Pardon me, Rudolph – but where did everyone go?

I awoke from my third nap of the day to find Glimmerglass Retirement Manor entirely deserted.

Clarence Phelps has vacated the canasta table, Henrietta Masterson’s half-knitted afghan is draped limply across her favorite chair and I can’t hear a single whooping cough coming from the kitchen. Where did everyone go?

They couldn’t have gone for a walk with Beatrice Barrett’s knees recently acting up. Gardening is definitely out of the question as a result of Fergie Malone’s chronic sciatica and Mildred Henkley’s allergies. I wonder where they went?

Hey, Rudolph, where is everyone? Oh, my shuffleboard partner Rudolph McCarton is missing too and it looks like he left all thirteen of his asthma inhalers behind. Ol’ Rudy sounds like a muskrat suckin’ gravel through a straw without his inhalers. Where could he be?

Wherever they went it wasn’t in an automobile. Yancy Carbine is the only one with prescription trifocals powerful enough to read road signs and he’s got no legs. Not to mention with Penelope Booth’s motion sickness and Asa Brainard’s combustible engine phobia, they both refuse to get near motor vehicles. So where’d they go…and what is that awful sound ringing in my hearing aid?

Well, they can’t be too far from a restroom because of Oscar Waterman’s erratic bladder and they certainly can’t be near a fire with Gertrude Somerville’s oxygen tank. I can’t even imagine a place where Tricky Nichol’s bubble would fit comfortably. And what is that infernal racket?

Medical issues aside – there isn’t a public place in the civilized world that could harbor Skeeter Barlow’s steadfast racial intolerance. Heck, Cy Gundersun’s bigotry would make a Klansman blush at a mid-August Alabama lynchin’. Holy Lord, that noise is vibrating the transplanted marrow in my osteoporisis-riddled bones – what is it?

Oh, would you look at that. It’s my alarm clock ringing to high heavens. I must have hit the snooze button after that last nap and been dreaming this whole time. Well, I better get out of bed and see if Adolph Reynolds has my goddamn drug money.