I took a nap yesterday afternoon and had this dream.
The unit secretary and I were trying to load an elderly patient into a wheelchair for transport to her daughter's vehicle for discharge home. Her daughter was one of those entitled-seeming, late 50's aged women in khaki capris who never smile, unless engaged in some sort of manipulation, and then only with their mouths and never with their eyes and you sense you're expected to be giving special treatment to due to their prominence in the community. I didn't recognize her, nor do I generally respond in the desired fashion when I do. I make a habit of pretending I've never heard of them which seems to bother them more than anything. These are the very people I abhor even more than most.
She was going ahead of us out the doors to the waiting area to fetch her vehicle, a Lincoln Continental SUV I'm sure, with a heated steering wheel, or some such. She'd barely passed through the door when the patient became invisible. I was grateful her daughter didn't appear to have noticed, hoping we'd have time to locate the old woman and, hopefully, reverse this new symptom or at least get her in the vehicle before her daughter noticed. I thought to myself, 'she's not going to want to take her mother home in this condition'.
I was attempting to strap her into the wheelchair (?) but was uneasy because, not only was she invisible, we were also unable to feel her. I was going through the motions to secure her but wasn't entirely certain she wasn't lying dead on the floor somewhere between the chair and the stretcher we'd just transferred her from. I was sure hoping she'd reappear as she was five minutes from a successful discharge and I wasn't certain her daughter wouldn't notice should she not reappear before we loaded her into the vehicle. And then I woke up.
The fact that this is loaded with revealing symbolism is not wasted on me.
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