Short Story - The Emergency Room

Nancy Kerrigan flashed her ivories as she floated and spun across the goggle box screen. She stepped to the beat of the EKG and the morphine drip; she glided to the constant beat of the ventilators rising and falling in the rooms below. Seeing her in the corner of the trauma intensive c ar unit surprised me at first. She looked forbidden of place, muted and tiny, transmitted from her wish-wash palace to an alien world of comas and catheters. I suppose Nancy served both(prenominal) purpose there, whirling mingled with sterile cream tiles and fluorescent fixture lights. Whether she faci illuminateated entertainment or escape valve I cant say, but are they real different?\nThis crabbed daylight, I directed my gawking eye and hesitant steps to a glassed-in cubicle cluttered with machines. The master(prenominal) doors of the unit sealed back us with a operose lub-dup; there was no escape. To our left, gunshot victims groaned audibly with dimly lit rooms. Gang fight, floris ts chrysanthemum explained as we paced rhythmically along the corridor foregone somber, faceless nurses and antiseptic uncontaminating counters. Her typical crisp khakis swung broadly too loosely- from her hips. Had she remembered to eat that day? Had I? My baggy gray-headed sweatshirt hung like a hollo shell on my rangy 13-year-old body, but the icy dressing table felt pure, reassuring. It echoed my bond with my mom and even that solemn hallway. unneurotic we formed a frozen, decoct audience in foretaste of the evenings chief(prenominal) event. Nancy still smiled and twirled above it all, mutely commanding attention, but she was really just a sideshow. mommy drew aside a colorless curtain to fall upon the real object of our visit.\nThe body, intubated and impotent, materialized as sallow bits of color against primordial white sheets. The tiny over-embellished toes of one foot peeked from the block of a mammoth cast. At the other end of the slanted expanse, a blue underpass emerged and disappeared again between thin lips. One line ran yellow, the others clear, and a curious mix of urine, and germicide ...