That Can’t Be Right.
Gotham Writers Write-In — 1/14/22
This is part 1 of 2 of a story created in this particular write-in. I used both prompts to make a continuous story. Part 2 and its prompt are here.
That can’t be right. Not for this patient. This patient that embodies and personifies the term “patient” after all. But he had to tell her.
“Ms. Williams, I’m afraid your MRI results are concerning,” Dr. McLaughlin said, as he slowly lowered his glasses off of his face and set them down on the desk. He pressed his hands together in a prayer-like gesture and sighed a sigh as long as the flight that Ms. Williams took from her home in Rhode Island to Dr.McLaughlin’s office at Stanford University.
He took his time as he was internally mustering the courage to share his initial findings from the scan. He had been lucky up to this point in his career. He had not grown emotionally attached to any of his patients before. Dr. McLaughlin saw his patients as cars, and he was the mechanic. No attachment to their humanness. No true regard for their personness. But over the last few months, he had grown fond of Ms. Williams. Her charming wit reminded him of his Aunt Eva, the woman that discouraged him from staying in his hometown and encouraged him to pursue the highest of the highest degree in one of the best medical schools in the country. He…
