As our series continues, we find…

The clanging and crashing of hospital trays and medical supplies hitting the floor had barely subsided from Garth’s rage-driven attempt to grab Frappé’s neck.  Or arm, or anything for that matter, to avenge her cashing-out of their medical policy to pay for the expensive but crummy redecorating job she purchased several months ago.   The nurses and orderlies summoned to the scene were holding him down, but just barely.  One exasperated head nurse assisted a doctor who quickly injected him with a powerful tranquillizer, and in less than thirty seconds they had a blissed-out pussycat where a furious maniac had been moments before.

“Whew!” said the nurse absently to the doctor.  “That was a surprise.  Did he get you too?” she asked, as she checked her bruised arm and left side of her jaw.

“Naw…  I just wish long-range tranquillizer dart guns were legal to use in hospitals!” he quipped.  “I hate getting in this close to these wackos.”

“Fra….  Fra…  Frap-paa-a-a-y….. ” Garth peacefully drooled.  “Uuuhhmmm……..  how ya doin’,  babe?”  He’d slouched back on the bed, a lazy, relaxed light in his eyes.

“Oh, dear…” she answered, then asked the doctor “Will he be okay?”

“He’ll be fine” he reassured her, “but I’d watch you don’t ‘push his buttons’ on any touchy subjects for awhile.”

“No!  No, certainly n-n-not!” she stammered nervously.  Even the thought of “pushing buttons” made her uneasy.  “Hmmm…” she thought.  An image of pushing buttons in the main entryway of her building had leapt to her mind.  She momentarily wondered why.

As the nurses made Garth as comfortable as an inert, drooling space cadet could hope to be, she settled into a chair beside the bed, close to Garth’s head.  She brushed back the matted hair from his forehead, and reassured him things would be okay.  He gazed, slack-jawed, at her, the ceiling, the lights, then slowly closed his eyes to settle into a medication-synthesized slumber.  She thanked the nurse and orderlies for assisting, and sat down to wait for Garth to wake again.  She couldn’t, however, shake the uneasiness that entered her mind when she thought of the entryway to her building.

“Oh well,” she thought “it’s silly to worry so much about it.  After all, Mother always sai…”  Her eyes flashed wide open.  She glanced at her watch, and saw that Mickey’s little hand was on the ‘5′, and the big hand on the ‘12′.