At first I thought it must be a trick of the light, some particular wavelength that shimmered and flicked with an orangish sheen across his skin, like tea gone cold in a porcelain cup.
All tagged hospital
At first I thought it must be a trick of the light, some particular wavelength that shimmered and flicked with an orangish sheen across his skin, like tea gone cold in a porcelain cup.
The phone’s ring pierced my mental fog as I lay in the hospital room.
The sink felt cool and solid beneath my shaky hands. I steadied myself over it before looking up into the mirror.
I’m in the ER with a kidney stone. There’s an IV for the pain.
I lay on the narrow table, left arm bent over my head, hospital gown open to expose my left side. The biopsy was over.
I sit on the idling school bus, knitting a scarf and waiting for the other students to board so we can all go home, but the head that appears at the front of the bus belongs to my father, not a fellow student.
I’d bought them specially, sought them out, in search of the style you liked.
When we get to the waiting room, our lucky seats are taken. We end up beside a talker.
“You look very good,” she said, patting my arm. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?”
My patient's oxygen levels were stable, yet he hunched over the edge of the bed, laboring to breathe. His eyes searched mine for answers.
Resisting the urge to peek at my defined abdominal muscles, I ripped an oily chip into quarters and apprehensively put a piece in my mouth, taking a deep breath.
Britney Spears almost killed me.
My right thumb pressed the button again to release more morphine. Covered in tubes and needles, surrounded by sounds generating persistent resonant vibration in the head, I shifted between states of consciousness …
I unclasped the bra hooks behind my back in a cold room with flower art and silver tools.
I can smell the acrid headiness of danger in the disinfectant-laden air. It cloys at my uvula before entering my lungs to catch on my breath.
A line ran down the middle of the hallway in the DePaul Behavioral Health Center in New Orleans. You didn’t cross it.
The towering tray of leftover Thanksgiving fare remained intact as I struggled to open the hospital room door. My sister sat poking cloves of cinnamon into an apple, hooked to happy juice.
"Sandy, do you have a nine-year-old daughter?" Hyper-alert, pulled from work's reverie, I hesitantly said, "Yes."