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A Story by AndrewH

A short story about a man on a hospital bed. Go to andrewhenleywriting.wordpress.com for more of my writing.

A tangled thorn bush of tubes consumes a hospital bed. Inside their plastic sarcophagus, at this stage as ornate as they are necessary, a man is trapped in a medically induced purgatory.

His palms are rough, callused and tanned like tough leather. The skin on his hands are thick like work gloves after a life of blue collar evolution. His elderly body has retained the basic muscles of youth, but in an atrophied state. A lifetime of sun and sweat has stained his complexion an earthy maroon.

He has two children, no wife, and no visitors. When it was young and in bloom, his heart was broken and poison leaked out. His wife left him like a steamroller; it was slow, it was painful, it squeezed everything out of him and left just an imprint. The broken heart was a catalyst, the poison in his veins the puppet strings. The way he looked at his children. The way he pulled his arm back. The way he clenched his fist.

She had her mother’s smile.

He had his mother’s eyes.

He had two children and no visitors. Inside his nest of life-support, he flatlined.