Jacob woke to a damp and sour world. As his eyes came into focus, he noticed a circling fly come to rest at the edge of a puddle of milk. Jacob couldn’t remember how he got to the floor but was pretty sure he fell. Again. He tried to move, but pain arrested his efforts. His head was pulsing in time with the whooshing sound in his ears. His head hurt, but if he remained still, it was the only source of pain. Moving his limbs or trying to right himself brought alarms from all quarters. He attempted to retrace the time leading up to his plight and remembered bringing groceries into the kitchen. He recalled a jug in his hand, which accounted for the unhappy shallow of curdling milk. He reasoned that as he fell, the milk jug crashed to the floor and exploded, and reformed in a tainted circle of fluid. Or maybe he poured a glass of milk and fainted, spilling the contents on the floor—no way to know really, unless one of the cameras in the house captured something.
***
Months earlier, when a doctor from the ER called Jacob’s daughter and told her about her father’s falls, she insisted he upgrade to a smart home. The doctor said her father had been to the ER twice before due to his falls. Jacob lied when she asked how often he fell, just as he lied to the doctor at the ER, and his internist at the follow-up appointment.
“I just got tangled up in my oxygen hose. I was in a hurry to go to the bathroom,” Jacob told his doctor, his daughter eyeing him for any curtailment of his history. He regretted the fall and resented the scrutiny it brought. His daughter nagged him for weeks, then resumed her usual pattern of calling him on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and his birthday but otherwise leaving him alone. After a few months of ongoing falls, Jacob figured out his daughter never reviewed the home surveillance footage as she had threatened to do.
He didn’t tell anyone about his falls in the bathroom, both on the toilet and in the shower. Or the ones in the bedroom, hallway, and kitchen. He joked to himself after developing road rash from sliding down a textured wall that he should crawl around his house to be on the safe side, “Wah, wah, I’m a baby again! Bring me my bottle!” he joked to himself
***
Stranded on the floor in a puddle of milk, he wished for a drink. It would pass the time and maybe numb him enough that he could get up. He tried to gauge how long he’d been on the floor. The lights in the kitchen were off and he could see it was daytime. But morning or afternoon? Maybe he’d been on the floor all night. He didn’t feel hungry, and his milk-soaked clothes hid any clues that he may have wet himself. He couldn’t see any maggots wriggling around in the milk, so probably fewer than five days had passed. He tried to remember a story he’d seen on 20/20 about seniors falling and the complications that ensued. He was pretty sure he hadn’t broken his hip or his arm because the pain when he tried to move was global. He felt rusted in place, and couldn’t break loose.
“Rhabdomyolysis!” Jacob said out loud, proud he could remember the name of the condition. Hugh Downs spoke to the camera with that slightly smug look on his face describing 20/20 viewers falling the floor, lying unconscious on a hard surface for too long, and causing their muscles to dissolve. This caused pain, kidney failure, and death. Cue commercial for Medic Alert.
As Jacob watched the flies circle the milky pond, he noticed a few maggots swimming along like albino Olympians. He fell asleep and, after a few hours, died.
***
A woman with the serene expression of the Botoxed sat in bed, lit by the blue light of her laptop. She looked through the live feed of a wireless camera and zoomed in on a figure sprawled on the floor. She squinted, watching carefully for any signs of movement. Seeing none, she said, “Finally.”
She picked up her phone, “Hello? 911? I need to report an accident. I think my father just had a fall.”