Anticipation
The white walls, the white couches, and white door in the room blanketed me like a morgue sheet. I waited there alone. My fingers once again reached to my bellybutton, running over the band-aid I had placed earlier that day over the biopsy stitches. The white couch gave way under my weight, like a fluffy cloud in the afterlife. I don’t know how long I sat there but I still hadn’t warmed it up.
To the side of the glass coffee-table in front of me stood one rack of magazines, also white, holding three or four periodicals. I picked one up, looked at the cover, then put it back. Picked another; put it back. Then another. Same stuff. Cover stories told of building retirement homes, decorating, traveling, and gourmet dining; they all told of living, and living well.
Such endeavors lay outside my sphere of concern.
Normally I would be bored at a clinic but boredom wasn’t what I was feeling. My body sat rigid in agony, as if rigor mortis had preemptively set in. I felt the burden of carrying the cross up Golgotha, alone; the anguish of not knowing God’s true will; the morbid surprise of an animal realizing the treat was inside a cage trap. I sat there contemplating what would come next, would the next few days and months physically hurt as much as the days since the liver biopsy had hurt mentally…
And how far down would my road hit its dead-end? Six months or six weeks?
Across the room the single white door begun to open, a door that led to consultation and biopsy rooms. I’d been back there before. Invisible graffiti covered the walls with diagnoses. Without the special UV light doctors have, however, I could not read them.
Her gown one with the morgue sheet, a short woman in a white lab coat—she had told me her name on the first visit but it didn’t register—walked out the door and guided me to the back of the oncology clinic where puzzlement turned to knowledge, and anguish became tranquility.
“Negative,” she said. “The tests were negative.”
To the side of the glass coffee-table in front of me stood one rack of magazines, also white, holding three or four periodicals. I picked one up, looked at the cover, then put it back. Picked another; put it back. Then another. Same stuff. Cover stories told of building retirement homes, decorating, traveling, and gourmet dining; they all told of living, and living well.
Such endeavors lay outside my sphere of concern.
Normally I would be bored at a clinic but boredom wasn’t what I was feeling. My body sat rigid in agony, as if rigor mortis had preemptively set in. I felt the burden of carrying the cross up Golgotha, alone; the anguish of not knowing God’s true will; the morbid surprise of an animal realizing the treat was inside a cage trap. I sat there contemplating what would come next, would the next few days and months physically hurt as much as the days since the liver biopsy had hurt mentally…
And how far down would my road hit its dead-end? Six months or six weeks?
Across the room the single white door begun to open, a door that led to consultation and biopsy rooms. I’d been back there before. Invisible graffiti covered the walls with diagnoses. Without the special UV light doctors have, however, I could not read them.
Her gown one with the morgue sheet, a short woman in a white lab coat—she had told me her name on the first visit but it didn’t register—walked out the door and guided me to the back of the oncology clinic where puzzlement turned to knowledge, and anguish became tranquility.
“Negative,” she said. “The tests were negative.”
posted by Astrapo | 10:58 PM
3 Comments:
As always, your style is good. For the most part, it's fluid and unforced. A little melodramatic though, especially the paragraph starting with "Normally..." The real problem is the narrative arc. There isn't one. What's missing are the next one or two paragraphs that tell us what the feelings or actions were after the negative tests; feelings or actions that are in some way surpising or contrary to the ones before. As it is, it's just a writing exercise, done well, but not complete.
Oh, and it should be "began" not "begun." Remember, the conjugation is begin, began, begun :-)
Interesting.
It shouldn't, but it reminds a bit of Kavafis. "Kai tora ti tha kanoume horis varvarous." I do not know if there is an intended irony in there.
Or merely the fact that there was this "anticipation", some "damage" will be done and his life will change, even though there was nothing there in the fist place.
I do not know why, but I liked it.
And despite what Marios said, I think I like the fact that you stopped it where it stopped. Makes you think what YOU would have thought and done under such circumstances. And different people would react diffrently.
Is there a word "blanketed" by the way?
Okay, as promised, I’ve finally gotten around and written you some feedback (it beats "working"). Here it goes:
I agree with Mario’s assertion that the story arc is incomplete, but I kinda got the impression that that was intentional. I don't think all stories have to follow a conflict-climax-resolution motif. After all, the story is called “Anticipation,” not “Resolution.” The focus of the story was on the uphill battle the character went through in preparing himself (herself?) for the news. I think that after all your (rather morbid!) references to death, the anticlimactic news at the end juxtaposes nicely with the rest of the story.
I agree with Aggi in that stopping your story with the negative diagnosis gives the reader the freedom to reflect on the news individually. I disagree with him in that I think “blanketed” is in fact a word. At the very least I think it works well as a vernacular expression (assuming that the character is an American).
I particularly enjoyed two of your lines: “The white couch gave way under my weight, like a fluffy cloud in the afterlife” and “My body sat rigid in agony, as if rigor mortis had preemptively set in.” Also, I liked your morgue sheet metaphor in the first paragraph, but when you used it again in the second-to-last paragraph, it sounds redundant. Maybe instead you could say “A short woman who resembled a mortician in her white lab coat. . .” Or perhaps you could say “A stoic and expressionless woman with the personality of a mortician. . .” Something like that would follow your morgue motif by comparing the doctor to a mortician, but it would deviate enough to avoid sounding redundant.
I don’t understand your line “Invisible graffiti covered the walls with diagnoses.” I’m guessing that this is a reference to some kind of medical technology, but I’m not sure.
I was also confused by your line “. . . would the next few days and months physically hurt as much as the days since the liver biopsy had hurt mentally. . . .” I’m guessing that liver biopsies hurt both physically and mentally. And if a person were to receive a positive biopsy, then they would continue to hurt physically and mentally throughout their cancer treatment (which would last for months, not days). Maybe you could say “. . . would the following months of treatment make the liver biopsy feel like nothing more than a paper cut or a stubbed toe?”
I didn’t understand the line “I felt the burden of carrying the cross up Golgotha, alone; the anguish of not knowing God’s true will,” but this is probably because I wasn’t raised religiously (thankfully). I’m guessing Golgotha has something to do with Jesus, right? :)
I think the metaphor of “an animal realizing the treat was inside a cage trap” could work well in this story, but I think it needs some more explanation to relate it to the main character. I think that the character and the metaphorical animal are alike in many ways, not (just) by their shared “morbid surprise.” I think the two both feel a sense of hopelessness and a devastating sense of humility. They know at this point that trying to fight their fate any further would be futile and in vain (** but you still see trapped animals trying to wiggle their way out, don’t you? Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!)
The first time I read the line “to the side of the glass coffee-table in front of me stood one rack of magazines, also white, holding three or four periodicals,” I thought that you meant the magazines were white, not the rack. I now think that I just misread this sentence, but I thought I’d mention it just in case anybody else had the same initial confusion. Also, I think “coffee-table” should be two separate words, but I’m not sure.
On the whole, I really liked this story (although I still consider “Runt of the Litter” to be my favorite because it was so funny). I don’t know if you realize this, but the story differs considerably from your other pieces (at least those that I’ve read). Most of your other pieces seem to be intellectual or humorous in nature (and sometimes they’re disturbing!), whereas this is emotional. It’s a good angle to work from. Kudos.
- Ryan
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