Wounded Nightingales by Karen Watts

She had the whole morning planned down to the minute. She’d give a quick report to the morning shift, transfer the drug key to the day nurse, and then pop into the locker room and change. The drive over would take twenty minutes, she’d timed it, and she would walk in the door with five minutes to spare.

Mr. Hernandez coded at 7 a.m., and that was not in her calculations. Everything else forgotten, her whole world became beeping alarms, chest compressions, and the coordinated movements of a team fighting for a life.

By the time she pried herself away from Mrs. Hernandez’s sobbing but grateful embrace, she knew the Eastside Elementary Spring Song Festival was over. Defeated she went home and indulged in a long, hot, tear-filled, shower. She baked cookies – dozens of cookies. A cup of tea and a few more tears, and a violent round of weeding the front flowerbed, and she was calm by the time the school bus beep beeped at the end of the driveway.

Her daughter skipped the whole way to the front door, and hugged her tightly.

“It’s okay, Mommy. People can’t help it when they’re really sick.”

Hand-in-hand they walked into the kitchen.

“Wanna hear my song?”

Karen Southall Watts, is an educator, speaker and coach in addition to being a writer. Her flash fiction and poetry have been featured at Fairfield Scribes, Free Flash Fiction, The Drabble, Sledgehammer Lit, 101Words, Paragraph Planet, Soren Lit, Spillwords Press, and The Chamber Magazine. Karen was a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee for poetry. Her poetry chapbook, Desire, Dreams and Dust was released in April of 2023.

www.instagram.com/thoughtsbykaren/

Photo by Aleksander Fox on Unsplash

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