Creative Writing Piece 3: Waiting in the ER

I checked my watch. It had only been two hours since I first brought the kid to the hospital, but I felt like i had been waiting for two days. Every minute was excruciatingly long and only left me more worried. The doctor wouldn’t let me stay with him since I wasn’t family, but it didn’t feel right sitting in the waiting room while the kid was all alone. In fact nothing felt right at all. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept shifting nervously in my chair, bouncing my knee up and down, biting my nails, trying to do anything that could distract me from not knowing anything. I kept waiting for a doctor to come out and give me an update or status report, anything at all that would at least give me some information about how he was doing, but so far I hadn’t heard anything. I didn’t understand how the doctors could just leave me here. Right now, I was all the kid had and even though I had never met him before in my life, I carried him through the hospital doors and I felt a responsibility to look after him. I started sorting things out in my head, everything had happened so fast I hadn’t had time to process what really happened. It’d happened around early that night around 7:30. I had just got off work from my crappy job at the supermarket and started walking to my crappy second floor apartment just a couple of blocks away. It wasn’t much, a bit small which I liked to think of it as “comfortable”, but it was also close to a large park. As I was walking down my building’s street I saw a large group of kids, they looked teenagers, but they couldn’t be older than seventeen. It looked like they were arguing, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because this sort of thing happened on a fairly regular basis. I walked up to my building and was about to walk through the door when the loud crack of a gun ripped through the air like a clap of thunder after lightning strikes. I dropped to the floor covering my head with my arms and waited for the shots to end. I listened to the ringing fade out of my ear and as I sat balled up on the steps of my building I realized that there had only been one shot. I looked up and saw the group of kids sprinting on the other side of the park, scattering in all directions. Then I saw someone writhing on the ground in the middle of the park. I ran to the kid on the ground and pulled out my cheap pay-as-you-go flip phone and dialed 911. When I reached the boy I was shocked to see how young he was. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen. I knelt down next to him and froze up. I didn’t know what to do. Blood had already soaked through his shirt and jacket and was beginning to pool around him. I pulled up the boy’s shirt, he had been shot right in the gut. I quickly whipped off my hoody and pressed hard onto the wound, but it wasn’t enough, he was still bleeding. My phone was still pressed to my ear, but I couldn’t hear it ringing. I looked at it and saw an error message displayed on the screen. Of all days I could’ve run out of minutes it had to be this one. The kid was already unconscious and I didn’t know how much longer he could hold out without medical attention. Suddenly I became very angry, where was everyone?! Was I the only one who had heard the gunshots?! No one was coming and I couldn’t carry the kid by myself. There was a hospital only three blocks away, but it could take to long to run all the way there and back. I had to find someone who could help. I got up and sprinted to the nearest busy street at the other side of the park. I was screaming for help, but cars kept passing me up. How could they just drive past me!? I need their help! On the fourth car I jumped in front of them and demanded that they helped me. After I brought him back to the boy we drove him to the hospital. I carried him in and the doctors immediately took him into the ER. Still sitting in the waiting room a nurse finally came up to me. “How bad is it? Will he live?” I asked.

“He showing positive signs, but the doctors say he has about a fifty-fifty chance. He lost a lot of blood you know, he’s going to need a transplant.” She said.

“He can have my blood, I’ll donate right now.” I was a little surprised I said that, given that I didn’t even know the kid, but it felt right.

“What’s your blood type?” She asked.

“Umm, I think A negative, yeah definitely A negative.”

“Sorry, he needs a O negative blood.”

“Oh.” I said. I sat back down feeling defeated.

“I’ll let you know if I learn anything and if you need something else please come get me.” She turned to walk back down the hallway towards the emergency rooms.  I had no idea how long I was going to wait here for so I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.

Creative Writing Piece 2

He opened his eyes and checked the clock, it was 4:45am. It was dark outside his window, but he rose out of bed and began to get dressed. He walked into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face. As he ran his hands over his face he felt his short, unkempt beard. He thought about shaving it, but realized it really didn’t matter. He went to the kitchen and looked at the calendar, it was March 17th. As he put on his boots he stared at the photo pinned to his refrigerator. It had been creased down the center so many times that the photo had faded away completely leaving a white vertical line down the center. He got up, walked over to the counter, opened the drawer directly next to the refrigerator, and grabbed the pistol. He grabbed his fishing gear, threw the gun in the bait box, and went to the door. He stopped. He turned around, walked back to the refrigerator, took the picture, folded it down the middle, and put it in his chest pocket. Then he went back to the door and left for the lake. The air was damp and cool as he walked down the wooded path towards the lake, it had been raining all week, which was alright with him because he liked the smell of rain. As he walked through the woods he listened to the sound of his feet in the mud. He counted his steps along the way as it was still too dark to see properly. Three-hundred and sixty-four days. For three-hundred and sixty-four days he had walked this same path, in the same boots, to the same lake, with the same gun. He reached the dock, unwrapped the rope holding the small aluminum fishing boat, and hopped in. He left the motor up and decided to row his way into the middle of the lake. Except for the soft dragging of the paddle through the water, it was completely silent. He enjoyed the silence; somehow it seemed fitting. Once he was out in the middle of the lake he stopped rowing. He opened up the bait box and looked at the gun. It was small .22 caliber six-shooter. He picked it up and opened the cartridge. All six bullets sat in place untouched. He set the gun next to him on the bench and baited his fishing line. His fishing rod made a quiet whir as he cast his line out into the water. He sat there the same way he had three-hundred sixty-four days in a row and waited. In three-hundred and sixty-four days he had done the same thing the same way every morning, but in three-hundred and sixty-four days he never brought the picture. He pulled it out of his front pocket and looked at it. He had seen this photo every day, but he had never looked at it like this before. The picture showed a young girl standing with a man. She had blond hair and green eyes. She was wearing a pink floral dress with no shoes. The man next to her had light brown hair and was wearing a tuxedo. He was looking down at her smiling while she was looking down at her toes. Both of their arms were extended towards each other, but the picture had faded where their hands would’ve met. He looked at the bottom corner of the picture and where the scribbled handwriting wrote, 3/18/07. One teardrop fell onto the photo, then another, and another, and then he felt them all around him. It had started raining again and as he sat crying he placed the photo over his heart. He grabbed the gun next to him and placed the barrel on his chest over the photo directly where their hands would’ve met. Three-hundred and sixty four days. He pulled the trigger.

Creative Writing Piece 1

I woke up from the soft crashing of rain against my window, but I knew I could not get up. I kept my eyes closed, and let my mind wander from thought to thought. I thought about everything and yet at the same time I hadn’t thought of anything. I lay in the bliss of my half-conscious state. As I was lying there I realized I could do anything I set my mind, and yet I couldn’t do anything at all. This moment just before waking up was my ultimate weakness. It was the moment in which I was my most productive self.  I was making plans to work out more, study harder, ask out the girl I liked. I thought back to last summer when we used to hang out at the beach and tease each other about who was a better swimmer. We were both pretty tall, me being around 6’2” and her being around 5’10”, but I was always able to pull ahead at the last minute and beat her. She had grown her hair out longer than usual reaching almost half-way down her back and I used to always tell her that maybe if she shaved it off she could finally beat me. She’d laugh and her bright hazel eyes would light up and I’d laugh with her. My entire body would heat up with happiness and I wouldn’t worry about anything. It was the best feeling in the world. All summer we had this back and forth of flirting and teasing until it got to the point where people started asking me when I was going to ask her out. My friends would ask her friends if she liked me and her friends would ask my friends if I liked her. It was obvious to everyone except for us, and neither of us knew for sure how the other one felt because neither of us had said anything definitive about each other to anyone else. Eventually I decided I had to make a move, but I was afraid of getting rejected so I simply asked her to hang out. That way I could play it off casually if she said no. After lots of careful planning and brainstorming I finally worked up the nerve to text her. I started with some casual conversation and asked her if she wanted to hang out next Saturday and maybe go grab something to eat. As I sat there my heart beat faster with every second and I began to break a sweat. It was the most excruciating two minutes of my entire life when all of the sudden my phone buzzed with her response. I flipped over my phone eager to see what she had said. “Sounds fun I can’t wait.” By the time Saturday had arrived I was extremely nervous. I decided I would wait to text her after practice since we hadn’t really figured out what we were going to do. After practice I checked my phone and saw that I had a message waiting for me. “Hey are we doing anything tonight,” I had only missed it by about 20 minutes so I quickly replied, “yeah I’d still be down if you are.” Not a minute later she replied, “Actually I can’t do anything tonight.” My heart sank, I knew that she hadn’t made any plans for tonight and in that moment I lost all of my confidence. Over the next few weeks we started talking less and less and things between us just became awkward. One day we just stopped talking. As I laid there, I realized that there was absolutely no reason for me to feel insecure. For all I knew she was just as nervous as me about the whole night. In that moment I became the most motivated I had ever been in my life. I thought about texting her, putting all my cards out on the table, getting a fresh start, but I couldn’t act on any of it. I knew that as soon as I opened my eyes I would lose the drive I was holding on to so tightly right now. I knew I could talk myself out of any resolution or plan I had made to better myself with convenience. I knew myself, but I promised that this time was different. I opened my eyes and stared at my phone. I had to act now while I still had my momentum. I grabbed my phone, searched through the contacts, and found her name. Without thinking I only typed out one word and clicked send. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

A Principle to Keep

A principle is an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct.  I believe that an important principle to keep is the idea of compassion for others.  In times of desperation people often only do things that benefit themselves and are unwillingly to share or even show any amount of kindness to others. I think that compassion is a core part of what makes us human, and if we were to lose it as a principle, the world would be much more evil. Without compassion, I think many people would lose faith in each other and give up on life much easier.  In the road, people no longer care for each other and simply live to survive for as long as they can.  There is no hope that someone will come and help you out or make things better so people decide that death is more appealing that life is and kill themselves.  In addition, without compassion there is essentially no sure way to trust anyone.  If you are aware that someone who is offering you help is probably doing so after self interest, then it makes their actions suspicious.  Although not everyone in the world holds the principle of being compassionate I think that it is extremely important for people to try their hardest to do so.  In the road, though the man knows that he should try to be compassionate, it is impractical for him to do so.  The boy, however, tries his hardest to help others when he can and resorts to begging the father to help others because that's what he has been taught to be good.  If in a world where everyone is simply trying to survive day by day there is someone that tries to be compassionate, then I think it should be easy for more people to be compassionate in our world.  Everyone can do something, small or large, to help somebody everyday.  Whether you are simply helping a friend through a personal issue, volunteering for a soup kitchen, or providing any service for somebody, small amounts of compassion by everyone go a long way to make the world a better place.