Strange Sails

She plucks a clover from the ground; presses it flat between two pages in a book, somewhere in a chapter about kings; removes it and places it under the mattress; closes her eyes and begins to dream.

* * *

A creature stirs.  It kicks and thrusts a foot and fist at the air.  It rips off transparent vines – riggings that have kept it at bay – and pulls itself to its feet.  ‘I AM HUNGRY,’ it cries.  ‘I AM HUNGRY!  Goo goo g’joob.  GIVE ME FOOD!’  It tosses aside an isolette cover as a shroud – a creature, no longer a creature, emerging as a child – and she dives to the floor, navigating the strange waters and beings that chase her in vain.  She cries, ‘Goo goo g’joob, GIVE ME FOOD!’ and goes about plundering the unit.  Others stir and wake.  An accomplice springs from his chamber bed, bounding from flotsam to jetsam in her wake.  They kick and bounce and stream in tune ‘Goo goo g’joob, GIVE ME FOOD!  Goo goo g’joob, GIVE US FOOD!’  One by one, the multitude creatures wake and wail and tear into the wreckage.  Each crying, ‘Goo goo g’joob, GIVE ME FOOD!’

The event is chaos.  Bedlam.  Pan’s de-monium.  The end of a plank, the end of a Geisel story, the end of the sidewalk as a
feline and duck debate
the Walrus berates the
Yipiyuk first mate

In its decades long history, the staff had never experienced an incident such as this before as 52 & 2 infants declared mutiny and stormed the sixth floor NICU at Memorial Hospital.