In the morning, he goes to the hospital for a chest X-ray because he’s told the doctor he’s worried he can’t breathe and now the doctor’s worried, too, listening to him six ways from Sunday and finally sending in a technician to do some spirometrics. It takes him longer to walk into and out of the hospital than it does to sit for the required exposures; the radiologist, apparently only about fourteen years old, is chirpy, energetic and efficient. On the way out, he pops into the pharmacy to pick up his new prescription—there being a new prescription each time he visits the doctor these days—and to buy a replacement for the knee brace he lost on vacation.
He adds it all up and comes to the obvious conclusion: it’s time for coffee. The bookstore café beckons. When he gets there, the regular crowd of late-morning geezers has already gathered and, although they still do not offer him a seat at their tables, when he comes limping in they shoot him a longer glance than usual, which seems to confirm, he imagines, an increased likelihood of imminent inclusion.
Art Credit: Tom Webber
I like this, but only if is fiction.
Viv is seriously concerned that this might be autobiographical! Did you do that lovely drawing – I can’t read the signature?
Thanks for the concern V, but–like most things writers create–this is only partly non-fiction. Don’t worry. As for the art, it’s by a very talentented guy named Tom Webber; does the credit/caption not show up on your screen? Oh my….
Otherwise known as ‘creative reality” which we all do from time to time. I don’t always comment, usually because WP won’t let me, I can’t “Like” any of them, (same problem} but I always read, and carefully. Take care of Ron., and button up that coat, it’s cold up there.
NIce writing, as always. Consider me as having clicked the “like’ button.