By Jon Moray
This story first appeared in an online magazine called Written Tales in December 2024 and was inspired by a story idea courtesy of my father-in-law, Mr. Joe Marti while he was ailing in a hospital bed in Central Florida. This piece was mostly rough drafted in the hospital room during visits with ideas bouncing between him and I. Mr. Marti has since gone on to his eternal reward in February 2025 and this story is dedicated to his loving memory. Enjoy!
Jo-An hung up the phone, perturbed at the news.
“What’s going on?” her husband, Jon asked, with a tilted head.
“He needs to go to the hospital again,” she slumped to the dining room chair. “This time, it’s his legs. They are filled with water up to the knee.”
The two picked up her dad and Jo-An informed her mom she would call with an update as soon as she could. They drove off into the star lit night to the local hospital they had just been to a week ago. Their forty-minute drive enroute was uneventful until they began seeing glowing neon signs advertising a new hospital.
“I don’t remember a hospital this close to your house, Mr. Marti,” Jon commented.
“It’s less than halfway to the other hospital,” added Jo-An.
“Make the next turn, and let’s try this new hospital,” Mr. Marti exclaimed. “I can’t stand the other place. They screw up my records, and the food is terrible.”
Jon and Jo-An shrugged a ‘why not’ and heeded to the old man’s request.
They made a right and drove a mile on an unlit side road when they spied a futuristic illuminated powder blue domed building with a cylindrical parking garage on the side.
“Wow,” Mr. Marti marveled. “Technology at its finest.” The son-in-law commented the hospital was void of a parking lot, vehicles, and an emergency entrance, as the soon to be patient gawked open mouth at the odd edifice.
They drove into the parking garage and to a section where a worker with a metallic reclining wheelchair greeted them.
“Welcome, Mr. Marti,” smiled the orderly. “We have been expecting you.”
The trio looked at each other perplexed.
“This is really odd. We’ve never been here before, yet they know you,” Jo-An stammered.
“Of course. We have been monitoring your dad for quite some time and taking note of his ailments. We will do our best to ease many of them.”
The orderly wheeled him around winding low lit radiused corridors that led to a huge room with glowing monitors shaped as orbs of various sizes floating in the air. A loud vibrating hum emanated as an orderly drew the curtain to reveal a concaved window showing the hospital slowly lifting off the ground. The parking garage retracted into a pocket that, when fully closed, formed a seamless exterior.
Suddenly, a doctor and several nurses entered the room, and simultaneously, their human makeup dissolved revealing their alien features: diagonal slanted periwinkle eyes, pinhole nostrils, and sky-blue colored bodies with elongated heads. Long, thin fluttering fingers without nails filled out their features.
“As you might’ve guessed, we are aliens…Martians, to be exact, and you, Mr. Joe Marti is our very first geriatric patient.”
Mr. Marti’s eyes lit up like a boy at a toy store as her daughter and son-in-law braced each other up from fainting away.
The Martians went on to explain they heard of his plight by monitoring him on a prior visit to an Earth hospital, observed he was reading a Science Fiction alien anthology book, and felt he was the ideal senior candidate to showcase their medical advances.
“Many of our techniques are experimental, but they should be harmless. No needles, no blood work, just Martian non-probing technology. No papers to sign, no medicines to take, just a simple okay will begin the non-invasive procedure.”
Mr. Marti shook his head excitedly, mimicking a bobblehead, as the two family members resigned to his whim while mentally questioned their sanity. The orbs circled the old man displaying his vital numbers to the medical staff and his family.
The doctor instructed his patient to sit up and enjoy the view of the stars provided by a oval skylight above as the nurses went to work with hands hovering over the parts of his body that were in discomfort.
Mr. Marti sighed blissfully as the soothing feeling and the optical treat of space made him feel younger by the minute.
“His blood pressure and heart rate are normalizing with ease,” Jon commented, with eyes locked on the floating orbs.
I still cannot believe we are in a Martian spaceship hospital. This has got to be someone’s dream, but who’s?” asked Jo-An.
“Who cares? As long as we are returned safely and he is happy, all is good,” Jon answered.
“Mangy and Linda will never believe this. They would have us all committed,” Mr. Marti giggled. Mangy is his wife and the pet name he gave her before they were married. Linda is his youngest daughter.
“How do you feel?” asked the Martian doctor.
“Like a million bucks,” Mr. Marti sang.
“And it won’t cost you a penny.”
The spaceship began its descent back down to Earth.
“Contrary to belief, we don’t abduct humans, we try to heal them, especially those that keep a welcoming open mind towards interplanetary life,” the main doctor commented. We have healed several Earthlings, but never the elderly, until now.”
The spaceship rotated to a soft landing as the dreamy-eyed patient basked in painless comfort. “Do you make house calls?” he kidded.
The Martian hospital staff laughed in unison that mimicked a thunderous applause. The amicably abducted trio were led back to the parking garage and drove away, as Mr. Marti spied a glimpse in the rear-view window of the wondrous Martian spaceship hospital spinning up into the night.
Moray Writes 