This single line of dialogue struck terror in the soul of a 10 year old boy on February 10, 1961. Prepare for a peek into my past as a not-so-interesting dive into how I became the psycho that I am.
No television show has ever made such a deep impression on me like The Twilight Zone. I looked forward to it every week. On the occasions when I was alone in the house I would turn it on with trembling hands and fear in my heart. But no episode affected my sleep to the degree of “Room for One More, Honey.” In the episode a hospital patient, Liz Powell, would have a very realistic dream where she would awaken in the night and inexplicably be drawn to take the elevator down to the basement morgue where the door swung open and a goth-looking nurse sneered “Room for one more, Honey!” This would send Liz screaming back to her room to wake up and me struggling to avoid wetting myself.
I will leave the details of the story for you to discover as I don’t want to ruin it for you. But fast forward about 18 years ahead. Linda and I were in a tight financial squeeze that led me to work two full-time jobs for about 8 months. My night job was driving a cab with a special assignment to run time sensitive shipments between hospitals and laboratories (characterized by my cousin as ‘delivering spleens’), usually internal fluids for drug testing. This night I was given the task of running a Stryker Saw from another hospital to the morgue at Queen of Angels Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. I was not thrilled with the assignment, especially since it was after midnight, but I made it down the creepy basement hallway and rang the bell at the morgue. I braced myself for the nurse that would swing open the door and inform me there was room, (if anyone had tapped my shoulder from behind I would have flooded the hallway).
I apologize, but after this dramatic build-up the end of the story is a bit anticlimactic. A very normal looking middle-aged doctor, gloved and wearing a rubber apron emerged and said something like “Oh thanks, we are in the middle of an autopsy and the saw broke.” Why I prolonged the encounter I do not know but I asked about the use of the saw. “We are removing the skull to examine the brain.” So while I relaxed to a degree, the image of that has stuck with me to this day.
It has made watching certain television shows challenging. Grey’s Anatomy, Saving Hope, NCIS; all surgeries and autopsies are endured with my eyes tightly shut. Then, without exchanging words, Linda taps my leg when I can safely open them again. Yet another reason I can’t live without her, the real point of this boring story.