Dotage

Every morning, he would wake up and assemble his world from scratch. The bed was a raft. The floor was a cold river. The nurse, a sharp-boned woman named Patience (truly, that was her name), would hand him his teeth in a little plastic cup. Prisoners, he thought, looking at the teeth. I have freed them for their morning exercise.

“That’s all right,” she said. “You forgot it ten years ago. You forgot it yesterday. You’ll forget it again tomorrow. But you always find your way back to this bench. You always find me.” Dotage

One Tuesday—or possibly a Thursday; time had become a Mobius strip—Arthur escaped. Every morning, he would wake up and assemble

His dotage was not a gentle decline. It was a siege. The nurse, a sharp-boned woman named Patience (truly,

Back at Sunny Meadows, Patience would find him an hour later, asleep on the bench, a peaceful smile on his face, his hand curled around nothing. But that was the outside world’s version of the story. Inside Arthur’s head, he was young. He was dancing. And a woman in a red coat was laughing like wind chimes, and she would never, ever become a blur again.