My Fellow Man

(Forty-five, Anteater, Karma)

I walked into the hospital room they put my son in. I was tired, kind of in shock. It was a semi-private room, holding a bathroom and two beds, separated by floor to ceiling curtains that could be drawn back. My son Donald was in the bed by the door. His appendix had burst. None of us had recognized the symptoms and by the time we realized there was something seriously wrong my husband Bill had to call an ambulance.  Bill would come in the car, as soon as he got my sister to sit with our six-year old daughter.

Going to the Chapel and We’re Gonna Get Ma-a-aried

Serendipity, Renaissance, Monique

There’s a girl sitting on my doorstep in a lovely Renaissance wedding gown, crying her eyes out, was Elise‘s first thought.  The second was that the gown was muddy and torn.  The girl’s mascara had run all down her face; her lipstick and hand prints had smudged the glass on the door of the shop.  The peculiar scene looked all the stranger for the lack of any evening traffic out front.  There was no one chasing her and no banged up car in the road.  Elise had no idea who the girl was or why she was crying.

She stood back in the shadows, watching the girl for a moment.  Long dark hair, cut in that new layered look that was so flattering these days.  Her bangs were sticking up in the front and tangled.  Large brown eyes stared at the door in front of her, not seeming to see anything at all.  There was a scrape on her elbow and you could see where she had brushed against her dress, marking it with scratches of blood and dirt.  The girl didn’t look panicked, just…despairing.  Like she’d given up on something that meant everything.  Had the groom left her at the altar?  Had she tried to chase him?  Elise stepped out of the shadows, she simply had to know.