We had to use a certain type of "opener" to get our story going and to indicate what was to follow. I used one of my recent Facebook posts as the opener and came up with a story. It is absolutely NOT what my ex was like, but he did like his video games. 

I Messed With The Bull And Got The Horns

            My ex-boyfriend had ended our last conversation accusing me of being “angry, bitter and passive-aggressive”. Which I probably was. Because he was a dick. Five years later, I received a subpoena, which sent a lava floe of rage up my spine. I was being summoned to testify as a character witness regarding the civil case of “Byrne vs. Schoenstein”. It took me a few seconds to realize that “Schoenstein” was my dick ex-boyfriend, “Alan Schoenstein”. I hadn’t talked to him in years and now I was going to be dragged back into his life.

I was still angry I hadn’t broken up with him first when he told me I looked fat in my favorite dress. After a long day of counseling veterans, I had made that soul-sucking 90 min drive to his place multiple times a week. Then three years later, he broke up with me because I was “no longer worth the effort”. After that, we stopped all communication. I celebrated with a bottle of wine, a fistful of Xanax and a bag of chips.

            Now it appeared his ex-wife was suing him to get the house and sole custody of the children. Their divorce case was all over the local news showcasing his perfunctory “I am not a dick” statement against his ex-wife’s grisly deposition. There were photos of bruises on her thighs and neck, stories about being restrained against her will and his unwillingness to provide any relief when she was busy taking care of his mother who was recovering from hip surgery. One night while he was playing Epic Battle Fantasy 4, she asked him to help get his mother in bed.

            “It’s your fucking job,” he said, allegedly. “You’re a fucking nurse.”

            That part was probably true, given my experience with Alan.

Ironically, Alan happened to be a beloved high school math teacher who had taught in the county for almost two decades. The students took to him like goslings to a Father Goose. After the news broke, not only did their Emperor suddenly have no clothes on, he was being accused of choking his Empress. Still, I heard he took good care of his two kids. As God supposedly molded man in His image, Alan loved molding children in his.

            A week later, the process server showed up at work to give me the subpoena.

            That night, my psychiatrist gave me a refill on my Xanax.

The day of their hearing, my head buzzed with each step towards the courthouse. My hands were red from rubbing them together and my nails were sore from picking at them. The judge was sitting at the head of the table. On one side were Alan’s ex-wife, her lawyers and a court stenographer. On the other side, Alan sat next to his lawyer. His lawyer greeted me and motioned to the seat on the other side near the judge. Alan nodded in greeting. His ex-wife looked like she was in her late twenties and reminded me of my best friend.

They made me put my hand on a book, “ to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” and asked about my history with Alan. It felt like a colonoscopy without anesthesia.

            Alan’s Lawyer/L: Did he ever force you to do anything you didn’t want to do?

            Me/M: No.

            L: Did he ever cause bruising or other injuries during your consensual activities?

            M: Yes.

            L: Did you pursue medical attention for the injuries?

            M: No.

            L: Did you ever see him threaten or be violent to a minor?

            M: No.

            L: Would you say he is good with kids?

            M: Yes.

            L: Do you think he would ever make a child feel unsafe?
            M: No.

            L: Did you ever feel unsafe when you were with him?

            For the first time during my testimony, Alan looked up at me. I didn’t move.

            M: No.

            I was humiliated and ashamed of myself, but I was never unsafe.

            It was the ex-wife’s lawyer’s turn to cross-examine me. I expected him to attack my credibility since I didn’t know the ex-wife and hadn’t talked to Alan in five years.

            EWL: Can you tell me about why you two broke up?

            M: He didn’t want to drive to my house because it was too much effort for him.

            EWL: Did he have any health issues that would keep him from doing so?

            M: No. I guess it stressed him out.

            EWL: But he expected you to go to his house multiple times a week?

            M: Yep.

            EWL: Did the 90 minutes sitting in rush hour traffic stress you out?

            M: Yep.

            EWL: Is the distance to your house different than the distance to his house?

            L: Irrelevant, Your Honor.

            Judge: This is a character witness telling us about his character. It’s relevant to me.

            EWL: Did he ever threaten to leave you?

M: Well, he said if I didn’t start wearing sexier clothing, he would stop thinking about me romantically. So basically, yeah.

If his shirt buttons could have melted with rage, Alan would have been covered in second-degree burns. I had already talked about the hand-cuffs; might as well talk about everything else.

            EWL: Why didn’t you leave him?
            M: The sex was good. Alan made me feel I was lucky anyone wanted me.

            My lack of self-esteem was now on public record along with anecdotes about our sexual proclivities.

Her lawyer knew that nothing I said was going to support the allegations of abuse, but at least I could corroborate the part about his controlling behavior. Being with Alan was like punching myself in the gut every day. But it was my own fault for messing with the bull and getting the horns. I was the one who thought I could change the bull into a kitten.

This assignment asks us to use a setting as a character/a pervasive presence. 

Mabel’s New Best Friend

The smell of stale macaroni and cheese under a heat lamp mixed with the scent of industrial cleaner in the hospital cafeteria was a familiar musty stench that Dr. Mabel Sun had grown used to. She grabbed a granola bar and a chocolate pudding cup from the counter and brushed her greasy bangs off to the side. The grey industrial cafeteria had been bustling with the dinner crowd two hours before, but Mabel found herself eating alone. The booth’s vinyl seat cushions exhaled puffs of air as she shuffled her butt across the broken lining.

            The best part of my day, she thought, as she cracked open the chocolate pudding cup. She inhaled the sweet sticky smell of high fructose satisfaction. She couldn’t get a date with a hot Marine, but she could get pudding.

            Beep beep beep! Mabel reflexively shut the beeper off with her left hand as she used her right hand to shovel a spoonful of rubbery chocolate pudding into her mouth.

“X4359.” The beeper message read. That was her senior resident’s phone extension.

A dollop of chocolate slid off the spoon and landed on the lapel of her white-ish lab coat.

Shit. Of all the colors she could have stained her coat with, it had to be the color of shit.

           

            Mabel sighed, her mouth full of chocolate pudding. Most likely, it was Matt, her senior resident, paging her about a new admission for the hospital team on-call. She picked up her Spectralink phone and dialed the extension.

            “Hey,” Matt said, “Got a fun case for you.”

“Ooo! I love the smell of gangrene in the morning,” she replied.

            The patient was a forty-five year-old white male with Stage Four Rectal Cancer. He arrived in the ER with “a severe obstruction of the lower colon.” In layman’s terms, “there was a giant tumor blocking the exit to the poop shoot.” Mabel would have to insert a rectal tube into the patient’s holiest of holies; then inject saline and withdraw whatever contents of the rectum would come out peacefully.

Click.

If she hadn’t been in the middle of eating chocolate pudding, Mabel would have been more enthusiastic about doing this new procedure. This was going to involve equipment and a lot of lube.

She walked quickly down the hallway, the hem of her coat floating behind her. Her reflex hammer clanged like a metronome with each step against the metal part of her stethoscope. At this hour, half of the fluorescent lights gave the hallway a ghostly vibe amid the hum of nurses quietly going over issues that were passed down from the day shift. Patients were “tucked in” for the night instead of wandering the halls with the physical therapists. There was an occasional beeping of machines and pneumatic “puffsssttt” of blood pressure cuffs.

This is what purgatory must look like, Mabel thought.

            She reached the patient’s room and took a deep breath and put her “professional doctor” face on so that her new patient would not have to see the “I just horked down a giant cup of my favorite chocolate pudding” face. The patient was in the bed, lying on his left side. The room was lit with a warm glow from a bedside lamp rather than the usual overhead lights, which usually cast a sickly green glow over the entire room. Unfortunately, it smelled like a man dying amidst the scent of industrial cleaning products. He had probably vomited earlier. Mabel mouth-breathed, closed the door and smiled.

            “Hi, Mr. Schofield. My name is Dr. Sun and I’ll be helping you out today.”

            He turned his head up and said “Ahhhh, so you got the short straw today.”

            Mabel could make out deep dimples in the outline of his face along with a tube coming out of his nose to empty the stomach. She walked around so he would not have to twist his body to see her.

            “Mr. Schofield-“
            “Call me Ron.”

            “Ron, I’m here to help you out today.” Mabel moved a chair closer to the bedside. “If anything, I hope you don’t end up feeling like you drew the short straw.”

            Ron laughed and then gasped as his belly cramped. He took a few deep breaths and was calm again.

            Mabel sat in front of him. “So tell me your story.”

Ron looked at the wall. “Well, don’t yell at me, but I hate goin’ to the doctors.”

“Nah, I worry about people who love going to the doctors.” Mabel clicked her pen and flipped open a small spiral pad.

“Fair ‘nuff,” Ron chuckled. “I never got my colonoscopy like my mom said I had to. Then my bleedin’ got so bad, I finally had to go and see someone. Next thing I know, they tell me I have three months to live. I’d prefer three weeks, personally. This shit sucks. Literally.”

Ron also smoked a pack of Camels a day and drank “probably more than you should”. He lived with a man named Zeke, when he wasn’t traveling all over Asia for work. It had been twelve years since he saw a doctor. The radiation treatments didn’t help much and he was going to be talking to the hospice service in the morning.

Mabel proceeded to examine his belly.

            Tap tap tap. It produced a hollow sound. Ron grimaced.

            Mabel went to the supply room at the end of the hall and came back with a basin, gloves, a rectal tube, KY Jelly, a jug of warmed sterile saline and a syringe. She set the equipment on the other side of the bed away from Ron. While they waited for Matt to come by and supervise Mabel, Ron chatted to her about his last meal in Asia. He paused every five minutes or so to grimace while his stomach cramped up with gas pains.

            Finally, the door opened and Matt whisked himself into the room.

            “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Schofield. I’m Dr. Cabrera.” He looked over at the pile of supplies. “Got everything, Mabel?”

            They assembled the apparatus, quietly reviewing what the steps were. Mabel could smell his cologne. Her nose tingled all the way down to her shoes.

“Just try to relax.” Matt patted Mabel on the shoulder.

“You heard him, Ron? He wants you to relax.” Mabel joked.

            Ron took deep breaths like a woman in labor as they inserted the tube.

            A loud warm burst of gas came out of the end of the rectal tube. Success. Another flush of saline and there was another warm flush of liquid stool.

Ron groaned a sigh of relief. “You. You are my new best friend.”

Mabel laughed and tried not to dislodge the slippery rectal tube. Fortunately the only brown stain on her white coat was still from chocolate pudding. Ron’s face relaxed. Matt’s beeper went off.

“You’re good. Page me when you’re done.” He slapped Mabel on the back and left quickly to the hallway outside.

Ron yelped.

Mabel had to withdraw the tube. She had gotten rid of some of the pain, but Ron’s belly remained full. The rest of Mr. Schofield’s medical plan would lie in the evaluation and treatment of the hospice team. For now, he would get morphine through a line inserted into his veins. 

“Doc?” Ron was resting in the bed, eyes closed.
            “Yes?”
            “Thank you. You’re still my new best friend.”

“You’re welcome.” Mabel played with a button on her coat. “Good luck with everything, Mr. Schofield. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Doc.”

Suddenly, Mabel’s eyes and nose were stinging. She took some deep breaths and walked out of the room.

She thought about the lonely studio apartment waiting for her at the end of the shift. Her friends were all starting families. Matt was faithfully married. It had been a long time since Mabel had been someone’s best friend. Another three days and she’d have to do the 32-hour shift all over again- probably powered by another cup of chocolate pudding. She saw herself alone at the end of her life, submitting to endless procedures after eating a lifetime’s worth of chocolate pudding cups. Mabel went to the nearest bathroom, closed the door to the stall, sat on the toilet and covered her eyes with wads of toilet paper to catch her tears.

Beep beep beep. Another fun case.