Behind glass doors

The Days for Daze retirement home certainly lived up to its name. Everywhere Vicky looked, she found blank-eyed stares and drool dribbling from flaccid lips. She herself, sat in a stiff-backed armchair positioned by a window large enough to let her feel the idea of the sun on her skin. Days for Daze had been Vicky’s house for the last year and a half but it was far from a place she’d fondly call home. 

She stared down at her son’s takeaway coffee cup sat half drunken next to the one he’d brought her, which was drained to the very dregs. 

He’d drink all of his coffee too if he were forced to drink the bitter black tar they branded as coffee in this place, Vicky thought with a scowl. 

It was almost as if the staff were too scared to let the oldies in on the good stuff, lest the caffeine cause them to start using their brains again. Maybe they were afraid they’d garner the energy enough to try and escape? 

Vicky snorted.

Well, I definitely didn’t need real coffee to dream of that.

She stared at the takeaway cup for a moment longer then sighed, sagging back into her armchair. Her son had only stayed for half an hour that morning. His visits were getting shorter and shorter. 

“I love you, mum but there’s just so much going on with work, the twins now in primary school…you know the drill. Plus,” He’d leant in closer so as not to let any of the other residents hear him. “This place still gives me the creeps, especially the dementia ward.” 

Vicky had felt like pulling her son in by the ear and watching him squirm as she told him that she was the one who had to live here so if he didn’t tolerate it then why must she. 

If only he knew the anxiety that coursed beneath her thin skin at the idea that soon enough, she might end up in there. Even with her wits, this place was no way to spend the rest of your days, let alone a home you send your loved ones to. 

Instead, she gave him a tight-lipped smile as he kissed her soft cheek goodbye and asked her to wish him luck with Angry Anne. 

Right on schedule, as her son reached the sliding doors on his way out, a thin, hawk-nosed woman dubbed Angry Anne by various residents, sat up from her chair by the elevator and beat him to it. For whatever reason, she didn’t like people coming and going through those doors and it was a 10 minute battle every time her son went to leave. But eventually he got past and Vicky’s heart throbbed as he walked out into the sunshine, as free a man as any. Meanwhile, she sat barred behind those thick, glass doors, the only ones granting access in or out of her part of the retirement complex. 

Rumour amongst the residents was that those floor to ceiling doors were bulletproof, though Vicky saw no reason as to why that was necessary. The staff restricted any of the resident’s belongings that seemed unsafe or inessential to wellbeing. Nothing was their own here. Not even their own bodies. 

Every morning Vicky was given a rainbow of pills to pop like they were skittles (They most definitely were not skittles). However, since the first day, when after swallowing them she had wobbled like a drunk newborn giraffe, Vicky had been stuffing them inside her bra and flushing them down the toilet. It wasn’t hard to convince the staff she was docile; no one took her seriously here anyway. She just let her eyes glaze over and gave them her best I-just-got-high smile.

Good God. Gone were the days Vicky smoked pot outside the back of the cinema complex where she’d worked as a teenager. With smoke swirling inside her lungs and snaking out her nostrils as she made plans to travel the Great Ocean Road in a van she built all by herself. Because that’s what people did when they felt young and invincible. But she’d fallen pregnant to a boy too complacent for her dreams and then life got in her way. Now asthma wracked her lungs and every so often she’d have a cotton swab shoved up her nose to test for infections. 

Couldn’t have any of the oldies dying prematurely, Vicky thought dryly. Days for Daze still needed to wring their superannuation dry before any of that nonsense. Death could wait, apparently. 

Vicky huffed at her own thought, crossing her wrinkled arms across her chest. Death might wait but she certainly wouldn’t. Vicky needed to keep her edge in here if she were going to survive this place. Her son was delusional if he truly believed there wasn’t a single ounce of her being that tolerated being in this domesticated doll house. 

Vicky reached down to her handbag by her feet, the one the attendants rolled their eyes and told her she didn’t need to carry around with her 24/7, and pulled out her creased sudoku book. She’d read once that keeping the mind active helped prevent developing dementia. She knew it was most likely hogwash but it was a small rebellion in the highly limited world she, unwillingly, found herself in. Vicky had only just flicked open to her latest puzzle when a flicker of motion caught her eye. 

Three staff members, one of which now refused to go to her room due to the amount of times she called him out for being late, led two men in dark navy overalls with lightning bolts on the pocket over their chest.

Sparkies, Vicky thought absentmindedly. Probably here to fix another one of the many overlooked failures in this place. 

Vicky could count on her fingers the amount of times her heating randomly shut off in the middle of an icy winter’s night. Or the fact that the cooks started heavy handling herbs and spices to all their meals due to a complaint that their food was too bland. But now all Vicky could taste was curry powder. 

Her son just laughed at her criticisms, waving them off as minor incidents like she was complaining to him for the sake of it. She’d like to see him eat curry-flavoured slop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or wake up in the middle of the night frozen beneath his bedsheets and the next one, sweating like a sinner in church. 

Vicky sighed. Her son always won in the end. Despite her avid desire to live independently again, she knew she had struggled after her husband passed away. Everything seemed to go downhill from that point on. Her social life, her health, her drive. At the same time, Vicky was sure that living— scratch that, surviving— here was definitely not the better option. Her grief had regulated into gentle tides now, rather than the raging storms immediately after her husband’s death. Before that, she had been the matriarch of the family, the spine of every reunion and gathering. Now look at her; biding her time with sudokus and brainstorming the dwindling ways to convince her son to let her live out the rest of the days how she wanted to. As if her life were something to be negotiated.

Was that too much to ask?

Vicky didn’t have long to ponder the question that had weighed her already stooped shoulders since her first day here, as the room plunged into darkness. No, not just her room. When Vicky turned her head to assess the rest of the building, it appeared that the entire complex experienced the black out too. 

As her eyes adjusted, Vicky saw that a few chairs down from her, two elderly Italian men with skin like wrinkled leather, babbled their uncertainties in the dim light. One of them clutched his walker, shaking uncontrollably. Her heart ached for that man, for all of the residents really, who cried out in fear and wondered what on earth was going on. A few even screamed. But it was the ear-splitting wails coming from the dementia ward to her left, that sent fear curling like a snake poised to strike inside her stomach. She shuddered, forcing herself to look away. Vicky could feel their fear like a living thing and knew in her heart, that she should pity the mind-addled people residing there. But quite frankly, their presence at Days for Daze scared her more than anything else and left no room for sympathy. The constant reminder of what losing the few marbles she had left and ending up no more than a vegetable in a deteriorating body inside that ward would look like, kept her up at night. Even with the sleep meds. 

Vicky’s mind conjured the image of herself, prostrate on a thin, hospital style bed. Her son had come to visit her but she no longer recognised him. The sight of his confusion, his hurt, made her brain throb and all too soon, the strange but familiar man who had entered her room was leaving with two twin girls in tow. 

I can’t end up in there. I’d rather be dead. 

Seized with sudden clarity, she clenched the arm of her chair and brought herself to stand supported by her cane. I’ve got to get out of here. 

She scanned the exit, from the reception desk all the way to the elevator where Angry Anne cowered by the buzzer. Once, twice and third time to be sure. For the first time since Vicky came to stay at this hellhole, no one was guarding the doors. 

But as fast as her hope lifted, Vicky’s heart sunk inside her frail chest. The doors might have been unguarded but there was still no way for Vicky to force her way through them. She entertained the desperate idea of using her cane as a battering ram but even if the doors weren’t made of bulletproof glass, she didn’t house the strength to achieve that kind of miracle. Vicky slumped against her cane, feeling hot, angry tears bubbling to the surface. There was no hope, there never would be. It was foolish of her to think fate still cared enough about her nearly expired life to send miracles her way anymore. 

Vicky begun to ease herself back into the armchair when a thumping sound snagged her attention. In a burst of typical, mercurial manner, Angry Anne had stormed away from her spot by the elevator and now banged her soft fists against the glass doors. 

Vicky guessed that the woman must’ve seen movement behind the glass; she hated anyone coming, going or even loitering around those doors. But Angry Anne’s temper tantrum was not the cause for Vicky’s jaw to drop so low that she briefly worried that her dentures would fall out. 

Still blinking in disbelief, Vicky watched bug-eyed as steam ejected from the bolted seams of the electric sliding doors. A harsh, staticky beeping rang out, causing Angry Anne to stagger, hunched and cowering, back into her corner by the elevator as the doors shuddered open with a screech. 

Vicky’s first thought was that the world seemed so bright, so inviting compared to this shadowed nightmare. Without really thinking, her body leant towards the light like a sunflower deprived of the sun. 

As the beeping refused to cease, Vicky finally registered the reason as to why they still sounded. Right now, with all the staff so preoccupied with resolving the electrical issue and soothing the most troubled residents, the only physical obstacle standing between her and her old life were those doors. Those supposedly bulletproof doors that were now so glaringly open, Vicky’s heart hurt just knowing freedom stood so close within her reach. Part of her wondered if Fate actually was listening to her complaint and that this was her sign. A sign that her life of adventure and independence was not yet over. 

Vicky bent down to sling her handbag crossbody over her shoulder and gripped the handle of her cane with white-knuckled fists. Not once did she take her eyes off those doors. 

Briefly, Vicky remembered the rest of her belongings cramped inside her closet sized room. “Screw it,” she muttered. “I don’t need that junk where I’m going.”

Her body was stiff from sitting for so long in that arm chair but it was no true determent, if anything, it caused Vicky to grit her teeth harder and fasten her pace. 

Sweat misted across her skin when Vicky made it to stand adjacent to the reception desk. She waved in mock salute to the abandoned Big Mac surrounded by crumbs, the only witness as she edged closer towards her freedom. The balmy summer air sung to her from barely more than a few metres away. Vicky’s heart inched higher and higher up her throat with every step. 

Vicky grinned, something primal in her roaring. I’m really doing this!

Suddenly a stooped figure stood in front of her, blocking out the sun. Vicky nearly stumbled but caught herself before she fell. Her heart plummeted back to where it belonged, inside her chest. She had been so close…

“You’re not allowed through these doors.”

Vicky knew that voice. Squinting against the light behind the figure, she realised that the person standing as her final obstacle was Angry Anne. 

Her arms formed an age-spotted barricade against her chest and her mouth puckered into a scowl. Vicky nearly laughed at the absurdity of her situation. Her old life lay metres away from her and the one person trying to stop her from reaching it was an old woman, acting as if a gust of wind wouldn’t blow her over. 

An old lady with a lot less marbles, Vicky noted to herself, squaring her shoulders. This woman will not be the reason I fail. 

“Step out of the way Angr— uh, Anne. I need to leave.”

“You’re not allowed through these doors.” Angry Anne repeated, as if Vicky hadn’t spoken. 

Vicky felt like screaming. Any moment now they’d fix the electrical issue and her chance would disappear with it. She took a step closer to Angry Anne. 

“If you don’t let me pass, then I’m taking you with me.” 

Angry Anne stared at her, unblinking and with a sense of distance in her eyes. As if her mind stood one foot in and one foot outside of her body. That’s what this place did to a person, it made you forget who you were. Vicky had never seen anybody come to visit Angry Anne and was fairly certain she didn’t have any family. For the second time that day, Vicky wondered if this were a sign that her adventure and trouble seeking days weren’t over. 

Taking a chance, she looped her arm through Angry Anne’s folded one. Surprisingly, the woman didn’t shake her off. Not even when Vicky shifted them both around to face the open doors. 

“We’re going. Now.” 

Angry Anne’s head dipped, the movement a bare echo of a nod. But it was all that Vicky needed. 

Striding forward with her cane, she led them forward and through the open doors. 

Tears strung like pearls along Vicky’s eyelashes as the outside air gave her a warm welcome. Although, she wasn’t able to relish in the feeling for long as Angry Anne slipped her arm out of Vicky’s and dashed back towards the doors. 

“Wait, please don’t—“

Vicky’s voice stopped in its tracks as she saw Angry Anne hadn’t raced back into the safety of the building but instead thumped against the button that worked to open the doors from the outside. The frame of the building entrance groaned as the sliding doors strained to shut. But something was wrong because they closed with snail speed and screeched with every centimetre gained. 

They were three quarters closed when Vicky noticed the three staff members from before, leading the sparkies towards the door. Towards them. Dread dead-locked her spine.

“Hurry, Anne! They’re coming!” 

She knew there was nothing the woman could do to hasten the doors but Angry Anne continued to whack the button with all her strength. The staff were moments away and if not for her cane, Vicky was sure she might faint. But with a final, jarring shudder, the doors heaved together so forcefully that smoke writhed out from between them. 

Angry Anne backed up to stand beside her and for a second, they watched through the thick glass in amazement as the staff hammered on the exit button to no avail. Their bulletproof doors would not budge. 

“How does it feel to be the ones locked inside?” Vicky asked, feeling bold. They couldn’t hear her but the act of open defiance zinged through Vicky like a shot of tequila. 

She turned to Angry Anne with a devilish smile curling from ear to ear, and walked with her out into the sunshine. “So…Anne, have you driven down the Great Ocean Road?”