The Wife sits in a green vinyl chair next to Husband’s mechanical bed in the Oncology ward of Baylor University Research Hospital. Poison drips into his arm; professionals call it medicine. She snaps shut her Selected Stories of Alice Munro; the sound is like a snowball thudding against the glass, its flakes flying this way […]
Herbert feared the intense pounding in his heart would explode from his emaciated chest onto the frozen field of his escape. The buckets of snow pouring from the black heavens were aiding his cause by covering his foot prints. This was the night he had waited for, a moonless sky, with weather projected to become […]
On the drive back to the Old Home Place, Dr. Watkins sat in the back seat filling the car with talk while Cheryl stayed up front with Frank, her face angled into the stream of cool air pouring out of the air-conditioning vent. Whenever a fresh wave of nausea welled in her stomach, she held […]
“Cher, wake up,” Frank whispered, shaking her gently. “It’s late.” She opened her eyes and the bedroom filled with bright morning sunlight. At first she saw only the empty room, her clothes on the floor, the sheet she’d thrown over Frank the night before bunched at the bottom of the bed. Her back ached from […]