Plot summary
Liz Powell awakens in her hospital room by the loud ticking of a clock. She knocks a glass of water to the floor, shattering it, then follows the sound of footsteps into the hall. She sees a nurse, half-hidden in shadow, descend to the basement in the elevator. She follows the nurse down and finds the hospital morgue, room 22. The nurse emerges from the room and says, "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and flees to the elevator.
Liz awakens, the experience being a nightmare. Liz is a professional dancer working in a nightclub, hospitalized for exhaustion, and she has been having the same recurring, vivid nightmare. She insists the dream is really happening to her, although her agent, Barney, seems doubtful. Her doctor tries to assure her this is impossible. He produces the night nurse who attends the morgue, and Liz does not recognize her. The doctor suggests Liz try an experiment in lucid dreaming and alter one detail of the dream.
That night, the dream begins again. Liz visualizes a pack of cigarettes next to the glass on the nightstand. When the clock awakens her, she reaches for a cigarette instead of the glass. She drops the lighter, and while reaching to retrieve it, her other hand knocks the glass to the floor. The dream continues as before, ending in the morgue. Liz awakens hysterical, and a nurse is required to hold her down while the doctor sedates her. The doctor tells the nurse it is odd that Liz, who has never seen the real morgue, knows it is room number 22.
After several days, Liz is discharged from the hospital. She goes to the airport to fly to her next booking in Miami Beach. She buys her ticket and is told she will be on Flight 22. She begins experiencing sensory details from the dream: she is thirsty, distracted by the ticking of a clock that only she can hear, bumps into a woman carrying a vase which drops and shatters, and hears loud footsteps. She crosses the tarmac to her plane and climbs the boarding stairs. As she reaches the top, a stewardess identical to the nurse from the dream emerges from the cabin and says, "Room for one more, honey." Screaming, Liz stumbles down the stairs and races back to the terminal. Outside the terminal, Flight 22 taxis to the runway, takes off—and explodes.
Credits
Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Twenty Two (The Twilight Zone). Paragraphs and formatting adjusted; illustrations, reference markers, block quotations and non-story material omitted.