--it's here, you, you... computer! I want to talk to a person.
"PERSON! LI-VING FLESH!" Please repeat? What kind of intelligent machine are you? I articulated as though you were 80 years old!

8:28 AM
This is ridiculous.

8:31 AM
FINALLY! "Yes, I have a problem with you and your entire company."
He says he's sorry. I don't think he means it.
"Actually, I ordered a package and something I didn't order arrived. Something that is very markedly not the thing I ordered."
Huh. Problems like this occur all the time, he says. What kind of a company does this sort of thing repeatedly? Aren't you supposed to learn from your mistakes?
"I ordered a lot of books. Why? Because I'm a librarian. Would you like to know what I got instead? A box of frozen birds! Dead ones, with the feathers still in! What kind of sick company are you?!"
He's told me to look at the address label. I know my address, why would I--oh.

8:36 AM
There's a different mailing address on it. It's supposed to go to the Environmental Studies Office down the road.

8:37 AM
But this means nothing! They are still at fault for sending me the wrong package and mentally traumatizing an old woman with a box of frozen birds!
"This means nothing! You are still at fault for sending me the wrong--"
He said they're sending someone over to pick up the box. And he hung up. Young people are so rude these days.

8:39 AM
I should probably let Zeppelin out of the book return box.

They'll Have to Pry Me Out of Here with an Iron Bar

5:17 AM
I have unearthed a problem.

5:18 AM
One that can be circumvented, but it is one I'd rather didn't exist. The fact of the matter is...there's no shower or bath in the library.

5:20 AM
Which, under normal circumstances, would be a reasonable lack in a public library. But right about now, the lack is highly inconvenient. I shall have to French Bathe.

5:21 AM
Sponge bathe, I mean. Not French bathe in the sense of not bathing at all, like Napoleon's Josephine. I believe in Hygiene.

5:23 AM
With a capital 'H.'

6:00 AM
Nice and clean now. Time for morning tea.

6:03 AM
I shall take an inventory of everything that the library is missing after that maniac burned the books. Then I shall devise a plan to make the city pay for replacing them.

6:10 AM
Which will be difficult. Extracting money, I mean. They're already rather shirty about having had to repair the building. Miserly little monsters, politicians. Ah, well, I'll just order everything and then send them a bill to surprise them. Perhaps they'll go down quietly due to shock.

8:04 AM
It's disastrous. I think I'm going to sink into a depression. We're missing nearly a quarter of our collection. The city's going to go berserk when I send them the bill. That'll be an exciting board meeting.

8:10 AM
Hahaha. "Exciting board meeting." Practically an oxymoron.

9:00 AM
I hate computers.

9:02 AM
And online book-sellers and everything to do with ordering things online.

9:09 AM
And people who come in asking for books that are long burnt and crushed to ashes as an offering to some maniac god. Go away. No, we don't have it. Yes, I'm quite sure. Are you aware that we had dingbats breeze through here and set the building alight? No? Well now you know.

9:20 AM
At last--peace and quiet, the kind that comes when the proper amount of people are in the library.

9:21 AM
The proper amount being 1.

9:22 AM
As in, me. And my two cats, of course.

9:40 AM
HA! At last. My orders have been placed. Books will come. I think I shall go to the grocery store and stock up on cheese and crackers. On my bike! Yes! Ooh, I have missed riding my bike. There it is, chained up outside the library even now, after so long. Beckoning to me.

9:42 AM
Ooh, everything aches... What's the point of having knees if they hurt too much to move? Wouldn't it have been kinder for evolution to just give us solid, unjointed stalks to trot about on?

9:45 AM
I've just tried to walk without bending my knees.

9:46 AM
It was not successful.

9:50 AM
It's even harder to bike without bending one's knees.

10:00 AM
Cheese! Crackers! Apples! Peanut butter! Oh, truly, these are the ingredients of ambrosia. I also got more tea. One can't have too much tea.

10:53 AM
Extracted one of the cats from the book return box. I'm not even sure how he got in there in the first place, but putting your hand through the slot was like paddling in a piranha tank until I found the key to unlock the access door.

11: 15 AM
I have arranged the backrooms of the library to my satisfaction. Now, I have to find Macy and re-hire her. All the other librarians have given notice. Not me, though. They'll have to pry me out of here with an iron bar.

But First, I Shall Have Tea

12:23 PM
An eternity has passed.

12:24 PM
That is to say, three days have passed. And they were, as I predicted, an eternity long.

12:30 PM
Here's the bus to take me back to town and away from the hospital and my miserable roommate.

12:32 PM
She wasn't sorry to see me go. Ha, well, I saw the next woman they were wheeling in to take up my bedspace. My roommate will be screaming for me to come back.

12:37 PM
I hate buses. And people who bring their horrible little yappy dogs onto the bus with them.

12:38 PM
And the horrible little yappy dogs, for that matter. Why to people like tiny dogs that yip all the time? Cats are quiet and all they do is sleep and occasionally eat bits of furniture when they're not entertained properly.

12:38 and a few seconds PM
Oh my god, my cats. Who's been looking after them?! I've been in a coma for over four months; what will have happened to them? I can't believe I forgot about this.

12:38 PM
Well I didn't actually forget. I was indefinitely unconscious. But they won't understand. They're cats. All they understand is tuna and cuddling.

12:40 PM
Perhaps Macy took them home; she knew I had cats. She's looked after them for me before.

12:42 PM
Which brings up a whole new host of worries.

12:43 PM
This bus is taking forever.

12:50 PM
I'm going to gut that little dog.

1:54 PM
Here! My bus stop at last--only a few more minutes of walking and I can sort everything out...

2:00 PM
My rooms are empty. I have opened the door to room number 316, with my key, in my apartment building. I'm sure I'm in the right place, otherwise the key would not have worked. Which does not make sense. My rent was paid to the end of the year, and, if I'm not very much mistaken, the end of the year has not come. So where has my stuff gone? WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH MY CATS?

2:07 PM
I've cornered the landlord. We'll see what he has to say about this.
"What have you done with my things?" I hope that sounded outraged enough. That's right, cower in fear. This is going to take a lot of explanation on his part.
"Well, Ms. Evans...we, we thought you were dead, so we... canceled your claim on the apartment. It's been rented out to a nice young couple, they're moving in next week, actually..." I would have a heart attack right now, but it would mean that I'd have to go back to the hospital. "I am NOT dead. I paid for that apartment! You had no right to give it to someone else! What did you do with my cats?! My things?"

2:09 PM
He's gone and ducked behind the counter in the lobby. Probably a good move on his part, but I am not pleased. I shall just have to follow him.
"My cats?" No need for complete sentences now; I think I've tapped into the primeval form of communication. Few words, much emotion. In this case, rage. Ug make fire, Ug set you on fire!
My, he's having trouble getting his words out. "We sold them to the pound, Ms. Evans--but, but!" He's holding his hands out at me, which I hardly think will stop me--"We put all your stuff in storage until we could find the next of kin! It's all here, we have all of your things!"
"You cold slimy excuse for a human! That's like saying, 'I'm terribly sorry, but I've killed your children. But don't worry, I didn't break your furniture!' What pound?!" I cannot believe this. "When did you sell them?"

3:00PM
At the pound. This is the most depressing place I've ever been. Apparently my landlord dished out my cats for a dollar apiece and called it good. The pound people--and all of them look as if they need a good dose of either Zoloft or cyanide, depending on which would be kinder--are checking to see if they have any of my cats left.

3:02 PM
Two cats. Out of nine, there are two left: Zeppelin, who doesn't have enough intelligence to fill a quarter teaspoon, bless his heart (he's the one who got stuck in the lampshade whilst trying to catch a moth), and the others were shipped down south to a bigger pound.

4:26 PM
I have the landlord cornered again. He's nailed the gate to get behind the desk shut, and I confess I haven't the heart--no, literally, being over sixty really does weaken the old ticker--to haul myself over the counter to strangle him. I'll have to content myself with my vivid imagination and a list of demands that I will expect him to fulfill. And he WILL fulfill them.

4:30 PM
There are no other apartments available. What, one wonders, is the point of surviving an entire library collapsing in burning shambles on top of oneself just to get back and find out your apartment has been rented out and you have no where to live? Answer me that, you prick.

4:31 PM
He has no answer. Very well. I shall just have to move into the library. I haven't been back since I've been in the coma, but I know it's been patched up a bit. It's closed, though; I suppose they realized the futility of letting the place just be run by Macy. Although really, she does a better job than most people would; at least she's properly respectful of the books. Keeps them in line. Scares off people who want to check out books and leave gaping holes on the shelves. Scares of regular people, for that matter.

4:50 PM
The landlord kindly agreed to move all of my things to the library in his hauling van.

4:51 PM
After I threatened to slice him up into bits, put him through a meat grinder, and feed him to my two remaining cats, since I will be too poor to buy cat food for them. Young men like him need a bit of encouragement.

5:00 PM
Ahh, to be in the library at last, to return to my true calling! It's a mess in here. And did Mr. Landlord deign to stay and help the little old lady organize her belongings in the worker's lobby? I think not.

5:01 PM
I shall plot his demise from afar. I shall scheme devilish strategies to make his life a misery. I shall concoct a plan to make him rue the day he was born. No, rue the day that he was conceived! Rue the day his parents met one another! He shall be rueful for everything once I am done with him!

5:09 PM
But first, I shall have tea.

Three Days is an Eternity

2:09 PM
I hate hospitals.

2:15 PM
Loath them. Abhor them. Despise them. Deprecate. Detest, disdain, deride, disparage, disfavor.

2:17 PM
So many words. So little time. I wonder if anyone has noticed quite how many synonyms of 'hate' start with the letter 'D'? I bet you if I used a thesaurus I could have a much longer list.

2:20 PM
Hospitals, apparently, do not have thesauruses. Just cheeky little nurses padding about asking me if I need anything and then refusing to give me what I ask for.

2:22 PM
I think a thesaurus is a perfectly reasonable request. It's a shocking lack that this hospital doesn't even have the most rudimentary of libraries. One of the nurses had to lend me her own personal copy of a book to occupy the dry, empty hours with.

3:00 PM
On top of everything else, the doctor is coming in a few minutes to "check up" on me. There's nothing to check. I am not dead; I've gotten quite good at not being dead, thank-you-so-very much, so if you please I think it's time to be discharged now.

3:07 PM
Here he is now.
"Miss Evans, how are we feeling today?" If there was a true and just god, He would have smote this nitwit where he stands on the basis that he's speaking to me as if I were three years old.
"I don't know how we are feeling today. I'm perfectly well, but I hope you're having a horrible day." That was a partial lie; I feel like I've been steamrollered to the bed. Everything else was true, though.
He's smiling at me. Humoring the spunky little old lady. "We do sound rather more robust than normal, don't we?" Smarmy, rich little twit.
"When are you going to discharge me?" Perhaps if I'm brisk and efficient with him, he'll stop using 'we' as his direct object and resort to being correct in his speech and say 'you.'
No such luck, he's gone off on a dumbed-down lecture of what a 'coma' is and why 'we' can't expect 'us' to recover in only a few short weeks... Why does he have to make recovering a group activity? Is this supposed to build my morale?

3:20 PM
If he keeps going on like this I'll darn well give him something to recover from.

3:34 PM
Better news than I expected; I must endure only three more days of being here, and then I'm free to go home.

3:36 PM
Three; a symbolic number. Everything comes in threes in stories. Except Noah's Arc, where groups of three would have been awkward and extraneous.

3:40 PM
I do get tired easily, but I think it might be a survival mechanism; all these white, surgical walls and the ugly, puce green and pink furniture are encroaching on me, and I'm hooked up to so many IVs that I certainly can't make a break for it; so my body shuts down in pure self preservation.

12:13 AM
And it wakes back up at the most cursed inconvenient times; nothing good is on television at this time of night and I've only got one book--Pride and Prejudice--and I've read it four times already since I woke up from my coma.

12:15 AM
I'm getting a bit prejudiced against it.

12:17 AM
Hahahaha.

1:30 AM
One would think that at my age, sleeping wouldn't be difficult. After all, isn't that one of the things old people are famous for doing? Sleeping? Falling into peaceful dozes not only at night but also in the early afternoon?

1:32 AM
Clearly such peace and tranquility is not for the likes of me. However, I have just figured out how to adjust the bed with the little automagical button. It can make the bed sit up...like so...and then lie flat...like so...

1:40 AM
This is more fun than I think I'd normally find it. I shall stop now before my roommate wakes up and howls for the nurses to complain about me. She is a most unforgiving sick person; I can't move for having her complain that I'm bothering her in some obscure fashion.

1:42 AM
Pitched an absolute fit when she overheard me asking a nurse if I could keep my cats in the room with me.

1:50 AM
In here, three days is going to be an eternity.