SOME KIND OF THIEVERY (Wild Irish 3)

Sister Margret slept three hours before returning for the morning shift, which she had specifically requested despite having worked the previous night’s shift. There is no rest for the wicked, nor any for the nurses who mend them. There was a homeless gentleman the Sister was interested in. He had come into the infirmary with a lot of cuts and bruises, likely over some kind of thievery. He muttered the name of a cheap wine over and over—likely the name of whatever he stole or had stolen—but said little else. Sister Margret had found that many of the homeless people who came through the hospital lived with blinders on, attempting to go by, quite strictly, from day to bloody day. It lessens the pain of life to think only of the things right in front of you. Sister Margret understood this.

        “Maggie, did you see?” Sister Helen asked as Margret came into the hospital through the staff parking lot.

        “What should I have seen, Sister?”

        “That gentleman that came in yesterday—the homeless man—he and another gentleman got into a fight on floor three last night. The other man was attacking the homeless fellow; he jumped through a window and the attacker is in custody now.”

        “Oh my,” Sister Margret said. Her face became hard. She and Sister Helen walked down the hall, toward the employee break room. Inside, the staff coffee pot was made up, grounds and water waiting, but the pot had not been turned on. “Why can’t anything ever just work?!” Margret erupted. She began to weep.

        Towards the end of her shift, Sister Margret took the elevator to floor three. She had been avoiding it most of the morning, instead trying to greet people in the waiting rooms and speak with families. She spoke with many new mothers, trying to keep her day as positive as possible. For whatever odd reason, the homeless man she had seen the day before moved her. She could remember his bitterness, his anger at the world, fiery within his dark eyes. This was a man that, Lord please forgive such language, had been fucked by life. It was impossible to think otherwise. In a good world, rich with bounty, how could we not provide for such men? How could souls burn with questions and choose to seek answers in glass bottles instead of holy text? Sometimes, Margret thought very quietly to herself, so quiet even within her own mind, that she hoped God could not hear her thoughts: maybe the Devil made the world and we are just his amusements.

        The elevator stopped. Sister Margret got off and stepped toward the In-Need ward, for those unable to pay for their care. Opening the door, Sister Margret immediately felt a cold surround her; the broken window was in the far corner of the room. A trail of blood droplets led to the window, and then a spray of it surrounded the shattered glass. Margret shivered.

        Plastic, secured around the broken window with painters tape, billowed inward from the wind outside. The contractors hired by the County never did a good job. They didn’t care to. One of them was still in the room, lazily measuring the window while eating a sandwich from the hospital’s cafeteria. The handful of patients still in the ward—all older men—were not allowed to move to a different ward. Instead they had each been given one extra blanket. Margret decided that coming up to see the ward had been a very bad idea. She left.

        The County contractor finished his sandwich and wiped off his fingers on the blanket of the bed nearest him. The County sent him to do a patch job and he was done. He was just soaking up extra time on the clock.

        “Watch it, kiddo.”

        “Huh?” the contractor grunted. The man whose blanket he’d wiped off on was looked at him, pissed.

        “I said, ‘Watch it,’ you fat jerkoff.”

        “If I wasn’t so sure your broke, sorry asshole was dripping with AIDS, I’d put you away.”

        “Alright tough guy, whatever you say.”

        The man turned on his side and tried to sleep. The contractor puffed out his chest a little bit, a small victory. He looked out, through the clear plastic over the window, toward his car. He was just about ready to take off for the day. Then he saw two guys smashing in his driver’s side.

        “Motherfucks, my car!” he said, running toward the elevator. He hit the DOWN button and waited.

        “What’s wrong, tough guy? You gettin’ a ticket? Repo’d? Or is some other broke, sorry faggot about to take it for a ride?”

        The contractor couldn’t do anything. He waited for the elevator. The man in the bed began to laugh. The contractor turned red in the face. All of the men in the ward began to laugh, then.

Take back the feature

Hmm, that wasn’t an easy thing to do but here goes:

1.Favorite prose:

      ode to having a moderate touch of mental illness, by processproduct

 It really offers an interesting and new perspective on the matter.

2.Favorite spoken word:

      blind dog, by eric boyd

 Listen to it and you’ll know why it’s in this list.

3.Favorite poet:

      loqui            I can’t give you a title

    all my favorites from him have been featured, I’m sorry dudes!

4.Umm, and here are two by me (I can’t narrow it down any further)

     S

     Dystopian worlds