Chapter 1—Diana, Norma, Ellen and Susan
Diana was sick and tired of people putting dirty dishes in the community kitchen cupboards. She got mad at a girl named Norma, yelling at her for doing so. So Norma got revenge, taking the dishes to her room, licking them, and bringing them back and putting them in the kitchen cupboards. “They want to see dirty?” she fumed. “I’ll show them dirty!”
Norma had covid.
She also knew Diana was too lazy to wash dishes before eating off them, and that that was why Diana had been so upset about the last people who had used the dishes and put a greasy dish and a stained dish back in the cupboard.
Diana ate off one of Norma’s plates and got covid from it. Then Diana unintentionally coughed in a girl named Ellen’s face and gave her covid. Ellen yelled at Diana, “You HYPOCRITE! Cover your mouth when you cough!”
Shamed and exposed as a hypocrite, Diana joined forces with Norma to start a Covid 19 support group at Anne’s House, with just the three of them.
Then a girl named Susan walked in on the covid support group, asking if there was some kind of group going on and if she could join in. When they opened their mouths to tell her to get out because they were contagious, all three went into a coughing fit and Susan ran over to see if they’re alright.
“Get lost!” Norma said.
“That’s no way to talk to me! I’m here to help!” Susan said.
“Get OUT! NOW!” Diana shouted.
“You’re rude. I’m not leaving until you explain why you’re treating me like this and apologize,” Susan said.
Ellen, Diana and Norma ran to the other end of the room.
“You’re treating me like I’m contagious!” Susan shouted. “Of all the nerve!” She ran up and got in their faces. “Scared of my germs, are you?”
“No, but you should be scared of ours,” Ellen said. “We’re contagious.”
But it was too late. The covid support group had to change its name from the Terrible Trio to the Four Freaks.
Chapter 2—Rita, Leslie, Danielle
Rita lived at the house too. She collected everything. It would be a tragedy, she reasoned, if she threw away a newspaper and then needed it the next week. And besides, whoever and WHATever she met she formed an emotional attachment to. Newspapers, cigarette butts, pens that have run out of ink, used Kleenex, empty milk cartons (but she never, of course, washed them out, because she was also emotionally attached to the drops of milk inside the cartons).
Everything. Unmentionable stuff, some of it.
She also never showered. She was too emotionally close to her dirty clothes to take them off. Anyway, she used her bathtub to store more garbage in.
Then she would go around hugging people because she felt close to them. She spent all her time in the community room, for three reasons: her room was too full of garbage, she couldn’t go out because she smelled like garbage, and she felt close to the people at Anne’s House.
It was a public health hazard.
Finally, a girl named Leslie told her she was abusing and mistreating the garbage she had collected; that its proper home was at the dump or the recycling center where it could socialize with other garbage.
“You have a point,” Rita said. “But I would miss them too much if I threw them away.”
“But you’re abusing it!” Leslie persisted, trying to convince Rita to clean her room.
Finally, Leslie and her friend Danielle barged into Rita’s room and cleaned it out, putting the garbage in the garbage and the recyclables in the recycling bins.
Rita was now at a loss. She was too emotionally attached to Leslie and Danielle to get mad at them, but she couldn’t just let them do it again! She hurried and got all her garbage out of the garbage and recycling bins, plus more garbage she found there that she became emotionally attached to just by looking at it, and brought it all back to her room. Now she had more than ever, and was running out of space in her room.
She asked for a second room, but all the rooms were occupied, and anyway, the staff didn’t want more garbage in the building. So Rita melted down. She got mad at the situation, because she couldn’t get mad at her stuff, her room, the building, the staff, or the other girls living in her building. She was too attached to all of them… and all the garbage.
Rita jumped up and down with rage, then realized she might be hurting the floor by doing so. She was emotionally attached to the floor too. She apologized to the floor, then got down and stroked it gently with her hand.
People started calling her the Horrible Hoarder.
The staff sent her to the mental hospital.
Chapter 3—Natasha, Cassie, Lydia, Leslie, Danielle
Natasha had Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and also lived at Anne’s House. She washed her hands 85 times whenever she had to wash them. One day, she touched her dirty door handle when closing the door on her way out. She got so angry that she had to wash her hands 85 times AGAIN, that she slammed her door 85 times.
Her neighbor, Cassie, was tired of hearing her opening and closing her door 85 times, flushing the toilet 85 times, and taking 85 showers a day. Natasha’s routine literally took all day. This was why she had no job. Anyway, also for this very reason, she was considered mentally ill and unable to work and given welfare.
Another woman, Lydia, was fed up with Natasha drinking 85 cups of coffee each day and leaving none for anyone else.
Then Leslie, the same resourceful lady who had tried to convince Rita to clean her room, had another great idea, this one to convince Natasha to break her 85 habit.
“What you need,” she said, “is for your magic number to be 1.”
“No,” Natasha said. “Something terrible will happen if I don’t do it 85 times.”
Leslie said, “Then take 85 teaspoonfuls of coffee instead of 85 cups.”
Natasha said, “No, I have to do what everyone else would do once, 85 times. People don’t take one teaspoon of coffee; they take one cup.”
“At least she doesn’t think people take two cups,” Danielle muttered to Leslie as they walked away. “Because… what’s 85 plus 85?”
“More than what we’ve got, at any rate,” Leslie said.
“Hey, Natasha!” Danielle said. “When you say something, why don’t you say it 85 times?”
“Don’t give her ideas,” Leslie muttered.
“Because I talk 85 times a day,” Natasha said. “I don’t have to say the same thing 85 times because people don’t necessarily say that thing during their day.”
“Oh, boy,” Leslie groaned. “What are we going to do?”
“I heard the doctor was afraid to give her meds because she might take 85 times the regular dose in one day,” Danielle shared. “So antidepressants that help with obsessive thinking seem to be out of the question.”
“How old are you?” Leslie said to Natasha.
“32,” Natasha said.
“Not 85 times 32,” Leslie said. “If you can admit that, then you can admit that the whole universe isn’t the number 85 and doesn’t revolve around the number 85, and your life doesn’t either.”
This gave Natasha something to think about.
Chapter 4—Glenda, Vicki, Danielle, Leslie
Glenda thought she might—or rather, did—have a deadly cancer. She shook with fright as she sat researching it on the computer in the community room.
“Oh. My. God,” Glenda said. “It says people with this cancer feel fine. I feel fine.”
A woman named Vicki snorted with laughter.
“You’re laughing and I have a deadly disease!” Glenda shrieked. “Do you think it’s funny that I’m dying?”
“No. It’s what you said about feeling fine.”
“That I have a deadly symptom: feeling fine?” Glenda said.
“No… that you think that’s a symptom. It’s the opposite of a symptom. It’s not evidence you’re dying; it’s the opposite!”
“But I had all the tests and they were all negative for everything.
That can only mean this deadly cancer. No diabetes, Lyme’s disease, celiac disease, AIDS, SARS including covid, other cancers besides this deadly one, Parkionson’s, Alzeimer’s, epilepsy, asthma or benign tumors! That means I have a tumor hidden somewhere inside me!”
“Did you have an MRI of your whole body?” Vicki said.
“Yes. I also had other scans, x-rays, blood tests, biopsies, and more.”
“And?”
“It was all negative. If all tests are negative, it rules everything out but this rare cancer!”
“But if they’ve seen every part of your body, it rules the rare cancer out too,” Vicki said.
Glenda suddenly changed. “You’re right, Vicki,” she said. “Oh my God… thinking that… I must have a mental illness! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my GOD! I must have schizophrenia, or hypochondria, or a personality disorder, or—“
“You have hypochondria,” Danielle said, coming up behind them.
“Oh my God, do you think so? That’s a serious illness!” Glenda said.
“Here we go again,” Vicki said.
“I can cure you,” Leslie said. “All you need to do to cure yourself of hypochondria is to believe you are not sick.”
Problem solved.
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