Meghan: Doctors

“You have to let me work.” I argued quietly with Jasmine as we scrubbed our already raw skin cleaner.
“If the mother dies they’ll all die.” She replied shortly.
“That doesn’t mean—“ I growled under my breath as she backed into the operating room.

“I can’t control this bleed!” Jasmine’s breathing was ragged after six hours of surgery, “You’ll have to do a cesarean.”
“Fine.” I said, sliding a scalpel over the mother’s shaved abdomen. An intern held open the skin as I dipped a finger inside to guide out the last kitten. I rushed it to an oxygen chamber and left Jasmine to try to save the mother. Oxygen gas blew by the kitten’s pitiful blue snout and I pushed gently on its frail chest in the motions of CPR but nothing helped. Meanwhile Jasmine screamed for a defibrillator and the body of the Queen jolted with electricity.

Jasmine’s Aunt waited in the aptly named waiting room, head in her hands. She had rushed her cat in to the hospital at the first pangs of labor, but she worried that even that had been too late. It was the cat’s second birth of the season, and thus more dangerous. Dr. Jasmine strode to Aunt Gloria to tell her the news. Her doctor’s coat billowed behind her and her long blonde hair fluttered in the breeze that seemed to perforate the hospital. She knelt next to Aunt Gloria and looked up at her, tears of sympathy glistening in her eyes.
“One of the kittens had a rare birth defect found only in one in ten thousand births.” She gathered Aunt Gloria’s hands in hers, “Can I preserve the body in one of my specimen jars?”
Dr. Meghan stomped up behind Dr. Jasmine and knocked her unconscious with a patient chart.
“So sorry about that. We try to keep her out of patient contact. So many lawsuits…”
Aunt Gloria blinked, “What? Was she telling the truth?”
Dr. Meghan sighed, “Yes, but the mother and the other three kittens survived.”
Aunt Gloria sobbed into her hands as Dr. Meghan led her into the Baby room where the mother cat was tiredly curled around her kittens.



-M

Doug: Ronin

Piano. It seems like a lot of significant times in my life are heavy on the piano. It is an instrument that is hard to mistake, the sound is unlike any other. It rolls over you, the music seems inevitable, like a tidal wave. Catches you up and spits you out on the other shore, exhausted, satisfied, empty/full at the same time.

There’s something simmering inside of me. Anger I can’t get seem to get out. I wonder if it comes from the contempt or genuine offensives. I feel old, bitter, angry. So full of this rage that I can’t seem to let go.

How can I be so lonely when I’m among so many friends?

Every instinct in me says ‘Go. Get away from this. It’s long past time for you to be different.’ I’ve never run from a fight in my life, but I fear staying so much. But to leave, without any kind of resolution…

I wish I was a less honest man. Then I would have better explanations. Reasons. Instead… instead I should tell the truth.

Hate fills me up again. Disgust. Rage. I wish it would show itself on my skin so people would see who I am. This curse needs to be seen, revealed. Then maybe I’ll be free of it.

Right. Like you’ll ever be free of this wanderlust. Like you’ll ever stop resenting anything tying you to one place. Like you’ll ever treat anyplace as home anymore. Like you have a home. Home is where the heart is.

What heart?

-Doug
I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay today” Ingrid Michaelson “Be okay”