After she finished with the morning visits, Susan buried herself into the armchair. Lately, she had begun to hate the hallway outside her office and crossing it gave her goose bumps. She felt she was interrupting an open-casket funeral on a daily basis; going through the crowd in the large waiting room she could almost smell the formol soon be applied on some of these unfortunate bodies. The patients were always pretending nothing was wrong, but their small-talk sounded quite out of tune to Susan, who was more than aware most of them were in serious conditions. She fought hard to keep her doctor's edge with all the suffering going on around her. After all, if you found out you have cancer, you wouldn't want your doctor, the person you put all your faith in, to already start shedding tears of compassion, would you?
Sometimes Susan doubted her classical approach to giving bad news. She felt that white lies such as "You're going to be fine," "I won't let anything happen to you," or "Chemotherapy should take care of it," could sometimes do more harm than a plain "You may die." No matter how much she stumbled upon words of comfort, at the end of the day she would always have that bitter taste in her mouth. Because she of all people knew that only a miracle could save some of her patients. Why give people the illusion of life when death will chainsaw through it like it was timber? Shouldn't she try to prepare them for the end somehow? But how?
YOU ARE READING
The Sphere
Short StorySusan lives on the lush coast of eastern Ireland, taking care of her daughter and her many patients. But an enemy Susan is intimately familiar with begins a full on assault on her duties as a mother and a doctor. **This story received 2nd prize at t...
