August

a.

It is five forty-five in the morning. The sun has not come out and it is cold and somebody in the hallway is shouting. The nurse is white and she is tall and she eats chocolate cake in the dining hall and she is fat.

c.

The doctor has a house on a golf course and he has a car that goes really fast. Is that good, Mary asks. Mary is the ambulance driver and she puts her body into little triangles in the morning. It is good, the doctor says. Where is the golf course, Mary asks. Someone in the hallway is shouting.

d.

The doctor is on a diet. The doctor has sex with the nurse at six fifteen. She moves her body back and forth and she makes little noises like she is a rodent. The doctor counts to seven. I am in better shape, the doctor says. The nurse looks pasty and her body is sweating and it sticks to the operating table. You look like you don’t see the sun all that much, the doctor says.

e.

Mary drives the ambulance very fast and sometimes she does not stop at the red lights even when her flashing lights are not on. They won’t like hitting an ambulance, Mary says. Who won’t, Harold asks. Harold and Mary started having sex when Mary was seventeen. Now, Mary is twenty seven. The other drivers, Mary says. Somebody is screaming in the hallway, Harold says. The doctor counts: eight, nine, ten. Where is the nurse, Mary says.

f.

There is somebody shouting in the hallway, Mrs. Galloway says. She is polite and patient but the screaming is really pretty terrible and she has become a little bit worried. Mrs. Galloway was born in a small communist village outside Moscow and she doesn’t think that some people should be left to scream in the hospital.

The hospital was built in 1901, the clerk says. I was born in 1924, Mrs. Galloway says. Then I would have a seat, the clerk says. The clock on the wall in the waiting room makes loud ticking noises and it sounds like it is a bomb.

g.

The nurse is tall and white and she used to play sports for her high school in Atlanta. She could make her body into squares and circles. The other girls couldn’t do that. Her father said she had an ugly nose. Her math teacher slept with her after homecoming. You are going to get fat, her father said.

h.

He doesn’t have insurance, the nurse says. Tell Mary to take him back to his neighborhood, the doctor says. He left a lot of blood on the floor, the nurse says. The clerk shakes her head. The doctor should be with you right away, Mrs. Galloway. The nurse and the doctor have sex on the operating table. It is seven forty-five. Your skin looks yellow, the doctor says.


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