chaplin
06-28-2007, 03:08 PM
I have never written any fiction before this, and I may not again for a long while, I feel so silly trying to do it. It all seems quite useless for me to write what so many others, mostly dead now, already wrote so well. However, just because I wanted to see what would come out of my pen, I wrote a couple of pages, and I wanted to get an opinion if there are any redeeming qualities in them.
I was nudged out of sleep and back to consciousness by the rap of the kitchen door closing. My half-clouded eyes opened on the motionless wall, perfectly white in the day, but now a yellow gray, reflecting the colors of our wing at night.
The sound of new rubber on smooth floor from the soft steps of the night orderly tapped alongside the silent rustles of socks, as Randy was corraled back to our room. I heard Randy ease on to his bed with a drawn-out, emotionless sigh, then a similar rap to that of the kitchen door as the bedroom door was shut. He then tossed back his cup of ice, filling his mouth full of it, and started his crunching like a sputtering motor.
Without looking I knew Randy wasn't laying or reclining. Whenever he ate ice it was always in an indian-style sit, and always directly in the middle of his bed, on top of the foam green blanket that frosted all of the beds here. I looked anyway, furtively, mostly to somehow express my consternation at being woken up. The light glowing through the small rectangle of window cast a blue gray light over Randy's face, illumined just enough for me to see the half-grin that curled his lips; the lips that were like an island in the sea of his pitch dark beard. I sighed silently and emotionlessly while I turned back to the still wall, forced to return to sleep with the image of those crunching lips floating in space between neck and nose, the chin and cheeks that lips are usually hooked to disappeared by that bottomless beard.
.........................................
The next morning I woke to the second step in the scheduled routine that managed every day here: moring vitals. The first step was simply waking up, which usually wasn't fully completed until after the third step, breakfast. Cedric strapped the blood-pressure cuff on my arm that day. His pulse-checking fingers counted my heart beats while he watched the gauge fixed to the inflating cuff.
Cedric was a big black man, as cheerful and accomadating as the deferential "Yes suh"s of the most blatant of minstrel show days. Whenever he was assigned to take vitals he always jovially asked your permission first, and actually waited to strap on the cuff until you granted it; it wasn't just a friendly rhetorical greeting, but a measure of respect that however unneccesary it seemed, always made you think again how nice he was.
Cedric was one of the four or five "Techs", like orderlies, that led us along our scheduled day. Every one of them were college-aged, and most used the income from their job here toward tuition. They brought and set out the meals, unlocked the bathroom, filled out reports on the patients, occasionally taught a short class, and managed all the other routine tasks that made up both of our days. The Techs were, along with the doctors and nurses, the only people we saw throughout our 15 hours of assigned awake time.
Cedric released me to breakfast with an "All right; thank you", and, gathering up his equipment, exited towards the next bedroom after marking down my pulse and blood-pressure numbers. He had taken Randy's vitals first, leaving me alone to take a few minutes for myself. After slipping on the black zip-up jacket that I wore everyday, I calmed the tangle in my hair and joined the others at the table, my feet quite content to slide there on socks, the same as all the patients.
Well that's it, I'm sorry if it was too long, and unfinished, I didn't want to write any more until I knew if there was a reason to keep going. Thank you very much if you read it, and thank you very much for commenting on it if you replied.
I was nudged out of sleep and back to consciousness by the rap of the kitchen door closing. My half-clouded eyes opened on the motionless wall, perfectly white in the day, but now a yellow gray, reflecting the colors of our wing at night.
The sound of new rubber on smooth floor from the soft steps of the night orderly tapped alongside the silent rustles of socks, as Randy was corraled back to our room. I heard Randy ease on to his bed with a drawn-out, emotionless sigh, then a similar rap to that of the kitchen door as the bedroom door was shut. He then tossed back his cup of ice, filling his mouth full of it, and started his crunching like a sputtering motor.
Without looking I knew Randy wasn't laying or reclining. Whenever he ate ice it was always in an indian-style sit, and always directly in the middle of his bed, on top of the foam green blanket that frosted all of the beds here. I looked anyway, furtively, mostly to somehow express my consternation at being woken up. The light glowing through the small rectangle of window cast a blue gray light over Randy's face, illumined just enough for me to see the half-grin that curled his lips; the lips that were like an island in the sea of his pitch dark beard. I sighed silently and emotionlessly while I turned back to the still wall, forced to return to sleep with the image of those crunching lips floating in space between neck and nose, the chin and cheeks that lips are usually hooked to disappeared by that bottomless beard.
.........................................
The next morning I woke to the second step in the scheduled routine that managed every day here: moring vitals. The first step was simply waking up, which usually wasn't fully completed until after the third step, breakfast. Cedric strapped the blood-pressure cuff on my arm that day. His pulse-checking fingers counted my heart beats while he watched the gauge fixed to the inflating cuff.
Cedric was a big black man, as cheerful and accomadating as the deferential "Yes suh"s of the most blatant of minstrel show days. Whenever he was assigned to take vitals he always jovially asked your permission first, and actually waited to strap on the cuff until you granted it; it wasn't just a friendly rhetorical greeting, but a measure of respect that however unneccesary it seemed, always made you think again how nice he was.
Cedric was one of the four or five "Techs", like orderlies, that led us along our scheduled day. Every one of them were college-aged, and most used the income from their job here toward tuition. They brought and set out the meals, unlocked the bathroom, filled out reports on the patients, occasionally taught a short class, and managed all the other routine tasks that made up both of our days. The Techs were, along with the doctors and nurses, the only people we saw throughout our 15 hours of assigned awake time.
Cedric released me to breakfast with an "All right; thank you", and, gathering up his equipment, exited towards the next bedroom after marking down my pulse and blood-pressure numbers. He had taken Randy's vitals first, leaving me alone to take a few minutes for myself. After slipping on the black zip-up jacket that I wore everyday, I calmed the tangle in my hair and joined the others at the table, my feet quite content to slide there on socks, the same as all the patients.
Well that's it, I'm sorry if it was too long, and unfinished, I didn't want to write any more until I knew if there was a reason to keep going. Thank you very much if you read it, and thank you very much for commenting on it if you replied.