An excerpt from Nikolas and Simone

Simone fled from the waiting room after an hour. Hospitals drove her crazy. They were like fun houses in the twilight zone, every where you look another person twisted into an unnatural shape: grief, fear, pain, loss.

And time moved at a different pace, agonizingly slow when you didn’t know if yourself or your loved one would survive and then like a lightening bolt when the answer came. Thomas didn’t try to stop her when she said she needed coffee. He didn’t say anything, just gave her a blank eyed stared, nodding.

She sat in the cafeteria, staring at the black liquid swirling in her cup, and tried not to think. The paramedics had jolted Edna, once, twice, finally getting her pulse back, then losing it again. Another jolt and then they were up and running, with her on the stretcher, toward their rig.

Death had been there, lingering above them like a thunder cloud, threatening to wash away the future they had, like foolish mortals often do, planned out so carefully. The one they thought they were entitled to.