Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly - The Fly & Code Yellow

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

“What are flies attracted to?” We’re talking hypochondria on the podcast this week with two stories revealing Dave’s undeniably hypochondriacal tendencies. Jess lets us into the secret of how Stuart was able to portray this trait of Dave’s so authentically. We start with an old favourite: The Fly. Then in our second story, Dave goes to visit a friend in the hospital. Result: Code Yellow! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We have two stories for you today. Two stories about Dave's hypochondria. It's hard to pick just two stories that illustrate this because there are so many, but we have a couple of classics for you today. And we're going to start with this one. I think this might be the one where we first learn about Dave's hypochondriacal tendencies. This is The Fly. Dave keeps a collection of smudged notes,

handwritten on cardboard, taped to the inside of the front door of his record store, The Vinyl Cafe, back in 15 minutes. I'm at Kenny Wong's. That's Wong's Scottish meat pies. Five stores along the street. Gone to the bank. He's been using some of those notes for years, and many of them are so smudged that Dave's the only one who can read them anymore. The small pleasure of going home at noon is one of the things that owning a second-hand record store allows you.

When you choose to paddle in the backwaters, people don't get bent out of shape when you pull to shore from time to time. Dave closes his store and goes home to eat lunch a couple of days a week. It's the only time he can count on being home alone, which being the father of a teenage daughter is a small pleasure that he's thankful for.

He enjoys getting to the mail before anyone else, sorting it out while he eats a sandwich or a bowl of soup. Dave came home to do just that in the middle of last week, and he found an envelope of the kind he's always hopeful of finding, the sort of letter that's the reason he bothers to check the mail. It was an ivory envelope of fine quality, and best of all, it was addressed to him in a handwriting that he did not recognize.

There was no return address. Now, a handwritten personal letter is not the sort of thing that you see every day of the week. It gave Dave pleasure just to hold it. The author had used a fountain pen. It was a touch that implied intimacy, a kind of extravagance, something an old girlfriend might do. Dave carried a sandwich to the table, and he ate half and wiped his hands carefully,

and then he picked up the letter, and he slid it open. Dear Dave, the salutation had been handwritten in the same ink as the address on the envelope, but the body of the letter had been typed. Printed, actually. It appeared to be a form letter.

There's no disappointment as painful as the fall that comes with great expectations. Dear Dave, This letter began five years ago in a small village on the coast of Turkey. It was written by a woman who lost her husband and children in a horrible traffic accident. Since she wrote this letter, it has traveled around the world five times, and it has brought fortune and good luck to those who have received it and not broken the chain. A lady in Brazil received a copy of this letter in 1997, and she sent copies to relatives and friends. Within a week, she won a lottery and now lives in a large house on Miami Beach surrounded by a fence. A dairy farmer in Britain threw his copy out,

and England was eliminated from the World Cup. You must make five copies of this letter and mail it to your friends or neighbors within 48 hours, you don't have to send them anything else. Don't tempt fate. Continue the chain. The letter was unsigned. Dave stared at the envelope. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it. He got up from the table, he carried it across the kitchen,

and he dropped it in the garbage can. He washed the dishes and he went back to work. But the thought of the letter tugged at him all afternoon. Dave knew perfectly well that making five copies and sending them to his friends wasn't going to bring him good luck. It was the bad luck he was worried about. good luck. It was the bad luck he was worried about. England had, after all, been eliminated from the World Cup. That night he pulled the letter out of the kitchen garbage and he flattened it and he folded it and he stuck it in the pocket of his pants. Dave went to bed feeling better, so good in fact that he completely forgot about the letter.

Until he found it a week later when he reached into his back pocket looking for his wallet. Dear Dave, don't tempt fate. Continue the chain. It was the same frustratingly familiar handwriting, but his 48 hours of grace were up. He had broken the chain. There would be no letters from him. The urge to pass the letter on was a defensive urge, an evasive action. Dave knows he's never going to win a lottery and live on Miami Beach, and he's comfortable with that, with the knowledge that he is not a winner, but he is also just as determined not to be a loser. Dave was on his way to work when he found that letter in his pocket, and it was with some anxiety

that he looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then walked to the corner and dropped it into a garbage can for the second time by the newspaper box. And as he did it, Dave sighed, a sigh of resignation, followed by a long, deeper in-breath, which is, as far as he can remember, the moment he inhaled something. Something that wasn't air. Something bigger than air. Something big enough to drive every thought out of his mind and send him reeling across the sidewalk, coughing, tearing, sputtering,

pedestrians gaping at him as if he were having a heart attack. Surely not now, he thought. Not even 50. Dave tried to work out what had happened. The last thing he remembered, he had thrown the letter out into the garbage can on the corner, and he looked over at the metal container, at the garbage spilling over the top, at the flies buzzing around. I just swallowed a fly, he thought. And his hand flew up to his chest involuntarily, and he touched himself, and then he took a few tentative steps away from the garbage can, and everything seemed to be working all right.

His legs were working, and he coughed gently, and he took a few more steps, and then he shrugged, and he began to sing softly to himself. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly. Well, I don't know why she swallowed the fly. I guess she'll... And he stopped dead. And as he stood on the sidewalk halfway between Kenny Wong's restaurant and his record store, the awful possibility hit him like a sledgehammer in the stomach.

Maybe he didn't swallow the fly. Maybe he inhaled it. Maybe the fly wasn't in his stomach where it would drown and be eaten by stomach acid and disposed of in the most fitting of all possible fly burials. Maybe the fly was in his lungs where there was oxygen, where it could presumably live and lay eggs. And the notion of having a lung full of flies horrified Dave. And Dave didn't want to die, especially a trivial death, unexpectedly on his way to work after a brief struggle with a chain letter.

He coughed and went into his store. And pretty soon he knew with certainty the fly was in his lungs. He could feel it. It was a weird sort of buzzing sensation. A tickle. It was less than a cough, but it was undoubtedly there. It wasn't normal. By three o'clock, David worked himself into a complete lather. Maybe it was a fly that came into the country in a shipment of exotic fruit. A fly that carried an obscure disease that only a few genetic types in the whole world

were susceptible to, and Dave was one of those people. And they'd never diagnose that. He'd get a fever and go into a coma, and then after a long and valiant fight in the hospital, the fever would suddenly break, and he would snap out of the coma, but he'd be speaking in a foreign language that no one could understand. Everyone would think he'd gone crazy until an elderly Egyptian orderly recognized the language as ancient Sumerian. It was 6 o'clock. It was time to close the store. Dave wasn't sure if he should go home or straight to the hospital. He went home, locked himself in the bathroom, and he took his temperature.

99.2. In that gray zone where you don't know which way it's heading. Whenever Dave starts to really get into a potential disease, he likes to do Tai Chi. He only knows a couple of Tai Chi movements, which he repeats over and over, but he feels they center him. So before dinner, he went into the backyard, and he started to do Tai Chi.

Now, Morley's been around long enough to know what's going on when this happens. So when Morley saw Dave in the backyard, awkwardly spinning and stretching and bending, she opened the window and she called out, Dave, she said, there's no such disease. What did she know? Dave knew he was going to die. The best he could hope for was that he might become a world-famous medical case and attract someone who could help him. Maybe along with a Sumerian, he'd develop the ability to solve complex mathematical equations. Maybe Dr. Oliver

Sachs would come from New York City to examine him. Dr. Sachs would watch Dave solve huge mathematical equations on a big blackboard in a university. Maybe they'd make a movie about him university. Maybe they'd make a movie about him, starring Robert Radford. Dave could see himself going to the opening of the movie at the film festival with his only friend in the world, the old Egyptian orderly. And he knew he had to do one thing, and he had to do it fast. He had to kill the fly. Until he killed the fly, he was not going to be able to function as a normal human being. And the only thing he could think of doing was to cut off the fly's supply of oxygen. But there was a problem.

This is Dave's supply of oxygen, too. Working on this sort of medical problem, which essentially involves auto-surgery, is not something Dave likes to do at home in front of his family. He told Morley he had to go back to work. He was too anxious to eat dinner. He said, I'm not hungry. I've got to go back to work. He let himself into the store and he spent a half an hour squatting on the floor behind the counter, trying to hold his breath for longer than a minute. And that's when Dave realized that

the fly probably wanted to get out of there as badly as he wanted it out. When he realized they weren't enemies. When he realized they were partners. This is what people who run management seminars call a shift in paradigms. Dave should help the fly, not punish it. He should show the fly the way home. And he stood in his record store and he looked around and his eyes landed on a table lamp on the counter beside the cash register. And he walked over to the lamp and he removed the shade and he flicked on the light and he opened his mouth as wide as he could. And he began to sink down

toward the light bulb with his mouth open wide, trying to get his lips as close to the bulb as he could. Which is what he was doing when his eyes caught movement at the front door. And he saw his friend Jim Schofield staring at him with his mouth wide open, wider than Dave's. Dave straightened up and unlocked the front door. I was just walking by, said Jim.

I didn't mean to look in. I swallowed a fly, said Dave. It's in my lungs. I thought it might be attracted to the light. I thought it might fly out to the light. That's moths, said Jim. What, said Dave? Moths, said Jim. It's moths that are attracted to light. Dave stared at his friend. What are flies attracted to, said Dave. There was a long and horrible moment of silence.

Jim said, do you have a vacuum cleaner? Dave glanced toward the back of the store. It was a reflex. Jim brightened. He said, we could use the crevice tool, the one for behind the radiator. Dave said, are you out of your mind? And Jim said, we could drown it. We could go to a pool and you could suck in a lung full of water.

Dave said, what about me? Jim said, we'll go to the Y where they have lifeguards. They'll know what to do about you. They're trained for that. You look after the fly, they'll look after you. Instead of going to the Y, they went to Horgas, humidors, and custom shirts, where Dave bought a $12 cigar. I'll smoke it out, he said.

He chose a Cruz Real number 19, dark and sinister looking, like a burnt stick. When he bought it to the cash register, the man behind the counter seemed to be trying to talk him out of it. That's a little on the strong side, he said. Good, said Dave. Actually, said the man, it has a sort of numbing effect. He lit the cigar on the street and he took a long, deep drag and he held the smoke in his mouth and then he inhaled it and near passed out. Jim stood beside him and said helpful things like, are you all right? And I'm not so sure you're supposed to inhale those things.

And then he said, aren't you supposed to drink brandy with those things? It was well after midnight when Dave got home. When he closed his eyes, the room began to spin, so he kept them open and he kept a hand on the floor to steady himself. And that's exactly the position he was in when he woke up at 11 o'clock the next morning, lying on his side with his mouth hanging wide open, his pillow wet from where he'd been drooling.

An awful thirst in his mouth. In his entire being, his mouth must have been open all night, and this strange whacking sound he didn't recognize coming from the other side of the room. Morley, he said, without moving, without rolling over. I phoned Brian, said Morley. Brian opened the store. Whack! There it was again. He rolled over. Morley was poised by the window.

A rolled newspaper raised in her right hand. There was a fly on the window walking toward the ceiling. And Morley drew the paper back and Dave said, wait, stop. Don't kill it. Just open the window. It'll go out by itself.

Thank you. That was the story we call The Fly. That was recorded back in 1998, like baby Stuart, over 30 years ago now. That's crazy. All right, we're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a minute with another story and a backstory about Stuart and his hypochondriacal tendencies. Believe me, you do not want to miss this.

So stick around. Welcome back. I told you we had two stories for you today, two stories about Dave's hypochondria. As I said, we had a lot to choose from. We learned a lot about Dave's hypochondria over the years, and I think I know why. Now, I have to say, if Stuart were here, he would jump in right now, and he would say he was not a hypochondriac. And I wouldn't argue with him. He would be right. not a hypochondriac. And I wouldn't argue with him. He would be right. Stuart was not a hypochondriac, but he was brushed by it. He was sprinkled with it. So he could understand it. He and I used to argue about this endlessly. And a couple of times we argued about it on stage

and on the radio. I would call him a hypochondriac, and he would say something mature like, I'm not! And then I would tell this story. This is me and Stuart, together in studio, back in November of 2008. Well, we have time for one more interview today, and I guess that means we have to bring

Vinyl Cafe producer Jess Milton in here. I was sort of hoping we wouldn't have time for Jess. Not that I don't love her, but she and I spent a lot of time together on tour, and she's always around for those moments where, well, those moments where you wish no one else was around, those embarrassing moments that you don't want to talk about on the radio, and I just know you're brimming with them. Oh, there's so many of them.

A large majority of the stories are about... Before you get any further, can we establish here that you are essentially a liar? You lie for a living, my friend. Yeah, but at least everybody knows it's fiction. My stuff comes out... Excuse me. My stuff comes out with the label fiction on it. Your stuff, you put your stuff out as fact.

You know what? The story that I would like to tell. The private moment that you want to drag out on the table. That's right. Parade in front of everybody who's listening. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I'll cut to the chase here.

I have no idea what's coming. This was just recently, actually. This was just back in our fall tour. So just a couple of months ago, a few months ago. And someone had given you one of those little Listerine. Oh, you're going to tell a story about the Listerine. Oh, you know I'm going to tell the story about the Listerine. Oh, you know I'm going to tell the story about the Listerine. So someone had given you a, you know those, they sell them in drugstores.

They're Listerine, but they're sprays. So the idea is like you open your mouth and spray it into the back of your mouth. And a little package about the size of a package of matches. Yeah. So someone had given this to you. It was in my pocket. It was in your pocket. It was always in your pocket.

And so anyway, so we're in a hotel. It was in Prince George. It was Prince George. We always stay at the same hotel there. So we're in Prince George. And, you know, I'm in my room, which is I think on the same floor as yours. And it's probably around nine in the morning or so. So I'd gotten up, done some work, and I got into the shower. And I'm in the shower and my phone rings. And I don't get it. I just figure whoever it is will leave a message, keep showering. Then my hotel room phone rings again, and I think, oh, geez, obviously something has happened here. So I run out of the shower and pick up the hotel phone, and I'm prepared. Like, in my head, I'm now prepared for the worst, right?

So I'm like, hello? And it's Stuart on the other end of the line. He goes, hi, hi. And I said, Stuart? And you said, yes. Oh, we've got a situation. Get down here. And I said, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

Stuart, what's wrong? And you said, just get down here. So I run down there and the door to his hotel room is open. And in my mind, the whole time I'm running on the floor, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, you know, Stuart's had a heart attack. You know, I'm thinking, what is the worst thing that could have happened? And I'm running down there. And

when I get into the hotel room, Stuart is standing there with pants on, but no shirt and no shoes. And he's sort of squatting, I think. Maybe like, if you can picture like a nine-year-old girl doing ballet, like a plie, is that what they call that? A plie? Liar. And this is not a lie. You're squatting and you're in this plie position and you've got your eye kind of pried open like it's that movie Clockwork Orange. And you've got

a coffee mug and you're pouring water into your left eye and you're going, Ah! Ah! And so I run in and I'm like, What the ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. And so I run in and I'm like, what the? And I see you and I go, what's going on? What's going on? Ah.

And then you just like shoot your hand out and you've got the Listerine. You've got the Listerine spray on your hand, right? And I said, well, what is this for? And you said, I sprayed it in my eye. At this point, I'm doing everything I can just not to start laughing. I'd been standing by the window thinking about the story, and I was holding the Listerine, and I had my chin in the palm of my hand, and I was playing with the Listerine thing,

which was pointed right at the eye. About half an inch. Like half an inch from my eye. And something compelled me to press the button. I don't know why. And it just blasted it right into my eyeball. Well, let's start with that, shall we? Like, who sprays Listerine into their eye?

Well, that makes me an idiot, not a hypochondriac. Well, the hypochondriacal thing starts in a second. Because you're pouring this water into your eye. And I understand, obviously, that would really hurt, just to pour Listerine into your eye. Really hurt? Have you ever thought what it would be like to have a wolverine gnawing on your eyeball?

No, have you? Anyway, so, you know, he's pouring this water. There's water everywhere. My feet are soaking wet now. I'm looking around. There's water all over the floor. It looks like a crime scene. And you said, I can't see!

And here it comes, folks. He goes, I've gone blind. You liar. I did not say that. No, you're right. You didn't say that. You say, I think I've gone blind. Anyway, we spent a good, what would you say, half an hour?

30 seconds? No, 45 minutes on the phone, first with Ontario Telehealth. And then with, ready, poison control. And then I had to talk you down from going to the emergency room. I thought we were going to have to cancel the show that night. Sorry, guys. We had to cancel the show because Stuart put mouthwash in his eye. Anyway, so it was great because you did get your vision back, didn't you?

Shortly, shortly after the incident. It's never been the same. No. And the joke on the rest of the tour was, gosh, my throat's really hurting. Can someone put a little Listerine in my eye? Anyway, it was fun. We had a lot of fun. And I'm not going to ask you to have any more stories because luckily we're just about through.

Because I do. Okay. You with me? You see what I mean what do you think like come on that's a bit hypochondriacal no anyway it's story time now this one is about dave we call it code yellow morning but an unhurried morning d Dave and Morley are in their kitchen, both of them doing their own stuff, both of them getting ready for the day ahead. When Dave says, I'm going to visit Marty this afternoon in the hospital,

Morley, who has her back to him, turns with her eyebrows arched, Really, she says. Come on, said Dave, that's not fair. Wasn't it fair? Dave's relationship with hospitals over the years has not been, well, without problems. Why, the very first time Dave and Morley were in a hospital together, Dave had fainted flat cold.

It was a week or so before Stephanie was born. They'd gone with their birthing class, the big tour. And halfway through it, the tour, when they were led into the actual birthing room and Dave came face to face with the moment of truth with the birthing table, his knees had buckled and he had staggered against the green concrete wall. Three of the other fathers picked him up and carried him across the room and laid him out on the table. picked him up and carried him across the room and laid him out on the table. It was Ron, the class clown, who had put Dave's feet into the stairs.

Come on, said Dave. That was over 20 years ago. Because what, said Morley, things have changed since then? It isn't that Dave is a full-blown hypochondriac. Morley would never say that. He isn't. But there's no denying he has hypochondriacal tendencies. And those tendencies mixed with his, well, with his personality, Those tendencies tend to get him into trouble. There was, for instance, the time he inhaled the fly.

He became convinced that the fly was alive in his lungs, was colonizing his lungs. There was a time in the drugstore when Dave got himself trapped in the cuff of the blood pressure chair. All his friends gathered around him, friends and neighbors watching the machine and his blood pressure inch up. They waited until his nose started bleeding before they called the fire department. Had to cut him out with the jaws of life. What, what, are you telling me I can't go,

said Dave? Of course not, said Morley. Of course not. You should go. I'm just telling you, just don't do anything stupid, Dave. Just don't embarrass me. Or Marty. Marty. Dave's pal, Marty, from the early days. Of all the guys from back then, no one would have pegged Marty to be the guy who would have a stroke. Two weeks ago, standing in his living room. He's walking again, said Dave, and they're talking about moving him to rehab. But he has to use one of those walkers. And Lillian says he's depressed.

She says he doesn't seem to care. It's like he's given up. I have to go see him. I'm not saying you can't, said Morley. I'm just saying I don't want any phone calls from the hospital. Marty had a bed on the seventh floor. When Dave got there, he was lying in his bed looking pale and deflated, like someone had let the air out of him.

His eyes were shut. His mouth was open. He was drooling a little. Marty, said Dave, you look great. Look terrible, said Marty. You think they don't have mirrors here? They sat together for half an hour, not saying much, sitting quietly the way old friends can sit when the only things to say are important things. There was a box of tissue on the side table, and every ten minutes or so, Dave grabbed a tissue and wiped Marty's chin. He threw the tissue in a garbage pail in the bathroom.

Every time he was in there, he pulled out a little bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed some in his hands. I can smell that stuff, said Marty. What, do you think strokes are contagious? David being there maybe an hour when he suggested they go outside. We should go for a walk, he said. Marty rolled his eyes. We could take a wheelchair, I could push you.

Marty said, I'm not going out like this. Dave said, come on, it's beautiful out, it'll make you feel better. Marty said, I'd feel like an idiot. Dave looked at his friend, at his sunken gray face at the blue hospital robe. Who would want to be seen looking like that? He was going to argue, but he didn't argue right, said Dave. He said it twice, right. Then he said, I'll be right back. I won't be long.

He almost sprinted out of the room. When he got back, Marty was asleep again, lying on his back, his mouth open, snoring quietly. Dave reached out and put his hand on his shoulder. Hey, he said softly, hey. on his shoulder. Hey, he said softly. Hey. Marty opened his eyes without moving. It took him a moment to register what he was looking at. And when it did register, he shook his head back and forth. No way, he said. Dave was standing beside the bed, beaming.

He was wearing a light blue hospital gown and nothing else. Dave said, one for all, all for one. There was a wheelchair beside him. He leaned over and he grabbed Marty under the arms to help him out of the bed and into the chair. Unfortunately, he hadn't put the brakes on the wheelchair. It was not the smoothest transition. At one point, Dave ended up sitting in the wheelchair with Marty sitting in his lap, the chair rolling across the room. It looked like some sort of new geriatric go-karty sort of event.

But they finally did it. We did it, said Dave, panting. As Dave pushed him down the corridor, Marty said, where'd you get it? Dave said, well, they have them in the lounge. Marty said, I mean the robe. Well, that's what had taken him so long. He looked everywhere. Finally, he had followed a porter onto an elevator.

The porter was pushing a steel cart full of linen. As the porter gazed at the floor numbers chunking by, Dave reached out, grabbed the gown from the cart, and stuffed it under his jacket. He changed in a washroom on Marty's floor at the far end of the hall. Wear your clothes, said Marty. He'd rolled his clothes up

and had hidden them on a shelf of supplies in the hallway. What, you don't think that's a good idea? Shelf on a cart with swabs and masks and gowns and sterile pads and Dave's clothes stuffed at the back. They took the elevator down to the main floor. The gowns they were both wearing were the ones that tied in the back. Dave's ended just above his knees. He looked ridiculous, which of course was exactly the way he wanted to look. They went out the back door into a little garden,

and they sat in the sun. After a while, Marty said, You're right. It is nice out here. It makes me feel lighter. Dave said, How about going to Rebecca's for a coffee? Marty looked horrified. Marty said, are you crazy? I can't leave the hospital grounds.

Some guy tried that last week. Some old guy. You should have seen what happened. What had happened was they had called a code yellow. Missing patient. Marty twisted around in the wheelchair trying to make eye contact. They shut down

all the elevators. There were guards on all the doors. Times have changed, Dave. You can't fool around the way we used to. Dave wasn't listening. Dave was already pushing Marty toward the sidewalk. Dave believed the outing would do Marty good. Marty just closed his eyes and slid down in the wheelchair. Oh, no, here we go, said Marty.

They were heading to a little cafe in Anderson Mill, a place Marty went to all the time. They got their coffees, two flat whites. They took them across the street to a little park by a school. It was nearly four in the afternoon when Dave wheeled Marty back to his room. Dave wasn't about to admit it, but he felt a sense of relief when they got there to be back. He had spotted a security guard watching them in front of the hospital, and he felt a rush of panic. He thought the guard was going to bust them,

and dear God, he was determined not to, you know, mess this up. Marty hadn't noticed. Marty said, that was determined not to, you know, mess this up. Marty hadn't noticed. Marty said, that was good, the coffee. You were right, I enjoyed it, he said. Dave said, we'll do it again. Thanks, said Marty. I've been feeling... He didn't want to finish the sentence.

But Dave didn't say anything, so he had to. I've been feeling sad. Neither of them moved for a moment after that. Then Dave leaned over and gave Marty a hug. I'll see you, he said. And then he turned to leave and as he turned he reached around to his backside thinking to himself that when he was leaned over hugging Marty there must have been a full moon rise. And so he laughed and he wandered down the corridor to the cart where he had hidden his clothes

and when he got there the cart was gone this is the part of the story where I catch up with you we're all on the same page now. Dave looked where the car was supposed to be. He said, oh, come on. There was a bathroom down the hall. He went in and locked the door behind him. He just needed a moment alone. He needed a moment to figure this out. Stood there in the darkness for a minute, staring at the locked door, and then he flicked on the lights, and when he did, he just about jumped out of his skin. There was someone in there with him. Excuse me, he said, jumping. I'm so sorry. And the stranger jumped at exactly the same moment he did,

exactly, and said exactly the same thing, which is when Dave realized he was staring at his own blue rope self in the mirror. He was just about to open the washroom door when he heard the announcement. Code yellow, code yellow, code yellow. The woman on the public address system repeated herself three times. Standard procedure. Dave stood there with his hand on the door, listening intently. Were they talking about him and Marty?

Had the security guard filed a report? The PA system interrupted his questions. Cold yellow, said the woman one more time. Then she said, white, middle-aged patient, brown hair. Well, could be anyone. Which meant, of course, could be Dave. Locked in the seventh floor bathroom, Dave frowned. Something told him this was not good news.

What did he know? Well, he knew this. He knew he had to get out of the hospital without a scene. And to do that, he knew he had to get out without anyone seeing him. He opened the bathroom door and he looked around the hallway. There was a stairwell at the far end of the hall. Figured there'd be a fire door at the bottom. He figured, right.

And he made it all the way to the second floor when he heard the burst of radio static coming up the stairwell toward him. And so he stopped and he peered over the railing and he saw the security guard from outside. Now how could he possibly explain himself? Sneaking down the stairwell in a hospital gown during a code yellow.

All he knew was he didn't want Morley getting a phone call from hospital security. And so he slipped through the exit door and out onto the second floor. And then, without stopping to think, into the first room he came upon. A patient's room. And gloriously empty.

He went into the room, and then he went into the bathroom, and he shut the door behind him. His heart was pounding. He waited in there for, well, what seemed like an eternity, and then he came out, and when he did, the security guard was standing in the hallway waiting for him, and their eyes locked. And Dave smiled.

And in a moment of divine inspiration, he did not break the guard's gaze. He just smiled, and then he turned, and he crossed the empty room and crawled into the empty hospital bed. The guard came in and stared at him. And Dave just closed his eyes and pretended he was going to sleep. And he heard the guard leave.

And while he lay there trying to settle his heart, he pondered his next move. And while he did that, a nurse breezed in carrying a dinner tray. Hello, she said, my name's Dana, it's supper time. And she placed a tray on the tall table by the side of the bed, and she pushed it in front of him, and then she stood there. Only thing Dave could do was eat the meal. It's good, said Dave, as he spooned the cold mashed potatoes into his mouth. Eat your dessert, said the nurse.

She was pointing at a bowl of applesauce. Thanks, said Dave. I'm okay. I mixed your medication into it, she said. It'll help you sleep. And she picked up his spoon, and Dave watched in horror as she dipped it into the drugged applesauce. And she held the spoon up to his mouth. Open up, she said.

What else could he do? She made sure he finished every last bit. He woke up four hours later. And when he woke, he was on a gurney. And there was a man in blue scrubs wheeling him down a corridor. Hey, said the man in the scrubs, you ready? What, said Dave, and he tried to sit up, but he couldn't sit up because he was strapped to the gurney. What are these straps for, said Dave.

And the man in the scrubs said, well, people often lash around during the procedure. There's been a mistake, said Dave, I don't need a procedure a procedure and the orderly said that's what they all say then he maneuvered the cart around a corner and into a room that looked exactly like the birthing room except it wasn't the birthing room. Dave caught a sign on the doors that swung shut behind him. Proctology. Proctology. By the book, the orderly should not have left Dave alone in there. But he did.

It was only two minutes, and he was, after all, strapped down. When he returned, Dave was still strapped to the gurney, but he was no longer lying on top of it. He'd flipped it over The gurney was on top of him Dave was trying to squirm his way to the door With a gurney tied on his back No hands He looked like a seal on a piece of ice

The next time he came to He looked like a seal on a piece of ice. The next time he came to, he was in the emergency ward. A young intern was stitching up a gash in his forehead. Marty was sitting in the corner. Marty was beaming. Marty had heard the code yellow and put two and two together. It was Marty who had identified him. Hey, said Marty when Dave opened his eyes.

You look good. I look terrible, said Dave. And then he looked at the intern. He told you I'm not the missing guy, right? Oh, yeah, said Marty. That was some guy who was supposed to be having a proctology procedure. Dave sat up and looked at the clock on the wall. It was after 8. Dave said, I'm so out of here. The intern was shaking his head.

Head injury, said Marty. You're in for 24 hours observation. They put you in my room. An hour later, they were lying in their respective beds, Dave tugging at his ID bracelet like it was a pair of handcuffs. Marty was having the time of his life. Marty was holding up his cell phone, waving it back and forth. Sometimes, said Marty. Dave said, you call her for me. Tell her there was an accident.

Tell her I'm in a coma. Marty said, I'm a stroke victim. That's too sophisticated for me. And he flipped the cell phone across the room and Dave caught it. And Marty sank back on his pillows and he reached out and he turned off the lights. And the two of them lay there in the darkness for maybe five minutes. And then Marty snorted and giggled and smiled. And across the dark room, he said, good night, John boy. He hadn't had this much fun for years.

That was the story we call Code Yellow. We recorded that story in the wonderful Station Theatre in Smiths Falls, Ontario. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a sneak peek from next week's episode. So stay with me. Okay, that's it for this week's show, but we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including this one. A story about the time Morley offers to house sit

for their new neighbors and look after their fish. She had considered how nice it would be if they could treat it like their own. She'd considered how nice it could be if they could move in. So that every time she flushed a toilet, she wouldn't have to jiggle a toilet handle until she heard something in the tank go clunk. So she would have a stove where all the burners worked on all the settings, not just the back left one. That's next week on Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. You can hear the whole story next week on the podcast. In the meantime, if you want to find out, well, anything,

you can check out our website, vinylcafe.com, and you can also find us on Facebook and Instagram. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Greg Duclude is our recording engineer. Theme music is by my friend Danny Michelle. The show is produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton.

Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.