
The Emergency Room
The sirens flash. The gurney rolls in. The patient is screaming, a knife sticking out of his chest. The rest of the patients in the waiting room watch the bloody wheels roll into the ER. Poppy Monroe with the broken leg turns her freckled face into her dad’s shoulder to look away. Gilbert Pierce pinches his broken nose and refuses to shudder, feeling the need to prove his masculinity to the girl sitting next to him. Grandma Betty clutches her shawl tighter with a haunted look on her face and squeezes her granddaughter Ivy’s hand a little. Doe-eyed Ivy hides behind her blonde bangs, one tear running down her cheek. What the patients don’t realize is they are all suffering from a broken heart. Poppy’s leg aches from when her new step-mother shoved her down the steps and told her in a sinister whisper, “ Don’t tell your father.” Gilbert’s nose cracked when the girl sitting next to him, the girl he loves, found out he cheated and punched him in the face. Betty feels broken because her husband just died in this very hospital. Ivy’s heart breaks because she knows her grandmother will follow soon. But the one with the most obvious broken heart is the patient who has now gone silent with a knife through his ribcage. The only person not heartbroken in this hospital is his wife with the fake tears rolling down her face.
The sirens flash. The gurney rolls in. The patient is screaming, a knife sticking out of his chest. The rest of the patients in the...