Me and Her at the Lab

Me and Her at the Lab


Lost, we rode the elevator forcing chatter
until we found the directory for the genetics lab,
and beside it, a delivery man with
a water cooler bottle thrown on his shoulder.
His worrying eyes locked on the door
about to close between us.
“You go ahead,” Jillian said. “We’re already late.”
He nodded, brushed past to lodge
in the hesitant space between a baby stroller,
wheelchairs, smell of sickness.
“There goes a man having a bad day,” I said,
my giggles banging nervously against the walls
until her silence chased them away.
In the next car, as we reached the floor,
we heard a crash, something dribbling into the shaft.
The doors opened to water, glass,
the delivery man smiling a broken smile
in an angry crowd and holding his hand
to stop the blood. Jillian gathered glass, tried to help;
I checked in at the desk,
glad to have something to watch other than
the cancer patients eyeing our youth
and wholeness. The nurses came in a wave of white
and took the man to stitch up his hand.
Doctors streamed out with vacuums, brooms,
like circus clowns, their white coats fluttering.
“I didn’t even know they made those water cooler bottles
out of glass anymore,” she said. “And in a hospital.”
We settled into our seats to wait
Soon, they’d be calling my name.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on The Dead Mule