“Excuse you?” the older girl in the hospital bed asked, frowning. “A plain is a flat piece of land…”

“No-well, yes. But not that type of plane. I’m talking about an airplane,” an older woman stated, trying to solve the young woman’s confusion. 

“There’s floating land in the sky?” the girl responded, head whipping to look out the window. “I don’t see such a thing. Please don’t lie to me so obviously.”

“No, not the land, plain. We have a vehicle that flies like a gliding bird in the sky. We call those airplanes,” the woman sighed, exasperated. 

“Madam, I am unsure of why you keep telling me about these mechanical birds in the sky. Will I be going near one soon?” the girl questioned from her hospital bed. The older lady shook her head.

“No, I supposed not. And you brat, it’s ‘grandma,’ not ‘madam.’” The grandmother clicked her tongue as she peeled an orange for the patient in the bed. 

“... Grandmother… When will my elder sisters be back?” she asked, looking at the empty beds next to her. The elderly woman frowned. 

“Emily, I’ve told you time and time again. They are not your sisters, but just friends from school. I’m not sure why you are so insistent, no matter how close you are.”

“Madam-”

“Grandma,” the elder woman corrected sternly. 

“Grandmother…” the young woman named Emily replied. “My name is Penelope, not Emily. I’m not sure how you keep confusing us - unless your elderly sight has deteriorated to such a point to confuse us because we both have brown hair…”

“Rude child…” the grandmother slapped the leg of the girl through the blanket. “My eyesight is perfectly operational. Stop talking like you’re some novel radio announcer reading a radio drama.”

“I… Grandmother, I don’t know what that is…” Emily/Penelope responded with a sigh. “With how insistent you are, I’m starting to believe my brother hired you to drive me to insanity.”

“I keep telling you, you don’t have a brother,” the grandmother groaned. 

“Oh, how I wish that was actually true sometimes…” the girl shook her head as she looked back out the window, frowning at the unrecognizable landscape within view before mumbling to herself, “but it’s in moments like these that I miss that overprotective narcissist.”

“Just marry this narcissist if you miss him so much. Usually means they’re handsome,” the grandmother commented, continuing to peel yet another uneaten orange. Emily/Penelope stared at the grandmother with a pale face and her mouth gapped open before she leaned over the bed, snatched the small garbage bin, and emptied her stomach into it.