Harold And Maude

A trip to the doctor goes horribly wrong

Harold and Maude

Brad Given

 

Harold and Maude were old.  Very old.  The kind of old where it was plausible that they both had just forgotten to die.  Harold wore the same clothes every day; Beige socks and slacks (pulled up over his belly button) with suspenders over his thin shoulders with a yellowed pinstripe button up shirt spotted with ambiguous stains and an unzipped blue windbreaker (regardless of the temperature outside).  He had a bulbous nose, thin white hair, and eye brows that would have made Gandalf proud.  His large hairy ears had very large hearing aids in them that did absolutely nothing because Harold had taken out the batteries.

                Maude was the living definition of medium.  She was medium height and weight with a medium back hunch and a medium voice.  Her medium clothes and medium jewelry were perfect for making no impression whatsoever.  She had a medium sized mole on her cheek with a medium amount of hair growing from it, and a medium mustache.  She also had a habit of tucking her lower lip under her teeth and scrunching her nose so that she gave the impression of being a medium rabbit. 

                Today, Harold and Maude had made the trip downtown to see Harold’s doctor.  The senior transport van had picked them up at their assisted living facility and now dropped them off in front of the large medical center.  Next to them on the curb a scruffy, thickly bearded man wearing a tattered trench coat and a cowboy hat was holding a cardboard sign that said “REPENT!”  Maude thanked the driver by giving him a quarter and an already scratched off lottery ticket and pushed Harold’s chair towards the door.  There was an odd rumbling in the distance that neither heard, partially because of Harold’s prolific swearing at having to be there at all.  As the revolving doors spun behind her the van drove up onto the sidewalk (narrowly missing the prophet) to allow a double wide column of Humvee’s to go speeding past.

Upon arriving to the 10^th floor offices Maude paused at the waiting area coffee station to make Harold a cup of black coffee with one pink packet and one blue packet of sweetener which was how he always took his coffee (if by “taking his coffee” one means that Maude always made it this way but Harold would under no circumstances drink it).  A squadron of attack helicopters whizzed unobserved past the windows. 

At the counter, Maude immediately launched into giving the eternally patient receptionist, Cheryl, a thorough (and extremely specific) rundown of Harold’s bowel habits since their last visit.  “Well on Thursday it wasn’t loose anymore but when I picked through it there were pieces of his pills, here, I brought them with.”  From the cavernous depths of her purse, Maude produced a Zip-Lock bag to a now utterly horrified Cheryl who started to stammer a reply when she saw through the window over Maude’s shoulder something that drove so many disturbing mental images right out of her mind and replaced them with a whole new set.

                The one thing that might be worse than being handed a bag of items excavated from an old man’s bowel movement might well be the army fighting a 100-foot-tall lizard monster right outside your window, and that is precisely what Cheryl saw.  It had a helicopter in its left hand and was swinging a radio tower like a club with its right.  Cheryl went very pale and (not without some relief) interrupted Maude and said in her sweetest voice “I’m sorry Maude we are going to have to reschedule.  Let’s get you guys back to the elevator!”  Maude leaned down into Harold’s ear and yelled, “We’re going to have to reschedule!”  A drip of moisture dangled from Harold's nose for a moment and then started a new stain on his shirt.

                The elevator call button had been pressed and the few staff that hadn’t fled down the stairs and had remained to make sure the patients got out safely were anxiously watching the floor indicator.  Somewhere between 6 and 7 the beast’s tail wiped out the building’s façade sending glass, paper, and uniquely boring office furniture flying.  Not Maude’s hair though, it hadn’t moved since August 4^th, 1974.

                When the elevator finally arrived, Maude declined assistance in pushing Harold and ever so slowly got him into the car as the staff swore creatively under their breath.  On the way down, the building was struck again and the elevator shuddered.  A nurse screamed.  Harold shifted in his seat and loudly farted.

                When the doors opened to the lobby, it was every man and woman for themselves.  People were running in every direction.  There was screaming, crying, hysterical laughter, and periodic explosions - similar to a child’s birthday party, but with more missiles.  The monster now had a helicopter in either hand and threw one of them at the line of tanks coming up the street at it.  Outside, the street prophet had dropped his sign and was having a vigorous argument with himself.  Maude parked Harold next to a bus bench.  She leaned over to a distinguished businessman wearing an expensive and very recently soiled suit who had taken refuge under it.  “I’m sorry,” she said gesturing toward her cell phone, “I don’t know how these things work can you please call for our ride?”  What answer the astonished man would have given is lost to history as at that moment he, and the bench, were stepped on by the 100-foot-tall lizard monster.  The world grieves the loss of a perfectly good bench.

                “Well, I’m sure I don’t know what all the hubbub is about!” Maude said to Harold.  Harold continued to aggressively not care.  At that moment a large military truck stopped next to them and uniformed personnel jumped out.  “Ma’am, please come with us!  We have to get you to safety!”  Maude handed them the card to their assisted living facility and mediumly squinted.  “Can you call for our ride?”  The officer looked over her shoulder at the creature who had the now ex-chief of police in its mouth and more forcibly suggested they take Harold and Maude themselves as the senior van crashed out of the sky in fiery ruin behind them on the sidewalk.

                A week later Maude hung up her rotary phone with a medium sigh.  She put the batteries back in Harold’s hearing aids and replaced them in his ears.  “I don’t know when we’ll ever get you back to the doctor.  Something apparently happened at their building and they aren’t taking any appointments!”  She shuffled off to their bedroom.  Harold sat quietly for a moment.  A slow smile crept across his face.  He pulled out the shriveled monkey paw he had won from his Jamaican neighbor in a game of checkers.  “Well, I’ll be damned” he said.

 

Epilogue

Harold and Maude were young and beautiful.  Harold confidently drove his Maserati across the Italian countryside, the wind whipping his long dark hair.  Maude, smiling in the passenger seat, was anything but medium and happened to be the leading cause of frying pan injury and divorce in at least 4 countries.  At a request from the back seat, Harold pulled over at a roadside farmer's market to pick up a small goat to feed their pet, a much more reasonably sized lizard monster.