D.J.E.: Friends, Avoiding a Lobotomy

My car was on the side of the free way on a curved over pass, battery issues. Yellow car plates of the government glaring in my eyes like a yellow jacket before it stings. She just called me saying something about going on "vacation". I get out of my car and the man gets out of his car, government plates. He's dressed in some white. He's got the most menacing pocket knife in his right hand. His body trying, non-convincingly, to say he wishes he didn't have to do this and we can work this out. But I was preoccupied listening to his eyes and hands to hear his mouth. I admit, I don't know why I got out of my car. Behind him, she show's up. Her message of taking a vacation was a red herring for wire taps. It's not paranoia if they really are after you and we don't know how woven into the system we may be. Her eyes, she doesn't want to catch his attention. Saving me from this man is her sole momentary priority.  I think about striking out at the most sensitive of male parts. She raises her fist, squeezing a tire iron. We get away.

It occurs to me that back at the hospital, as a visitor, they require you to at least put a gown over your clothes to visit in with the patients. We didn't know why other than "procedure". But they were all out of gowns. Most of the patients were either gone or shy to the point of what seemed like anger towards us for not having to layer up. If they hadn't run out...we realize as we start up my barely turning over car, just how close we were to ending up in a locked box on the side of the road, the average passerby mistaking our movements for those of a raccoon or fellow scavenger. 

That's how they disposed of them. Metal cabinets beneath underpasses in the ghettos or refrigerators in junk yards. Seizure after seizure until your brain fried itself to death. We figured you too ended up on some kind of list somewhere if you stopped to help. Even if you noticed it, you left them in there. They were as good as gone.

We went to get gas after leaving her vehicle and the man in white behind. I was going to go into the store by myself and we laughed at the idea like Velma probably laughed at Fred. We held hands, vowing to hold on and went in to pay the clerk. There were enough women in there to hold a hooker convention, all early releases. Some of them were let loose into society before the seizures.  There was nothing we could do. We tried not to make contact. They were doomed to wander homeless until the convulsions started. 

At that point, I still thought I had a home and was adamant about getting back to it. God only knew what was waiting for us there. The frizzy haired man in white was by no means their best man, we understood that. I wanted to warn my husband. Not calling, I felt I was setting him up to be ambushed. But calling was a risk of it's own.

With a full tank, we took off into what felt like a win. In our silence we attempted to process how we could end up lobotomized or in a junk yard. Those were just the two options we knew about. I asked her if she knew how to get home, she didn't. I pulled out my phone and used Google Maps. I suspect that was when we lost the war.