(no subject)
“It’s all taken care of doll,” Chief Rick Hollo said.
Deborah, propped up in a chaise lounge position in the triage bed stared blankly at Rick Hollo. Him sitting there with his left leg folded over his right knee, slurping, gratuitously, his coffee from the Styrofoam cup. Forehead furrowed pensively - looking up at her. At ‘doll’. Was she a doll? She never really thought so. She did, however, get two chili peppers out of seven ratings on Ratemyprofessor dot com.
The fluorescent lights of the triage area did wonders for Debbie’s pale complexion. The dark crescents under her eyes provided a delicious accent to the stark beauty of her bloodshot grey eyes. God, thought Rick Hollo, things are really going to pick up around the station.
“What do you study?” Rick asked. He leaned back in his chair.
“English, twentieth century mostly,” Deborah said to the drop ceiling. She turned, slowly, toward her right. To where Rick was sitting.
“I study twentieth century literature.”
Rick’s eyes went to the floor. He intently studied the puce green linoleum tiles. They looked as if they were from a Siberian clinic, he thought. He had once read a National Geographic article in the late eighties or early nineties about the bleak post communist conditions in the former Soviet Union. People cobbling together garden tools and gym equipment from rusting tank parts - starving, making wine in highrise hovels. Waiting in line for bread. Having critical operations in filthy puce floored operating rooms. Literature was it? What kind of literature? She said English. Does that mean from England? Twentieth century? Let’s see, what happened in the twentieth century? Rick began counting, on his fingers, significant events he could place in the twentieth century.
“Twentieth century?”
“Yeah,” Debbie said, “Woolf, Atwood, Le Guin, Stein, Morrison, stuff like that.”
“Uh huh.”
William Comparetto
© 2007