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Literature Text
You’ve run out of excuses to leave her.
The need for coffee runs to the downstairs cafe, at first plentiful as the situation was urgent, have trickled to a halt. Everyone is caffeinated; everyone has a styrofoam cup to duck their faces into, hiding sad eyes and worry lined lips behind store brand logos and steam. If they cry out it’s because the liquid is too scalding, that’s all.
You already know where the bathroom is. You know where every bathroom is on every floor, down every hall. You’ve explored this building, and the parking garage attached to it, from basement to ceiling. You don’t know them better than the back of your hands because you’ve never paid much mind to the backs of your hands at all, but you can’t claim to get lost anymore.
The gift shop’s already taken your next two paychecks.
No one is hungry. No one needs someone to walk the halls with them, talking. No one needs someone to walk the halls with them, not talking. No one needs anything, but you.
“I think I’m gonna –” Before you can even start to fumble through your newest excuse, she interrupts you, harshly.
“No. You, stay.”
Sick as she is, and looking as small and as pale as she does, her voice still overpowers your most desperate desire to go anywhere else, and you listen, and heed the command.
The chair you sit on is worn, and noisy. Shifting, and applying even the slightest amount of pressure to it causes its fabric – something synthetic and clammy feeling – to squish and crinkle. The symphony of wrinkles swishing and squirming is a familiar one, the favorite encore to the countless performances people have put on in it, trying to get comfortable. Your one leg is bouncing, shoe scuffing at the white tile floor in the process, and you sit, waiting.
“Have a Jell-O,” she offers from the bed besides you.
Her pillows and blankets are starch white. Just like the walls, just like the floor tiles, just like your own face had turned when you first heard the news. Everything here is white, bleached clean-looking to trick you into thinking things are healthier than they are. You look at her, and her too pale face, and her too thin hands, which push the Jell-O cup at you, and think that it isn’t working.
“Hospital food sucks,” you say, petulantly accepting the electric blue gelatin glob, stabbing at it with a plastic spork.
The look she tosses you is equal parts wry and incredulous and wholly guilt-inducing. You want to get up and run out to a store to buy her something different. You picture yourself on a quest for the perfect edible prize you could retrieve her: tasty, healthy and doctor approved, the kind of treat that would get her back on her feet.
“You suck more,” she retorts.
You choke in your indignance, feeling the Jell-O wiggle its way down with each cough. This is enough to make her smile, and she continues on airily.
“Well you do. You’re my best friend, and this is the first time you’ve sat down in the room with me!”
There’s more than a hint of accusation in her observation, and though you search the room desperately there are no shadows for you to hide your face in; everything in the room is frank in its white lightness.
“I – hospitals freak me out. Sorry,” you stammer and the words sound empty, even to your own ears.
“Welcome to the club,” she huffs, “We don’t have jackets yet, but help yourself to a complimentary paper gown, now with extra butt shot action.”
You laugh, and her face softens, which your stomach takes as its cue to finally unclench.
Unfolding her arms, so the IV and blue of her veins are no longer prominent, she relaxes back into her pillows.
Eyes closed, she continues, “Seriously though. I’m scared and I need you. Suck it up.”
You’ve scoured every inch of open space in the hospital twice over already, so you know that nowhere in the building is there a place where you can hide from her reality. In every corner the same fluorescent lights flicker, and down every corridor the same determined, faceless doctors pace. It’s the same all over, with no escape.
You look at her, and her dark hair outlines her face and shoulders, thick and heavy like the lines in a coloring book you always drew over in your hastiness as a child. She’s so white; she’s an empty canvas, and this is your chance to help color her into life again.
“Okay,” you say quietly, and you cease your leg’s impatient bouncing because you know you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
The need for coffee runs to the downstairs cafe, at first plentiful as the situation was urgent, have trickled to a halt. Everyone is caffeinated; everyone has a styrofoam cup to duck their faces into, hiding sad eyes and worry lined lips behind store brand logos and steam. If they cry out it’s because the liquid is too scalding, that’s all.
You already know where the bathroom is. You know where every bathroom is on every floor, down every hall. You’ve explored this building, and the parking garage attached to it, from basement to ceiling. You don’t know them better than the back of your hands because you’ve never paid much mind to the backs of your hands at all, but you can’t claim to get lost anymore.
The gift shop’s already taken your next two paychecks.
No one is hungry. No one needs someone to walk the halls with them, talking. No one needs someone to walk the halls with them, not talking. No one needs anything, but you.
“I think I’m gonna –” Before you can even start to fumble through your newest excuse, she interrupts you, harshly.
“No. You, stay.”
Sick as she is, and looking as small and as pale as she does, her voice still overpowers your most desperate desire to go anywhere else, and you listen, and heed the command.
The chair you sit on is worn, and noisy. Shifting, and applying even the slightest amount of pressure to it causes its fabric – something synthetic and clammy feeling – to squish and crinkle. The symphony of wrinkles swishing and squirming is a familiar one, the favorite encore to the countless performances people have put on in it, trying to get comfortable. Your one leg is bouncing, shoe scuffing at the white tile floor in the process, and you sit, waiting.
“Have a Jell-O,” she offers from the bed besides you.
Her pillows and blankets are starch white. Just like the walls, just like the floor tiles, just like your own face had turned when you first heard the news. Everything here is white, bleached clean-looking to trick you into thinking things are healthier than they are. You look at her, and her too pale face, and her too thin hands, which push the Jell-O cup at you, and think that it isn’t working.
“Hospital food sucks,” you say, petulantly accepting the electric blue gelatin glob, stabbing at it with a plastic spork.
The look she tosses you is equal parts wry and incredulous and wholly guilt-inducing. You want to get up and run out to a store to buy her something different. You picture yourself on a quest for the perfect edible prize you could retrieve her: tasty, healthy and doctor approved, the kind of treat that would get her back on her feet.
“You suck more,” she retorts.
You choke in your indignance, feeling the Jell-O wiggle its way down with each cough. This is enough to make her smile, and she continues on airily.
“Well you do. You’re my best friend, and this is the first time you’ve sat down in the room with me!”
There’s more than a hint of accusation in her observation, and though you search the room desperately there are no shadows for you to hide your face in; everything in the room is frank in its white lightness.
“I – hospitals freak me out. Sorry,” you stammer and the words sound empty, even to your own ears.
“Welcome to the club,” she huffs, “We don’t have jackets yet, but help yourself to a complimentary paper gown, now with extra butt shot action.”
You laugh, and her face softens, which your stomach takes as its cue to finally unclench.
Unfolding her arms, so the IV and blue of her veins are no longer prominent, she relaxes back into her pillows.
Eyes closed, she continues, “Seriously though. I’m scared and I need you. Suck it up.”
You’ve scoured every inch of open space in the hospital twice over already, so you know that nowhere in the building is there a place where you can hide from her reality. In every corner the same fluorescent lights flicker, and down every corridor the same determined, faceless doctors pace. It’s the same all over, with no escape.
You look at her, and her dark hair outlines her face and shoulders, thick and heavy like the lines in a coloring book you always drew over in your hastiness as a child. She’s so white; she’s an empty canvas, and this is your chance to help color her into life again.
“Okay,” you say quietly, and you cease your leg’s impatient bouncing because you know you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
So this week's assignment was to write a scene where the setting had impact on the character (or the character had an impact on the setting). I took the easy way out and wrote about a hospital. To be fair to me, however, there are certain people out there who've pushed hospitals to a rather prominent spot in my mind so ... I choose to blame them for this.
This doesn't officially have anyones' characters in it, if you hadn't noticed. I wrote it in the second person because no one in my class had done that yet, and I wanted to be the first. Given we've got both TK *and* Dove being hospitalized lately, it could work for either of them, with plenty of other characters. So ... read it as you want to.
You know, I'm almost kind of sad that I've only got one more story to go before the semester's over?
This doesn't officially have anyones' characters in it, if you hadn't noticed. I wrote it in the second person because no one in my class had done that yet, and I wanted to be the first. Given we've got both TK *and* Dove being hospitalized lately, it could work for either of them, with plenty of other characters. So ... read it as you want to.
You know, I'm almost kind of sad that I've only got one more story to go before the semester's over?
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Comments10
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I love how this is written. Its sad, but there's hope and friendship among that sadness. Hospitals may be cliche, but there's nothing cliche about your story at all ^_^