chapter something 19: hurry up

~ Hetty Eliot

Chad burst into the room where Mikhail and the chick were (thank God) only talking.

The chick begged “Can I please come?” obviously because she wanted to get him alone, the same way she had been pestering him since she got there.

“Do you even know who she is?” he asked. The chick claimed she did but he doubted it. The more pressing issue was that they didn’t know where Brad went or even who Brad was. And Tiffany, of course.

When they got down to the lobby, Chad threw his arms over the security desk and grasped the edge of it. “Have you seen Brad?” he demanded.

The guard leaned back and smirked as she played with a pencil. “Saw him leave with that hot mess.”

“Hot mess? What are you talking about?”

“The hot mess. Your girlfriend.”

He slapped his profusely sweating forehead. Brad was with Tiffany. No, no—it wasn’t like that—he was upset that Tiffany took Brad with her, not that Brad chose to go with her. Obviously.

The three of them exited the building and looked around. None of them had a car available. Chad’s father hadn’t let him bring his Lamborghini with him “to teach him the value of being a pro-football player,” the chick had stopped driving for some lame reason or other, and the serial killer was too broke for a car. So they decided to call a cab.

When the big yellow taxi cab arrived, Chad put his foot down. “I’m not sitting next to someone who looks like a serial killer,” he said, pointing to Mikhail. “She can sit in the middle.” The chick was the lesser of two evils, he figured.

They arrived at the hospital and entered the walk-in area of the emergency room. Chad rushed to the front desk where a triage nurse was speaking to a staff member. “Did a couple come in here looking for someone?”

The nurse looked confused. “Are you looking for a patient or are you here for yourself?”

“No! Someone was taken here after a fall and I want to know if a couple came here looking for her.”

“Oh, you are referring to the fall accident patient. May I take your names, please? And then I’ll have you sit down and wait until she is stabilized and a room becomes available.”

“How long is the wait?”

The nurse smiled with half her mouth. “That’s difficult to say. I’d get myself a cup of coffee if I were you.”

Needless to say, if you, dear reader, have ever been to an ER, you are well aware that they waited for a very long time. During this time, Chad shook his foot up and down, the chick looked at her hands, and Mikhail walked around and stared at the people coming in and out.

Finally, the nurse returned. “Your friend has been placed into a room and you can visit her for a little while.”

Chad said, “Well, I’m going up to wait for Brad and Tiffany.”

The chick replied, “I’m going up too. Someone should at least see if she’s okay. It’s probably a good sign that they moved her out of here to a room, right?

The serial killer said, “Not interested. I’ll stay down here in the waiting room.”

The elevator attendant directed Chad and the girl to one of the many elevators. Chad tapped his foot and sighed. Why did he have to be in the elevator with this chick? He suddenly remembered that Tiffany was Vanessa’s sister (a fact he had only just learned a couple of hours ago). If she wasn’t already at the hospital, where did she take Brad?

26 thoughts on “chapter something 19: hurry up”

  2. As much as I make fun of footballers, I have to remember that I’m just as bad when it comes to name. Granted, no one should expect to be remembered for years, but forgetting someone’s name just from yesterday, or just a few hours ago, that happens to me a lot.

    At this point, I just bring out my excuse: “Names are just string values.”

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    1. I am pretty good with voices and names. So many names are burned onto my soul. People at work are so impressed when they try and remember somebody from years ago and I just interject with their first and last name.

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  5. Dear Reader…
    Maybe that’s an artifice you could use again. Like Rod Sterling, “Imagine your girlfriend has plunged to her so-called death. Are you relieved or disappointed to find that she survived?”

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  6. The opening double entendres are deliciously delightful. Probably just my dementia rising out of the shadows, but it does seem that you are a true straight out of the behind late at night genius that can layer a story so well that it’s like reading five separate but related stories at once. It’s serious, it’s hilarious, it’s layered in a slow building tension only to burst with a twist out of the blue. I’m all in. I don’t be going no where soon.

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      1. I always do a story and then after I’ve blogged through to the end, I convert it to a manuscript and rewrite it with intent. It works better for me because I have a start to finish document so no guesswork about what happens in the end. So I can go back and tighten things up and fix any problems with the flow. I first need to pump it out and let it evolve.

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          1. That’s pretty much it, otherwise, I ruthlessly waste days obliterating everything that displeases me then the only thing left is a few ack, kack, phffft, phfffts. Even I have no idea what that means and I wrote it. 🤨

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  8. I would mention here that the actual rhetorical device used was metalepsis. But at the risk of chastisement and further abuse I won’t mention that OR meta fiction even if I did suggest David Foster Wallace and Sandra Cisneros at the beginning of y’all’s journey.

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      2. Fourth wall is theater talk, but there’s nothing “wrong” with directly addressing the audience. I would almost expect your lead protagonist to stop mid head time and tell us okay, this is shittier than I expected.

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