The Shortys

UTLOTM - 10 yrs. later pt. 4 -- Hospital Room Engagements

Thursday, Sept. 8th, 2016 - 1:39 a.m.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is just some random thing I wrote earlier, I guess the correct term here would be called a "one shot" or an "imagine".  Maybe I should include it in a future story?  Maybe it will be included in a story I'm already working on ... ?  Who knows.  lol. 

The "he" in this story I purposely made "anonymous",  meaning he could be whomever you imagined him to be.  Who do you think he is?  Who is he to you?

UPDATE - 04/23/2017 -- I think at some point I may add this to the "Under the Light of the Moon" book I'm sporadically working on, as it kind of fits the idear and direction I had for that book, this taking place many years later. I'm not really sure yet though, this could just end up as a stand alone as well. Only time will tell.

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          She stood alone in the corridor, quiet save for the occasional beep of god only knows what kind of machiene further down the hall, the stench of everything sterile filling her nostrils as she subconsciously wrinkled her nose just a little.  She caught herself staring at the door handle of room 1029, the room he was in, almost afraid to touch it, almost as if willing the door to open on it's own.  She was shaking like a leaf, she knew this as she didn't really have time to compose herself in her race to shower and get up here, her thoughts going again to the anonymous call she got almost an hour ago, which roused her out of a dreamless sleep, but woke her up straightaway as soon as she'd heard the news.

          "Hello, is this Julia?"

          She was trying hard to wake up enough to recognize the thick, male, Irish,  accent as she replied, "It is."

          "Have you been watching the news tonight?"

          She thought that a rather odd question to be asked by an anonymous caller at -- she glanced at her clock -- just after 2 a.m., still she answered, "Should I have been?"

          The was a long silence, she was about to hang up when the caller came back on the line, "He's in the hospital, and he needs you."

          As luck would have it, they were performing in Chicago that evening, and as luck would have it, she just happened to be staying in Chicago that very same weekend for a photo shoot she had been hired to do, staying in her beloved condo on West Erie in the River West neighborhood.  And, as luck would have it, he happened to be at Northwestern Memorial, just a short drive from her condo.  Listening to the radio during the drive, what had happened  earlier was all over the news on every station she had turned it to:  . . . not much is known . . . collapsed onstage. . . successful solo career . . . reunited with his old band . . . comeback tour of the century . . . That's all she caught as her mind raced with a million and one questions, the main one being why he wanted to see her, especially after very little contact over the past two or three years.  It wasn't that they were on bad terms, far from it, he was busy living his life, trying to get his music career kick-started again, and she was busy living hers, being a mom and most recently a grandma, and the freelance photographer and writer she'd always been.