Short Stories

Week 4

Prompt
Write about an important scene from your own life using third-person objective narrative mode. Find a powerful moment in your own life. Try to be detailed and subtle and explain nothing. You cannot use names or explain what people are thinking. Try to imply a relationship and see if you can show some sort of change from beginning to end.

***

The lights were white, filling the small, windowless room with a sterile glare. The light green walls provided a sickly background for the single-person chairs that ran along it, outside the room emanated frequent, consistent beeping, whispered voices barely carrying through the open door.

The chairs were filled with mask clad individuals, bags of varying sizes at their feet. A woman walked into the room and took the chair closest to the entrance, slipping her bag underneath her creaky chair, she crossed one leg over the other, bouncing it up and down in a quick pace.

She fumbled out her phone, her hands unsteady as she unlocked it and began scrolling. A man pulled down his mask, coughing roughly into a handkerchief, momentarily breaking the quiet of the room.

The door opposite to the entryway opened, revealing a figure dressed in scrubs, shoe covers, face mask, and hair net, the light blue of these items only broken up by the bright red of eyeglasses. The figure called a name in a distinctly feminine, kind voice. The man roughly pulled up his mask, his coughing not quite ceased as he reached with one hand to grab the handle of his duffle bag and followed the women into the looming brightness of the other side of the door.

The woman at the edge of the room watched him go, silent, eyes darting to the woman in blue, to the man, to the bright room behind them, then back to her phone. She started as fingers gently tapped her shoulder. Turning, she looked straight into the face of the girl crouched beside her, her cheeks bunching up beneath the black mask covering the bottom half of her face.

"I just wanted to come say hi before I started work, and I'll come see you post-op when I finish work. You'll probably be too tired to stay awake that long though, but what are friends for? Are you nervous?"

The patient took a breath and heaved it out with a sigh, her shaky hands raking through her short hair once, twice. "I'm absolutely shitting myself."

The crouched woman frowned, "Covid ruined the pre-op support," She smiled brightly, her hand squeezing the shoulder it rested on. "But I'm here. You have nothing to worry about," Standing back up she straightened her black dress over her light blue shirt, adjusting the small name badge on her breast, "an appendectomy is a standard procedure, you'll go to sleep, you'll wake up sore, you'll heal and then have no more pain. I must go but I'll talk to you later." Her smile was bright, her head and cheeks crinkling.

In that moment the door on the other side opened, red glasses in a sea of blue displaying the eyes that glanced around the room. "Hayley Rudel?"
The woman took a breath, pocketed her phone, reaching underneath her seat to grab her bag as she stood, heading towards the brightness on the other side.