Willard leaned back in the chair and swung his feet up
on the mattress.
“Willard, please take your boots off my bed.”
“But there’s no lounge chair for us old folks,” he
said.
“You’re confusing this self adjusting bed,
Willard. It just began to recognize me lying on it and now it’s
wondering how I grew two extra feet with boots on.”
“Self what?” said Willard.
“I just took a test drive,” I said. “You jump in
and it feels odd at first, like the worst lumpy bed you ever slept in.”
“Sounds like my Aunt Elva’s bed when I was a lad,”
said Willard.
“Maybe,” I said. “I was never in your Aunt
Elva’s bed.”
“Neither was Uncle Jed after their fifth young-un came
along,” said Willard.
“But then you feel the bed start to move right under
you,” I said.
“Like when I get home to bed after the Annual Hunter’s
Ball and Beer Bash,” said Willard.
“No, not quite. The bed doesn’t’ move. The
surface of the mattress kinda crawls.”
“Like Aunt Elva’s bed in the fall before she put the
mouse traps around the house.”
“If I were your Uncle Jed, Willard,. I’d sleep in the
barn.”
“Mostly he did,” said Willard
“”But within seconds,” I said, “you can feel the
entire mattress re-assemble itself to fit the contour of your body. It’s
like magic, Willard.”
“Abra cadaver,” he said.
“That’s Abracadabra, Willard.”
“Aunt Elva did parlor tricks,” he said. “That’s
what she’d say to make me disappear.”
“What kind of tricks, Willard.”
“Not for children,” he said in a high pitched voice,
shaking his finger at me.
“And Uncle Jed?” I asked.
“Her best customer. That’s why they wanted me to
disappear.”
“Willard, take your feet off the bed and listen to
what happens.”
Willard stirred himself and removed one foot,
placing it on the floor. The boot clunked loudly on the tile and
small bits of mud dislodged and fell around the heel. We both
listened. Almost inaudible, somewhere under the bed a small air pump
began to whir. The look on Willard’s face was one of incredulity.
His eyebrows shot up.
“It’s moving,” he said. “It’s pushing up my
other foot.
Now the pump sped up a little.
“It’s looking for you, Willard. The bed is
wondering where you went.”
Willard took his other foot off the bed, leaned in and
spoke to the side of the mattress. “Don’t worry, little bed, I’m still
here. I’m sorry I put my feet on you.”
Now another pump switched on under the bed and the
mattress began to move beneath me.
“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” said Willard
“No, but maybe the bed is confused. Maybe
it’s never seen separate weights at either end of the mattress.”
A third pump began to whir and a flapping noise issued
out from below.
“Holy ….”
“Willard, get up and sit down at the end of bed.
It wants to know you’re still here.”
“I just told it I was here.”
“It’s still learning, Willard, and it doesn’t have
ears. You have to sit on it.”
The hissing of valves kicked in as Willard jumped up
and sat on the mattress. I hadn’t heard that noise on my test drive.
“It may not be programmed to recognize two
people on the mattress,” I said. “It’s only a single bed.” Willard
lay back, draping himself across the very foot of the bed. Then he sat up
and again lay back. I swung my legs up and tucked my feet
underneath me at the head of the bed.
“No, Willard,” I found myself shouting. “Stop the
sit-ups. The bed can’t figure it out.”
Beneath me the bed began to undulate, as if writhing
in agony over a new discovery it could not fathom. In its short life
since leaving the factory floor the onboard computer had never encountered two
people on its surface with a third force rhythmically dropping down from above
as Willard popped up and down doing his sit-ups. Maybe the bed’s brain
was struggling to imagine its first tennis match taking place across the
surface of the mattress. The electronics obviously did not know what to think
of such a conflation of inputs.
“What are you two doing?” said a rather large nurse as
she walked into the room. I sat on my pillow like a Buddha with my legs
crossed. At the foot of the bed lay a decrepit old geezer doing
sit-ups. Small motors huffed and puffed to keep
up.
“Willard, stop,” I said.
We sat still, Willard holding his breath. He
twisted his head and stared up and down the length of the tall steely
woman. She was built like popcorn machine, but didn't smell as
nice.
Willard let his breath out loudly and turned back to
look at me.
“I withdraw my offer,” he said.
“Which one of you is Mr. Griffin?” said the woman.
Willard and I pointed to each other.
She walked toward us and stopped next to Willard.
“I seem to remember you from somewhere,” she
said airily to Willard. “Could it have been the Emergency Room?”
She walked up to my end of the bed. I gulped
“I know who you are,” she said. “I heard you
read at the Library last Fall.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
A sarcastic smile came across her face. “Will
you need any help undressing?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” I blurted out. “Why would you ever think
so?”
She chuckled. “I’m a nurse. This new bed
tells me everything.”
Had I read far enough in the brochure I would have
discovered the bed had a built-in intercom. Willard hopped off the bed
and headed for the door. The nurse watched him leave and then turned
back to me.
“Abracadabra,” she said.
Disclaimer: My limited personal experience was with a Hill-Rom Versa Stiyle Hospital Bed. Price $13,250, Internet sale for $8,500, The Synergy Air Elite Therapy Surface Mattress is priced separately. I do not know if my technical descriptions are accurate and they were obviously over stated. Also, I don’t really believe any of the models have an intercom. But I could be wrong.
copyright 2014, David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South
Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
