Days like today

There are good days, and then there are days like today.

Lorna turned the tap on and ran her hands under the cold water. Pumping out a little more soap than necessary into the palm of her hand, she scrubbed away ferociously. They'd taken in a trauma patient just as Lorna was about to leave for the day; instead of going home, she'd been called in to help save the man. The patient, who had been hit by a car, had no ID on him, no wallet, no phone, nothing that might have told them who he was; they called him John Doe, for now. John Doe hadn't made it. When a patient died, it was Lorna's job as a nurse to clean him or her up before he or she was sent to the morgue. John Doe had emptied his bowels just before he died. There had been a tear in one of Lorna's gloves, and some of the man's feces had gotten on her finger. So she scrubbed her hands even more carefully than she normally would. As she was leaving the restroom, a young woman walked in and bumped in to her. 

"Sorry," she mumbled. When Lorna had left, the young woman looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath. "You can do this, Caroline," she said encouragingly to her mirror image. Caroline tugged at the collar of her t-shirt, pulling it just low enough to reveal the dark bruise under her collar bone. Encouraging words were of no use - the sight of the bruise made her cry. It wasn't the first time her boyfriend had hit her. On the contrary, it was a routine of theirs, just a part of their daily interaction. He was careful to hit her where the bruises could be covered by clothes; only once had he hit her square in the face, but the black-eye had attracted stares and whispers, so he made sure never to touch her face. Caroline lifted her shirt and looked at the bruise on her lower stomach. It was already fading, but she was worried - she had such terrible cramps, and her period was two weeks late. What if I'm pregnant and he... But Caroline didn't have time to finish the thought. The door opened and a bewildered-looking man stepped inside. 

Paul soon realized his mistake and hurried out of the ladies' room. There was something about hospitals that made him so scatter-brained. Maybe it was the memory of the time his brother had fallen and hit his head when they were kids; Paul had sat in the passenger seat of the ambulance, his mother in the back with Max and one of the paramedics. The other paramedic, the one who was driving the ambulance, had tried to engage Paul in some sort of conversation, but Paul had quietly stared out the window. Where had his father been the day Max fell and suffered a concussion? Off on some business trip, Paul thought, full of resentment. Isn't that where their father had been their entire childhood - off on some business trip? Now, here they all were, worrying over their father who had been rushed to the hospital. They said it was only a minor heart attack, but that didn't stop their mother from making a major deal out of it. If only she would let him taste his own medicine, Paul thought and knocked over a pencil holder that was standing on the nurses' station. 

Like Paul, Dr. Stone was deep in thought, so deep he barely noticed the pencils spilling all over the medical journal he had been writing in. The journal belonged to their John Doe, who had been cleaned up, tagged and was waiting to be brought to the morgue. Meanwhile, to make room for other patients, his body lay covered by a white sheet on a bed in the hallway. Dr. Stone was staring absentmindedly at the covered body, wondering what to do about identifying it and wondering if he was really cut out to be a doctor. It wasn't that he didn't love his job, but lately it seemed his patients were all dying. He sighed and scribbled something in John Doe's temporary journal; once they'd found out who he was, these notes would be filed with his real medical journal, but for now they would be filed under DOE, J. Dr. Stone sighed again and went to see his next patient, thinking that maybe he wasn't a bad doctor - maybe it was just that, when working in an emergency room, dying patients were to be expected. 

Dr. Stone's colleague, Dr. Jackson, knew that Dr. Stone was a good doctor, and that the increased mortality rate among his patiets was entirely imagined. Jackson's shift had just ended. Before he left he watched John Doe being wheeled off to the morgue and said good night to the nurses who were at the nurses' station. Why they still called it the nurses' station was anyone's guess. Nowadays it was used by nurses and doctors alike as a place to document patients and their ailments, a place to breathe, to gossip and sit down for just a couple of minutes. Jackson liked the nurses' station, especially when it was filled with nurses. Walking out of the hospital, he smiled to himself as he thought of some of the flirtatious exchanges he had partaken in at the nurses' station over the years. He smiled even more when he started his new car. It was sleek, it was fast, it was German, it was expensive. When he turned on to the busy road, he spotted a puddle of water by a bunch of people waiting for the bus; stepping on the gas pedal and laughing, he drove straight through the puddle and splashed the waiting passengers. 

"You f*****g a*****e!" Lorna called after the car and tried to wipe the dirty water off her face. It had been a long enough day as it was - she could have been home hours ago, but instead she'd had to deal with a patient who had shat all over his bed and now she was being sprayed with filthy gutter water by some idiot driver. Days like today made Lorna swear to never come back to the hospital ever again. The truth was that she loved her job and, despite of days like today, she would never leave the hospital. Life at a hospital, she supposed, was a lot like life in general: somedays you can't believe your luck, and others you end up with s**t all over your hands.

Reviews

[TLK]

Here's your first paragraph:
"Lorna turned the tap on and ran her hands under the cold water. Pumping out a little more soap than necessary into the palm of her hand, she scrubbed away ferociously. They'd taken in a trauma patient just as Lorna was about to leave for the day; instead of going home, she'd been called in to help save the man. The patient, who had been hit by a car, had no ID on him, no wallet, no phone, nothing that might have told them who he was; they called him John Doe, for now. John Doe hadn't made it. When a patient died, it was Lorna's job as a nurse to clean him or her up before he or she was sent to the morgue. John Doe had emptied his bowels just before he died. There had been a tear in one of Lorna's gloves, and some of the man's feces had gotten on her finger. So she scrubbed her hands even more carefully than she normally would. As she was leaving the restroom, a young woman walked in and bumped in to her."

Having read it again, what was most interesting to you? What was most memorable?

Now, I have taught Health and Social Care, and my mother was a nurse, so I appreciate the value of a health-care professional washing their hands. However, that is not what I want to read about in fiction.

I'm going to give you a few moments to think further...

(I'm a teacher, you have to give students time to answer).

Yes, there you go: the most arresting line was "John Doe had emptied his bowels just before he died. " Why not start there? Why not involve the reader in the hand-washing through a sense of shared disgust (disgust at faeces seems to be a rather primal, evolved emotion that we only intensify through socialisation).


From then on, it seems each new paragraph introduces a new character in a new situation. I have to admit that I will need to give this a re-read to fully understand it. But I hope I have shown you one way of improving the openings of your fictions.