Author: Fall Writing Contest 2020

“You don’t have to do this,” Garrett said.

I smiled, looked into his eye and said, “Yes. I do.”

He placed his hand on mine. I felt the warmth radiating through him. He tried to wrap his fingers around mine and draw my hand into his grip, but I pushed my palm into the hard seat. I didn’t want to hold his hand. I didn’t want him to hold me back.

“Macey,” he said. “No one expects you to do this.”

“I do.”

“It’s too much.”

“it’s all there is.”

A cold spring rain falls softly as she sits on the damp curb skirting the asphalt drive. She should have grabbed a blanket, not that it matters. She is emotionally anesthetized most of the time and too tired to care. For the umpteenth time, quitting crosses her mind, especially after she loses a patient. Three died this morning.

Meditation sometimes helps her unwind. She reaches into the depths of her heart, seeking a spark of nostalgia to recall the last time she laughed. Pictures and sounds of joyful exuberance with her family at Christmas fill her thoughts. She closes her eyes for a few moments in remembrance.

Philip flexed his stiff fingers against the worn leather steering wheel as he drove through the gray November morning. The heater in his station wagon was out again.

The repairs would cost more than the beat-up Buick was worth, too much for his public school teacher’s salary.

“I ought to call Lisa,” he told the icy windshield. “Make her pay.”

Rainy nights were the worst. 

Jake stuffed the towel into the frame of the leaky window. There, that should do it. He flopped onto the peeling vinyl seat of the ancient chair. He’d naively assumed that when he graduated the rehab program, the world would open before him. But six months, ten commandments, and twelve steps later, he was still haunted by the ghosts of his past—especially on rainy evenings.