The Golden Girls: “Thank You For Being a Friend, Dr. Mario”
By Dan Lopez


A plane flies overhead, casting a shadow upon this comfortable home in an average Miami suburb.

Inside, Blanche Devereaux sings along with Andrew Gold while tidying up. We see her adjusting a chair on the lanai and dusting in the living room before switching off the radio and entering the kitchen to fix a glass of lemonade for her nephew. His fever is up a bit and the heat doesn’t help, but the lemonade should.

While in the refrigerator, she reaches for a slice of cheesecake, but then remembering her diet, stops. In her fifties, Blanche is still a temptress, and once she sheds a few pesky vanity pounds she’ll weigh what she did at thirty. Musing on her good looks, she places the pitcher back in the refrigerator, pausing a moment to enjoy the chill rolling through the open door.

The a/c is on the fritz, so Dorothy and Rose, her roommates and best friends, are at the home improvement store out by Coconut Grove trying to find the wing nut or doohickey that needs replacing. Sophia, Dorothy’s mother and Blanche’s third roomie, wanted to call a repairman, but Rose insisted the girls could do it themselves.

How is unclear to Blanche at the moment, but Rose insisted fixing an a/c is not unlike midwifing a calf. In the context of yet another St. Olaf story, Blanche thinks, dabbing sweat from her perky bosom, Rose made sense, but now it’s all a jumble of luferlugen, wiendersplurgen, and a host of other Scandinavian gibberish.

At any rate, a repairman would charge an arm and a leg to come out on a Saturday, so they might as well give fixing it themselves a shot.

Swaggering in through the front door, Dorothy shouts, “That’s because you’re an idiot, Rose!”

A tall, pale woman, bony and of a certain age, painted in the brightest of red lip colors, Dorothy’s entrance is designed to generate rumbling applause. She’s wearing floppy boots, a silver caftan and a zirconium pendant, which swings between the two paper bags she carries.

Equally burdened, Rose bounces in tow.

“It’s true, Dorothy,” Rose rebuts.

In comparison to her roomie, Rose appears naïve, wholesome, and sensible in her stylish pumps and powder blue dress, but pushed too far, she too will snap back with scathing ire.

“I should know,” she continues. “I was St. Olaf’s reigning peek-a-boo champion three years running until Heidi Huufenlyn beat me when I went into labor with Kirsten.”

“Oh, thank God,” Dorothy says, as Blanche saunters into the living room. “One more minute alone with her, and I swear I would’ve killed her!”

The expression on Blanche’s face is sympathetic, but she doesn’t say anything. The girls drop the dispute. The premise of their argument will remain a mystery, as if taking place off-screen within the context of a popular sitcom where punch lines are predictable and the set-up is often negligible.

The girls migrate into the kitchen. Purses are dropped with disregard in various spots throughout the living room. The heat is overwhelming. Pulsing like a furnace, the far reaches of the kitchen seem to melt.

“Lemonade?” Blanche offers.

“Oh, thank you,” Rose exclaims.

Blanche pours three glasses before primly stationing herself at the table.

“Girls, I cannot stand one more minute of this,” she says. “I haven’t been this hot and sweaty since the power went out in the Sea Breeze motel with one Mr. Harry Newsbaum two summers ago.”

Lowering herself into a chair, Dorothy quips, “And what about last Tuesday in the grocery store with Fernando?”

“Of course not, Dorothy,” Blanche says, adjusting the spring in her ‘do. “He’s a produce boy. He knows when to water the melons with that hose of his.”

“Oh, girls,” Rose interjects. “It doesn’t matter because we’ll have that air conditioner fixed before dinner.”

Mention of the a/c reminds Blanche that she still hasn’t given her nephew his lemonade. Excusing herself, she goes to deliver it.

His name is Benny “Stud Man” Hollingsworth—the nickname self-appointed in defense against the endless adolescent tyranny directed at him for being too friendly with the ladies without macking it with any—and he’s playing Dr. Mario on the NES console he brought with him from Atlanta. Even sick as he is, his carriage is impeccable. Like Aunt Blanche says, “A straight posture thrusts one’s best attributes forward.”

Swirling through his skull are the endless permutations, incalculable numerations of blue with red or yellow or itself in pill form that comprise the games gestalt. Slowly, a theory has hatched in his fevered brain. If played expertly, flawlessly, is it possible to eradicate all the viruses without superfluous pill halves?

Ah! One wrong beat on the “A” button when he should’ve flipped the pill with the “B,” and now the experiment must be reset. He brushes his bangs behind his ears and sets to work. Stud Man’s mane is lustrous, well-groomed, and blurring the line between masculine and feminine.

Two blue and yellows then a solid red, Stud Man notes. Damn, a blue and red. Useless. At first, the theory applies perfectly, but then the possibilities escalate exponentially while the three viruses under the magnifying glass in the corner of his screen mock him with their dance.

When he eradicates a yellow virus in the bottle, its larger-sized manifestation writhes in agony under the glass. The setback is temporary, though, in a moment the injured one will recover from his psychic wound, rise and continue mocking Stud Man with his na-na-boo-boo dance.

“Benny, honey,” Blanche says. “I brought you some nice lemonade. Would you like a glass?”

Stud Man is unresponsive. The game appeals to his fever, and he can’t turn away. Blanche offers the glass. Instinctively, his clammy hand grasps it, bringing it to his chapped lips. Not once do his eyes divert from the screen, from the viruses.

Tenderly touching his forehead, Blanche says, “You’re burning up. Why don’t you turn off the game and take a nice nap out on the lanai. It’s cool out there.”

Nothing.

He wants a clean vessel, purged of all impurities placed in his way by the game’s programming. Given the proper skill, patience, and foresight there must be a way to change what he has into what he needs. Maybe not every time, but at least once in every who-knows-how-many times, the pills must fall that way. Otherwise the fever may never end.

“Benny? . . . Benny? . . . Now, Benny Hollingsworth you answer me.”

“Oh, sorry, Aunt Blanche,” Stud Man says, his voice soft, apologetic. “What’d you say?”

“I asked if you’d like to take a nap out on the lanai.”

“Maybe in a little bit Aunt Blanche,” he says, apoplectically. “I’m just trying to beat this board. I’m feeling a lot better.”

Blanche has her doubts, but before she can voice them, a scream comes from the hall.

“Rose, you idiot!”

Rushing in, Blanche shouts, “Girls, girls what’s all the fuss about?”

Dorothy, dust comically plastered across her severe features, is on her back, and Rose is trying to help her to her feet.

“Well,” Rose begins with trepidation. “Dorothy was moving the water pump so I could get to the compressor unit when it kind of burped.”

“It exploded in my face, is what happened,” Dorothy shouts, once on her feet. “That is it! I have had it! Rose Nylund you don’t know what you’re doing. Ma was right. Come on Blanche, we’re calling a repairman right now.”

“Oh, come on Dorothy,” Rose begs. “Blanche, wait! Girls, we can do this. I think I know what the problem is now. Won’t you just give me one more shot?”

Dorothy, with her characteristic forgiveness and reason, acquiesces. Blanche beams, and the three golden girls hug.

“Alright, girls!” Dorothy cries. “We have an air conditioner to fix.”

In Blanche’s room, the lemonade is gone, but the viruses persist. And, worse, the very pills designed to squash them are in danger of stopping up the bottle. This is the eighth round in as many minutes, and Stud Man has made surprisingly little progress toward proving his hypothesis. His fever continues to rage, and Dr. Mario can do nothing to help.

Half an hour later, dressed in denim and ratty tee-shirts, the girls are still at it. Blanche moans, “Oh, girls, it’s hopeless. We’ll never get this thing working again. It’s just hopeless. At times like these you remember how much you need a man.”

“My Charlie,” Rose says, perky as a golden retriever, “was wonderful when it came to fixing things.”

“My George was the same,” Blanche says. “He’d fix anything including me if you catch my drift.”

“I remember the time our town’s only sundial stopped working,” Rose continues. “And it was right before the annual herring sprint, too. So you can imagine how Sven Lugenlen felt; he was the official herring sprint shoemaker and made all his money based on the sprint—”

“You had herring wearing shoes and running a sprint?” Blanche interjects, because it wouldn’t be the first time herring did human tricks in St. Olaf.

“No,” Rose says with a chuckle. “Don’t be silly. People ran it—it was just called the herring sprint because the winner got a year’s supply of pickled herring, which came in handy because, as you may know, St. Olaf exports most of its best farm-raised herring, but with a year’s supply you would always have enough for the annual pickled herring feast after Founder’s Day—”

“Rose!” Dorothy shouts, clutching her collarbone. “What does any of this have to do with a sundial?”

“Well, if you’d let me finish I’d explain how it was used to time the sprinters.”

“Why didn’t you use a stopwatch?” an exasperated Dorothy asks.

“Maybe that’s how you do things in Brooklyn, Dorothy, but in St. Olaf we like to do things the old-fashioned way. The way they’ve been done for hundreds of years.”

“But, Rose, honey,” Blanche mediates. “I think what Dorothy meant was how, exactly, did you use a sundial to time sprints?”

“Oh, only St. Olaf’s oldest citizens ran in the annual herring sprint! It took them at least an hour to get down the street if they made it at all. Most of the time the winner won by default.”

Sighing, Dorothy presses her hands to her face. How much longer must she bear this idiocy? And the other one, with her endless parade of men, turning their lovely Miami home into a tawdry boudoir of ill repute!

Unable to stand it any longer, she interrupts. “Girls, now that is enough. We don’t need a man. Come on, we can fix an air conditioner ourselves. Just, for the love of God, Rose, no more St. Olaf stories!”

“You’re wasting your time,” Sophia announces, making her entrance from the bathroom. With trademark purse in hand, and white hair worn in a timeless bouffant popular with women of her advanced age, thundering applause seems to greet her appearance.

“Call a repair man already,” the cantankerous octogenarian harps. “Jeez, with you three who needs Weight Watchers? Look, even Blanche is sweating off all those Christmas vanity pounds!”

“Ma,” Dorothy warns. Sophia shrugs and shuffles on.

“Girls maybe Sophia is right,” Blanche says, biting a thumbnail. “Why don’t we call a repairman?”

A raunchy longing seethes from her eyes, and her body squirms. Pursing her lips, she continues, “A burly, big-chested repair man who’d work up a steamy sweat, causing his tight white shirt to cling to his full biceps and rippling stomach, and when he bends over to grab his hammer his pants would struggle to keep from tearing along the seam running across his muscular behind...”

Blanche fans the air. “Woo, it’s hot in here. What were we talking about?”

Dorothy looks annoyed, and Rose blushes with embarrassment. But that’s just Blanche, and since it’s impossible to change who someone is at her very core, what are they to do but accept it?

“Wait,” Dorothy says, alarmed. “Do you hear something?”

“The sound of one hand clapping,” Rose says, thinking it to be a riddle.

“No, listen.” She turns her ear toward Blanche’s room at the end of the hall. “Silence,” she says.

“Coming from her room,” Sophia says, pointing at Blanche. “That’s not something you hear everyday.”

Ignoring her, Blanche asks, “What’s your point?”

“My point is Benny’s game stopped playing its music.”

“So?” Rose asks.

“So, he’s been playing that game non-stop for the past three days, and the song has played with it.”

“Oh,” Blanche says. “He probably just got tired. I’m sure he’s just taking a nap.”

“In this heat who can take a nap?” Dorothy asks. “No, I think I better check on him.”

Suddenly concerned, the girls flock to Blanche’s room. Inside, they find the game with an apologetic Dr. Mario shrugging his shoulders, while next to him on the screen the bottle says “Game Over,” and the three sinister viruses gnash their teeth in ecstasy, reveling in their victory.

Slumped at the foot of the bed is Stud Man, unconscious with his face pressed against the empty lemonade glass.

Miami-Dade Regional is air conditioned—at least there’s that. And dripping into his arm, Stud Man has a steady stream of antibiotics. As if to the tune of a mollifying TV score, the girls, led by Sophia, enter the room, faces stretched in varying displays of compassion, accessibility, and contrition.

The fever got the best of him. Nothing serious, just a minor infection, it’ll clear up in a day or two, but everyone concerned agrees it’s best for Stud Man to spend the night for observation. 'We’re sorry' hangs from the girls’ lips. We’re sorry we let it go this far, that your fever stewed in that sweltering room with only an 8-bit placebo to keep vigil.

And though the fever broke, those same pills still dance in Stud Man’s head. A, B, A, A, B, left, left, down. So close, but still the dross is there. Jetsam of the sterilization process. Mario’s botched attempts.

The superfluous pill halves and wholes aren’t harmful, but aesthetically they are a nightmare that returns with every blink of the eye. And, what’s more, the nurse’s cart just outside the door is brimming with more pills: pills in cups, pills in bottles, pills in hand to mouth for a headache or a backache, and Stud Man is going crazy. Obsessed.

“You look better already,” Blanche chirps. “Doesn’t he girls?”

Oh, yes, they say. Definitely better.

“Why, you’ll be out of here in no time. You got Hollingsworth blood in you, and Hollingsworths never stay down for long. You just ask a Mr. General Ulysses S. Grant about that. Not even he could keep us down for long.”

“Blanche,” Rose interjects, excitedly. “You knew President Grant?”

“Yes, Rose,” Dorothy hisses. “They went to the 1859 cotillion together right before Lincoln gave him command of the Union army!”

A long-sufferer, immediately after unleashing her seething wit, Dorothy has to rush across the room to stop Sophia from pilfering the hospital’s toiletries. “Ma,” she shouts. “Put that down!” And then exits the room, chasing after Sophia, leaving Blanche and Rose alone with Stud Man.

“I can’t believe I let it get this bad,” Blanche laments, and we see, deep-down, co-mingled with the endless stream of doctors, lawyers, and celebrities she has bedded, lies the kernel of her existence: her regret of being a less-than-adequate mother while being an all-star lover.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Rose says, tapping into her training as a grief counselor. “It’s not your fault.”

“Oh, thank you, Rose,” Blanche says, hugging her. “I really needed to hear that.”

“This one time in St. Olaf—” and just like that silly Rose reemerges.

“Oh, for the love of all that is holy, please, Lord, spare me another St. Olaf story.”

Stud Man is in an overstuffed chair in Dr. Mario’s office.

Hanging from the walls are mounted heads from various big game excursions. But because it’s a dream, what they’re doing in a plumber-cum-doctor’s office neither is clear, nor does it matter. Stud Man is here because something is different inside, and that’s all that matters.

Externally, nothing points to his perceived defect, but it’s an indefinable different something which has been there all along. And now, the context of the dream tells him, he has worked up the courage to define it, and hopefully, correct it.

“Your body is overrun with viruses,” Dr. Mario says, stroking his mustache. He appears as a two-dimensional cartoon, exactly like in the game, and smells like an indoor basketball court or a toy store. He looks like he’d taste of Starbursts, and Stud Man fights the urge to bite him. Everything else in the room is of the non-8-bit world—hard, tactile.

“I can help you,” he continues. “Thanks to a grant from the Mushroom Kingdom, I’ve developed a hormone treatment that, coupled with therapy, has a good chance of wiping out the viruses.”

“You can cure me?” Stud Man asks while parting his bangs. Of course it’s the viruses! Already he can feel their dancing as a tickle in his abdomen.

“Certainly, yes,” Dr. Mario says. Placing a three-dimensional cigarette between his lips, he pulls a pixillated plant from a drawer. Spitting fireballs, it lights the doctor’s cigarette. “We think it was Bowser who introduced the viruses. We’re not entirely sure. At any rate, we’ve had some tremendous successes with Birdetta and some of the Koopa troopers. If it was Bowser, evidently he did extensive testing on his own people.

“The princess and my brother Luigi!” Mario says.

“They, too, were infected, but they’re recovering, and doing quite well. Quite well.” But there’s a hesitation in the doctor’s voice, which he hides by languidly dragging on his cigarette.

Dismissing it, Stud Man asks, “And I’ll be just the same? These... these things invading my body will go, and I’ll be the same, normal?”

After only two puffs, Mario snuffs out his smoke on a mushroom, recently sprung up on his desk.

“I suspect you were infected early on with a rudimentary version of the disease,” Dr. Mario sidesteps. “More than likely something from the pre-Raccoon Mario days. I wouldn’t be surprised if your system is harboring an aboriginal version of only one strain—two at the most—of viruses instead of the more advanced blue-red-yellow triad prevalent these days.

“We’ll know more once we get inside your body,” he continues. “But older strains would account for your remaining relatively symptom-free until recently.”

“But, you can make me normal, right?”

“Sure,” Dr. Mario says, hesitating again. “For all intents and purposes, yes, you’ll be normal.”

“What do you mean, ‘For all intents and purposes’?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Mario says, walking to his window. For the first time, Stud Man notices the doctor’s office is in a turret of a castle floating high above the Mushroom Kingdom, which glows pink in the waning light. And the revelation affords him some comfort. In another dream, perhaps he’d let his locks fall out the window so someone could climb up.

“If you choose to accept my help,” Mario continues,“You should be aware that the treatment is very invasive. It requires intense individual implementation of the pills, which I would personally oversee. We will need to isolate the viruses in one location within your body, and then systematically wipe each and every one out.

“It’s all very technical, but basically I’d miniaturize myself and enter your body after the viruses have been corralled into what is best described as a ‘jar.’ From there, I’d stack three pills to each corresponding virus until the jar is free of its viral lode. In the past there have been complications.

“Making headway in the jar is difficult to begin with, but if we don’t pack the viruses in correctly, well, the results can be fatal. There’s also the problem of superfluous pill halves and wholes littering what, in essence, will become a new addition to your body because once the bottle is implanted it can’t be removed.

“The pills themselves are harmless, but too many stacked together obstructing the flow of blood through the bottle can lead to complications later in life.” The doctor pauses to let the effect of his words settle in.

After a moment Stud Man ventures, “And if I do nothing?”

“The viruses will not hesitate to overrun your body and eat everything available to them. At best, you’ll become a husk of a man. At worst, you’ll die—more than likely by your own hand.”

“I have a lot to think about.”

With a nod, Dr. Mario says, “Take some time. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

When Stud Man awakens it’s nighttime and he’s alone with an empty bag attached to his vein and the steady beep of a heart rate monitor.

Sophia and the girls are in the hospital’s lobby. Visiting hours are over, and they have been ushered out of Stud Man’s room.

“Oh, girls,” Blanche pouts. “I just feel awful. Here my sister trusts me with her only son, and he ends up in the hospital. It’s all my fault.”

“Now, Blanche,” Dorothy says. “This is not your fault.”

Piping up, Rose seconds the motion.

“Come on, honey,” Dorothy continues. “Let’s go home, get some rest, and first thing in the morning we’ll come get him. Huh, doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Oh, Dorothy, I can’t.” Blanche worries her lip, and wrings her hands. “Girls, I simply cannot.”

“You have to, Blanche,” Rose says.

“Oh no I don’t. I’ll stay right here in the lobby all night if I have to, but I am not leaving. Go on home, and get some rest, but I’m staying.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel,” Dorothy says.

“It is.”

“Fine, we’ll all stay.” And before Blanche can object, Dorothy clutches her collarbone and waves her other hand in her roommate’s face. “No arguments. If you stay then we all stay. That’s final.”

“Oh,” Rose says, grinning. “It’ll be just like that time we had to spend the night in the bus station. Remember, girls?”

“Well if we’re staying,” Sophia says, before everything gets hazy and time shifts back to earlier that fall. “I’m going to see if there’s any Jell-O lying around.”

Stud Man resolves to never play Dr. Mario again, but the image is already there, and every time he closes his eyes he sees the patterns of his hypothesis. He can’t avoid it now, and it’s glorious. In its spotless state, the jar is magnificent. Sterile. Sans disease.

“That’s what I want,” he thinks.

But before he can enjoy the moment, a moaning coming from the air vent distracts him. Cautiously at first, he waddles toward the vent, dragging his IV with him. The moaning is constant, as if preserving its energy so that it can go on expressing itself forever if need be.

Intrigued, Stud Man carefully pulls the needle from his arm, wraps a towel around the hole, and cinching his robe in the rear, goes out to find the source. Stopping at the first open door, he ducks his head in, searching for the moan. The room is empty, but from that vent too comes the steady lament. He plods on, searching room after room on three different floors before finally finding the right one.

Back in the lobby the girls look anxious and bored.

“Oh, girls I can’t sleep,” Blanche bemoans. “These benches are hard as rocks.”

Polishing off some Jell-O, Sophia snipes, “Aren’t you used to lying down anywhere you can?” She is undoubtedly Dorothy’s mother.

Blanche shoots her a smile, wagging a now-now finger. The girls are a family, and with family it’s okay to call out each other’s idiosyncrasies.

“And cramped too,” Rose opines. Dorothy, who is sleeping, has collapsed her large body on top of Rose, as if her fellow golden gal were a pillow. With a shove Rose corrects the problem.

“What? What?” Dorothy says, suddenly rocketed from slumber.

“You were crushing me.”

“Oh, Rose, honey, I’m sorry. I was just trying to get some sleep.”

“Yeah, and smother me too. Move over.”

“Now, Rose,” Dorothy starts.

It looks like the girls are going to have at it again, but Sophia steps in, citing how back in Sicily, it’s not uncommon to sleep five to a wooden bench in the town’s square when all the hotels are full. Blanche is appalled.

“Hey,” Sophia defends. “We didn’t all win World War II.” Like with her fellow roomies, the timeline of Sophia’s life is often questionable.

Assuming Dorothy is in her late fifties or early sixties and was born in Brooklyn, wouldn’t Sophia and her late husband, Salvatore, have had to already be living in America by the time WWII broke out? Furthermore, what of the fact that Dorothy’s first child (the cause of her marriage to Stan) should, by all accounts, be at least thirty-eight, but was only thirty the last time he stopped by for a visit? Sophia’s advice is always helpful, but if you think about it...

Before anyone can ponder the glaring inconsistencies, a screaming child and his mother come rampaging into the ER. The child’s ear is bandaged, and the mother rushes him to the triage nurse.

“I wish they’d let me see Benny,” Blanche says. “I cannot stand this waiting!”

“Blanche,” Dorothy says with a reassuring chuckle. “He’s fine. He’s probably sleeping right now. Look, soon it’ll be morning and we can go see him. Try to get some rest.”

“Yeah,” Rose adds. “We’ve been through worse. Remember when I thought I had AIDS? The only reason I got through was because of you girls.”

The child screams, “Mommy, mommy it sounds like bees!” He’s shuddering, and the mother does all she can to calm him while the nurse inspects the wound.

Noticeably affected, Blanche squeezes Rose’s hand and says, “Lord, I pray you’re right.”

The moaner’s room is much like his own, Stud Man notes, except the bed is against the opposite wall. Come to think of it, the arrangement is a mirror image of his room, everything reversed, but accounted for right down to the untouched dinner tray. The only difference is the moaning figure on the bed.

Shuffling over, Stud Man studies the anguished face. She’s handsome, somewhat severe in her features—not unlike Dorothy, he thinks—but handsome, maybe even pretty if her face weren’t contorted from the pain. Her IV—a sedative of some sort he can recognize but can’t pronounce—has run dry, and teetering between consciousnesses, she paws at her crotch. Blood stains the sheet there, just a small spot, but there all the same.

And now the moaning stops, replaced by a muttered “Thank God.” But, that too, gives way as she struggles to reclaim the relative comfort of drug-induced delirium. Whatever wound lies beneath the sheet must be exquisite in its torture if she’s fighting this hard to escape, and yet judging from the faint glimmer of a smile she seems glad to have it.

At first it’s a lark that makes him chuckle, but then the pills return along with the gnashing teeth of the viruses and the impotent Dr. Mario who can do nothing but fling pills based on some enigmatic computer formula, and the thought crystallizes into a compulsion. He has to see what’s below the sheet.

One, two, three, and then pull back the sheet. It’s easy. He can do it, and she’ll never notice. The whole thing will be over in under a minute. But he can’t.

The moaning starts up again, the “Thank Gods.” And there, of course, is the pawing too. The stain has grown, and now compounded with his curiosity, Stud Man is worried for her health. Maybe he should alert a nurse.

But how would he explain his presence in this room, which is so far from his? Better to verify it’s not something natural, like menstruation. If it is then there’s nothing to worry about. But what if it’s a botched C-section, or hysterectomy? Then it would be serious. Anything is possible, and Stud Man has to look.

One, two, three, and he pulls back the sheet. His expression lets us know that what he sees blows his mind. At once enlightened and horrified, Stud Man’s dramatic reaction coincides with our collective gasp.

“If you’ve come to rape me,” the moaner says. “You should know I wasn’t born a woman.”

Coming over the P.A., the hospital’s sedate background music is Sophia’s only companion as she wanders the halls.

“Remember the time. Remember the time,” she mutters. “Jeez! You’d think we never do anything new listening to them.”

She shuffles through corridors, partly just to get the blood circulating, but mostly to see what she can steal. Hey, it’s not everyday you’re surrounded by pills and toothbrushes free for the taking! And, at her age, you never know when you’re going to need some Fixodent or blood thinners. But then a steady moaning beckons her.

A few yards ahead, Benny flounces into the hallway and enters the moaner’s room. By the time Sophia gets there, Stud Man is pulling off the moaner’s sheet.

“Oh, God,” Stud Man says, obviously flustered. “I’m sorry. No. I just saw blood and... I’m three floors up, recovering from a fever. I heard you through the air duct.” He points. “And I came to see what was the matter.

“I’m Benny,” he says, extending a hand. “But people call me Stud Man.”

The moaner chortles. “Stud Man. Me too.”

Her eyes dart across the room, and she paws her crotch endlessly. “Don’t forget the lotto tickets,” she says to someone who isn’t in the room, someone only she can see. “Stud Man, ha! Come close. Ice cream. All they give you here are pills,” she spits. “Pills,” she says, disgusted. “Pills.” Fleshy, silver jowls jabbering, and some spittle for effect.

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Stud Man says, backing away.

“I can roar,” she says. “I am woman!”

Running out of the room, Stud Man doesn’t look where he’s going and slams right into Sophia. The impact feels like smacking into a pound of ground beef. Sophia groans, and when Stud Man realizes what he’s hit, he freezes. At her age, she’s a brittle skeleton held together with beeswax.

I’ve killed her, he thinks. But Sophia’s not dead. She’s on the ground, but she’s not dead.

“I’m fine,” she says, but when she tries to stand her scream rips across the hospital. That cinches it. She’s broken a hip. “Get Dorothy,” she says, enfolding Stud Man’s hand in hers.

Stud Man had a single; Sophia has a double, but other than that Miami-Dade Regional doesn’t look that different the following morning, as the girls and Stud Man file into Sophia’s room. Aside from the cast and IV, Sophia looks fit and full of vigor. One glance puts everyone at ease. She’ll be okay. They always are because they’re women and they have each other.

“You gave us a real scare,” Dorothy says, beaming, pinching her mother’s cheek. “Honey, now you just rest.”

“Oh, yes, Sophia,” Blanche says. “The doctor says you’ll be able to go home next week!”

“When did he say that, Blanche?” Rose asks.

“When he asked me out to dinner tonight,” she says, giggling like a girl three quarters her age.

“I break a hip and you get a date,” Sophia says. “In Sicily we have a term for women like you.”

“And what’s that?”

“Slut!”

“Ma!” Dorothy shouts.

“I’m sorry pussycat, it’s all the pills. They dope you up so much, I swear your father was just here telling me we were out of milk. By the way, did you ever call a repair man?”

“Didn’t have to,” Rose giggles. “We fixed it ourselves this morning. Just like I said we would.”

“Go figure,” Sophia says. “The nit-wit knew what she was talking about all along.”

“Honey,” Blanche says. “Why don’t you get some sleep? We’ll be in the cafeteria if you need anything.”

The girls all nod in agreement, but as they file out the door Sophia calls Stud Man to her bedside.

“Go ahead, Aunt Blanche,” he says. “I’ll be right along.”

When they’re alone, Sophia pats Stud Man’s hand.

“I’m real sorry,” he says.

“Eh,” she says. “Don’t be. I’m eighty-three and it’s a miracle I hadn’t broken a hip sooner.”

“Still –”

“I saw you talking to that woman,” she says.

“Oh –”

And in the pause, Stud Man yanks on his hair, pulls it into a ponytail, and then releases it, trying to hide within the auburn locks.

“I know what you want,” Sophia says, kindly. “And I think it’s okay. My son Phil, I think he might’ve been the same way. But—” she shrugs. “It was a different time. What could people do?”

“Here,” she says, slipping Stud Man a pill bottle. “I found them in her room.”

It’s all too much, and he stutters. “I couldn’t,” he balks. “It’s... it’s... What about doctors?”

“Doctors! Please! In Sicily I was the village doctor, pharmacist, and therapist!”

Gnashing teeth and mustachioed Mario flash across the darkness with every blink. Stud Man doesn’t argue for long.

“Won’t she need these?”

“What, she doesn’t have insurance? She can get more.”

“Thank you, Sophia.”

“Don’t mention it. Now go find the girls. And see if you can get me some extra Jell-O. Take it from your aunt. She could use to skip dessert once in a while.”

Once they stop talking, we can hear comforting background music coming from the hospital’s P.A. And as Stud Man bends over for an embrace, a nurse, who has come to check on Sophia’s neighbor in the next bed, pulls the dividing curtain shut.

 

 

 

Dan Lopez is a graduate of the writing program at the University of Central Florida. His work has appeared in Cypress Dome and the Gender Gazette. He lives in Brooklyn.

 

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