Short #1

“There seems to be some misunderstanding, I am not supposed to die,” the woman in the hospital bed said. The room was the traditional sterile white. The silence in the room after her last syllable is stark.

The nurse calmly walks in, “Honey, you ain’t gonna die, and you know it.” She is wearing those weird foamy plastic sandals that have become a fashion trend of late, Crocs. “Lemme take your blood pressure,” the nurse said as she wrapped the cuff around the woman’s arm.

“Anderson, what’s your first name,” the bed ridden woman asked the nurse.

“My name is Marie, and you know it,”

The weak stream of early morning light began to break over the horizon and peer into the hospital room.

“I don’t know anything, I am in a hospital and I am sick. That’s all I know. I was fine one day and the next day I’m lying on my bathroom floor cold and naked,” the woman told the nurse.

“Honey, you are, I mean were sick. You had a stroke and you fell. We are monitoring your heart and you fractured your hip when you fell. Some things may still be a bit foggy but that will go away.” The nurse said finishing her tests. “Call me if you need something.”

The woman lies still in the hospital bed. Rails of the hospital bed containing her even if she had wanted to leave. The hospital staff bustled down the corridors with an assertive quickness. There always seemed to be something happening outside the woman’s door way.

“Hello, Mrs. Walsh. How are you feeling today,” the tall man asked as he entered the room as he folds over the metal cover of the clipboard.

“I’d be a lot better if you would just let me go die at home. People go the hospital to die and I do not want to die in a hospital, I’d rather be in my bed or couch, hell, I’d rather be back on my bathroom floor.

“Now Mrs. Walsh”
“STOP calling me Missus, my husband died years ago and I have no association to anyone to fulfill the title Mrs., “the woman interjected. She began to fidget in the bed and looked away from the doctor towards the window.

“Well. What would you prefer to be addressed as?”

“Alice.”

“Okay, Alice you are not going to die, you are, however, still recovering from a stroke. Your hip is also badly bruised and there are small hairline fractures. This has happened to countless people and they have recovered, just as you will, and live a completely normal life,’’ the doctor said.

Alice Walsh turned toward the doctor and looked at him sternly. “I am ninety-one years old, doctor, what part of normal life do you think makes up my normal day. I have watched everyone I have ever loved die. My husband came to the hospital with stomach pains and left in a casket due to an aneurysm. My son died when he was twenty-five to some rare form of cancer, hooked up to more tubes than a church organ, and was a small sliver of what he once was. My other son died three days after in a drunk driving accident. Everyone is gone. People come to the hospital to die. Or maybe they come here to be proven dead...officially.”

The doctor saw the pain in her face, the sincerity in her eyes, and said, “That is true ma’am but you still remember them and can cherish the time you had with them. I am sure they wouldn’t want you moping around for the rest of your life.”

The heart monitor had doubled it pace since she had begun talking. “I would like to be left alone, please,” Alice Walsh said. With a flick of her trembling hand, the doctor was gone.