BY MOIRA GARLAND
Copyright is held by the author.
THE SNOW has begun to shelter the pair of willow trees in the square. Behind the pile of patient files and the typewriter, through the thin panes of glass framed by yellow peeling paint, I watch the soft flakes make devoted landfall.
Weeks since she started on this outpatient floor, in her green uniform, broad belt, perching white cap, dark brown eyes, hands you could easily hold.
Warm hand once on my arm on the corridor.
Fridays are for birthday celebrations, and cream cakes in the nurses’ restroom when secretaries are invited to socialise with the nurses. I edge my way to where she’s stood with two other nurses. They’re talking about the pace of the plaster room, how the plaster will protect the arm from damage, help knit the bone. She glances my way, returns to the conversation.
Questions she’s answered previously over cream cakes: she takes 30 minutes to get to work. She lives in a district at the other end of town to me. She lives in a flat. Other people live with her “now and then”.
Questions she has asked me: Do you like working for Mr. — (the consultant who everyone knows is grumpy)? Do you like this warm/hot/freezing weather?
Overnight we expect the snow to have gone.
My cold fingers tap, tap, tap.
The snow hugs the landscape; overnight it will melt and be followed by slumping grey clouds shedding rain again. Brazenfaced crocuses poke through.
***
Moira Garland is a U.K.-based, prize-winning fiction writer and poet. Her work appears in magazines including Strix, Dreamcatcher, and Stand, and in various print and online anthologies, and has been broadcast on Radio Leeds. @moiragauthor: Instagram/Threads/ X
