The Quiet Room

The Quiet Room
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I looked up at the clock, it’s 3:00 a.m.

I’ve been standing here for over 14 hours now and my feet are killing me. The room is deathly quiet. The sounds of machines and blood pumping through the lines is rhythmic and almost hypnotic, like the windshield wipers on a long drive home.

I hear a soft voice behind me say “ raise your right foot, now your left.” I don’t know what’s under my feet, but it feels spongy and soft and for the time being, it feels really good.

In a blink of an eye my head snaps back, the left side of my vision becomes red and I hear “give me a pledget and 6-0 proline suture.” I lean back and someone takes my loops off, then wipes the blood off my face. I see what’s under my feet, it’s a blanket and it wasn’t put there for me, it’s there to soak up all the blood that is pouring off the table. I glance around the room, it looks like one of those murder scenes in a movie or a good teenage slasher film, but this is no movie, it's real life and one can’t imagine the view of people mopping up buckets of blood.

You never know what goes through the human mind or where someone’s breaking point is, but today was hers. what would make a fifty one year old female get up, paint her finger nails red, roll her hair up in pink sponge curlers, put her makeup on and then stick a 38 cal. pistol to her chest and pull the trigger.

The rooms deathly quiet.

I look up, it’s 3:55 a.m.