Super powered

The Light and the Darkness"

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"The Light and the Darkness"

New Haven Retirement Home

The brochure for New Haven Retirement and Rehabilitation Home shows clean, attractive rooms, recreation areas, a beautiful dining area with mouth-watering food, along with helpful, smiling employees. It has all the luxuries and comforts one would want in their golden years of life. Visitors were pleasantly surprised that the actually facility lived up to the brochure. It was everything you could want for your elderly parent or relative when it came to a retirement home.

What couldn't be shown in the brochure or felt by the casual visitor was the overwhelming sadness of the place. It wasn't unique to New Haven. Every such facility had it. It stems from the simple truth that no one really wants to acknowledge the people in these facilities are dying. The golden years are a nice way of saying the last years.

Wander off the carefully guided tour and this reality smacks you in the face. This is end care. None of the residences are checking out and walking out those doors again. The staff tries to make them as comfortable as they can, but everyone understands why they are here.

The patient in Room 714 is close to the end.

The shell of the man he used to be lies on the hospital bed, tubes and wires connected to his arms, heart and nose. Machines monitor his breathing and weak vital signs. The staff has been informed it's only a matter of time for him. Most days he slips in and out of consciousness, too weak to speak.

Nurse's assistant Mai Ellis wipes a cool cloth across the man's forehead. Like most of these types of institutions, the actual care of the patients isn't done by doctors and nurses, but by the low paid staff. They're usually young, poor and female. They managed to make it through some technical school, business college or training program in hopes of making a better life for their young children than the one they had. Without them, places like this couldn't function.

Mai has fifteen patients she's responsible for during her shift. Depending on the patient, her responsibilities include, washing them, changing them and their beds, and feeding them. While she cares about all her patients, this old man has become special to her. He's a mystery. When he was a little stronger and able to speak, Mai would sometimes come in to check on him and finding him whispering in his sleep about the most amazing things. Heroes and villains, fantastic places and adventures and warnings seemed to fill his unconscious mind. It was one particular warning that had changed the way she looked at him.

"In the air above, lovers embrace and fear spreads."

It had seemed like such a strange dream for the old man to have, Mai thought. At first she dismiss it as just the ramblings of a dying man, but several days later the first picture of Superman and Power Girl appeared on all the channels. The way people reacted to it brought the old man's warning back to her. How could he know, she wondered? When he was awake, she'd asked him about it. He got a far away look in his eye, but then played it off as just luck.

After that Mai paid more attention to the ramblings the old man whispered in his sleep. She realized that somehow in his dreams he was seeing events that hadn't happened yet. She mentioned it to some of her coworkers and friends, but they dismissed it. The old man's condition grew worse and he rarely spoke.

As she wiped the sweat from his brow, the old man's lips suddenly moved and he whispered for the first time in weeks.

"It's a turning point for the lovers. They and others will make decisions. The light or the darkness will grow because of it."

He was silent again; his heart rate took a deep as if the strain of speaking had almost been too much for him. Mai sat there wondering what it meant and why was this old man that was able to see the future?