Young Writers Society

I don't normally write pieces like this, so any criticism is welcomed. It's not quite finished yet, but I wanted some people's thoughts before I continue.

The white walls and smooth floors were washed with emotions and embedded with events. Anxiety, fear, elation, ineptitude. A man paced back and forth, those emotions evident in every facet of his actions; his slow steps, the nervous trembling of his hands and the thoughts that flashed through his head.

“Your wife will be another few minutes, Mr Allen, why don’t you take a seat?” a nurse’s disembodied voice pleaded from a doorway.

The man just slightly shook his head, not breaking his stride. The woman stood in the doorframe a moment longer before turning away. Mr. Allen seethed with emotion, trying to think about anything but here and now. He created a blockade of memories and petty tasks, to stem the nervousness. The thoughts of the painting he was to do, the cupboards that needed to be fixed and the nursery that needed to be completed. That brought back all the thoughts that he had been trying to hold at bay into full flight. What if she didn’t survive? The hospital light, above his head flickered for a moment. He started, distracted for a mere moment but returned with renewed vigour to the thoughts that now threatened to overwhelm him; his own ineptitude, his inability to see her, to help her now pushed him to the edge.

Thoughts of life before her and what life would be like without her occupied his mind. The picture of her smiling face faded, he stopped pacing and by then it was too late. He heaved in deep breaths, panic overtaking him, his life was a single flame that sputtered before the harsh gale of Imagination.

In an instance of life’s tragedy, the overcoming emotions of welling pity, fearful anxiety and his own horrible ineptitude robbed him of the one thing that his wife and her newborn child needed the most. A provider, a protector, a husband and a father.

The doctor smiled down at the mother cradling her baby boy, born after so many hours and endless complications. He nodded at the nurse who promptly went off in search of the woman’s husband. The Doctor was basking in his self satisfaction, hungrily taking in the exhausted joy that irradiated the pain filled hours that previously presided. The innocence and simple happiness that glowed off of the baby was further fuel to the wide smile that lit the doctors face.

As the nurse reappeared, the doctor went to meet her and offer his congratulations to the husband, and accept the grateful flurry of remarks he had come to expect. A flicker of the light was only a momentary annoyance for him, and passed unnoticed.

His nurse’s usually calm presence was wracked with anxiety and shock. He pulled her aside and through contorted sobs of self centred grief the story was related. The woman was vow gently rocking her child, the physical ordeal over; the Doctor stopped back in, his smile faltering. A gesture was thrown in her direction; a deep breath taken, before he moved to her side, crouching down low he gushed out what had happened, more interested in his own discomfort than hers. The news delivered the baby was snatched away. Waves of grief seeped from her drugged body, the hospital walls eagerly drinking what they could.

Years passed and the boy grew older; the taste of the icing from his first cake had long since faded from his mouth; the smell of his mothers wet hair forgotten with his now dead mother – the grief of that white hospital room, he was blissfully blind to.

He passed the days of school blurrily enjoying the silences that life offered and doing the best with what he was given. Three nights a week he worked in the charity shop sorting the faded clothes. Other nights he avoided his foster father and foster mother’s drunken rages and studied late into the night; a straight A student. Friends, he had few, but the few he had were friends worth having. Today he was helping his neighbour out of kindness for the elderly woman and as an escape from the house.

“Your such a nice boy for your age,” she was often telling him and he would always dismiss her kind praise, embarrassed. Once more she told him, slowly pronouncing each word as he helped cart the cardboard boxes that contained her possessions; possessions stained with age. She presented him with a variety of objects, urging him to take them – as a show of her gratitude. He declined; the aged items promised little use to a young man. They sung too much of the past, their meaning lost in the transgression through time.

“Boy,” came the guttering voice of his father, the rest of the sentence was lost in a pool of drunkenness. The boy smiled sadly.

“I’ll take these boxes to the charity shop for you, I’m going in tomorrow,” the words were softly spoken, each word precisely weighted. He waved aside her protests and laughed softly at her assertion that he was to young to drive. He was seventeen, he said to her, old enough.

His father’s cry rang out once more, challenging the world to silence him. The young man turned, pacing evenly as he moved round to the back door of his house. He passed through their sloppy backyard, marred with mole holes and collections of weeds. A fleeting silence as he stepped inside, gently putting down the boxes on the small kitchen table. The mesh door behind snapped closed.

“Boy,” roared his father once more, tumbling into the kitchen; a bottle swung in his right hand, “Where’s your mother, boy, where is she?”

With each word he raised the bottle a little higher, enunciating each point with a jab forward. He didn’t wait for a reply, when the bottle had reached its zenith he hurled at his son’s head. His son dodged to the right, a tired and pained look in his eyes. The bottle, going slightly wide, caught the edge of the table and was deflected. With a tinkling of crashing glass the bottle cut through his shoes, slicing into naked flesh.

A mad laugh erupted from his father’s lips, “That’s the tragedy of life, boy, you lose a foot for a day, I lose a wife forever.”

That day was engraved upon the, now, young man’s memory. A vivid picture of blood and pain, part of a series that stained the tapestry of his life.

That day he had crawled his way over the badly washed floor, stood with the help of a half broken stool; it creaked under the pressure of his body. He’d limped his way out the door. Hours of waiting, the white walls of a hospital room and visit from the social services assured him his final years of school away from his father and mother. His mother had gone out to shop that day, she left a week later.

It was an incident like this which led to little sympathy when his father fell ill, suffering from lung cancer. Smoking was another of his many vices and the one that had reared its head first to fell its abuser.

Surprisingly the only person to help him through those final weeks of choking life was the once son. The funeral came and went; the graveyard remained empty of those wishing to pay their last respect to an immoral man, a drunken man but a man nonetheless.

It was an incident like this which led to little sympathy when his father fell ill, suffering from lung cancer. Smoking was another of his many vices and the one that had reared its head first to fell its abuser.

Surprisingly the only person to help him through those final weeks of choking life was the once son. The funeral came and went; the graveyard remained empty of those wishing to pay their last respect to an immoral man, a drunken man but a man nonetheless.