*** Featured on StoruesUndiscovered ***
A bittersweet story about a lover who never stayed and a love that never ended.
Disclaimer- This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of my imagination. Any resemblance is...
"You used to be this boy I loved. I used to be this girl of your dreams. Who knew the course of this one drive injured us fatally?" Love without tragedy by Rihanna.
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Thursday, July 9th, 2020
10:00 PM
I took an underwhelming bite from the corner of my dull tomato sandwich and washed it down with a stale orange soda that had been open and on my desk for hours. The tart taste of the bread mixed with the candy-like flavor of the soda stung my taste buds, making the insides of my tongue prickle.
With my eyes closed and my brows furrowed in concentration, I relished the moment of complete normalcy and waited for the residual taste to disappear so I could torture myself with yet another unimpressive bite.
I had spent most of my life striving for greatness. Aiming for extraordinary. I had sacrificed my childhood for success. Forgone my youth for love. Relinquished my sleep for my career. And surrendered my soul to the universe. But lately, I had been longing for mediocrity. Craving for average. Because, as it turned out, "extraordinary" came with a price too expensive to pay.
My sanity.
Clenching the bread tight, inadvertently squishing the tomatoes together, I leaned my head forward, ready to shove the sandwich into my waiting mouth. Lean mayo oozed out and dripped onto my scrub pants, sparing the pile of paper on my desk in a near-miss.
"Whoa!" I picked up a napkin and wiped the white-ish mess from my navy-blue pants before it left a stain. Angling my sandwich away from the desk, I scooted back in my chair, creating a space between the mountain of paper and my sloppy food.
Locked inside the closet-Esque office by the restrooms, I had spent the better part of my night buried nose deep on paperwork, filling up a hefty patient accident report form for an incident that had happened under my watch.
One of my patients who had come in for a sinus infection had ended up being admitted for a fractured wrist and a dislocated joint after he slipped and fell while walking to the bathroom unaccompanied. He was examined and scheduled for an open reduction and internal fixation surgery. And instead of scrubbing in and learning new techniques, I chose to fill out paperwork... because that was how I coped with my chaotic life.
I made up for the order and regularity my life lacked by ruminating on tasteless food and immersing myself in lackluster work.
I yearned for an uneventful day. A monotonous, silent few hours where nothing was happening to me and around me. Where I was just an ordinary girl who wasn't being attacked by the universe and all four of its elements. I was exhausted from hustling my way through life. I was tired of all the harsh surprises that were being thrown my way. I was done being overwhelmingly overwhelmed.
I had completed the form and was only left with scribbling my signature when my phone buzzed from somewhere under the pile of paper. Putting down my sandwich on a clean paper towel, I shuffled through the stack and located my ringing phone.
